by Calculated Risk on 8/25/2011 08:30:00 AM

The DOL reports:

In the week ending August 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 417,000, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 412,000. The 4-week moving average was 407,500, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week's revised average of 403,500.

The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since January 2000 (longer term graph in graph gallery).

Click on graph for larger image in graph gallery.

The dashed line on the graph is the current 4-week average. The four-week average of weekly unemployment claims increased this week to 407,500.

Weekly claims have increased for two consecutive weeks and the 4-week average is still elevated.

by Calculated Risk on 8/25/2011 12:10:00 AM

From the NY Times: U.S. May Back Refinance Plan for Mortgages (ht Ann)

One proposal would allow millions of homeowners with government-backed mortgages to refinance them at today’s lower interest rates, about 4 percent, according to two people briefed on the administration’s discussions ...

Administration officials said on Wednesday that they were weighing a range of proposals ... They are also working on a home rental program that would try to shore up housing prices by preventing hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes from flooding the market. ...

But refinancing could have far greater breadth, saving homeowners, by one estimate, $85 billion a year. Despite record low interest rates, many homeowners have been unable to refinance their loans either because they owe more than their houses are now worth or because their credit is tarnished.

This is a recycled suggestion that Tom Lawler criticised last year. There is a already program to do this called Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) that wasn't very successful.

by Calculated Risk on 8/24/2011 05:19:00 PM

From the WSJ: Europe Banks Lean More on Emergency Funding

Commercial banks boosted their reliance on the European Central Bank, borrowing €2.82 billion ($4.07 billion) from an emergency lending facility on Tuesday ... While the amount of borrowing is tiny ... the increase from €555 million a day earlier, nonetheless suggest that some lenders are struggling to borrow from traditional funding sources ... The ECB charges a punitive 2.25% interest rate to borrow from its facility

From Le Monde: Fillon dévoile un plan de 11 milliards d'euros de réduction des déficits

Comme prévu, François Fillon a précisé, mercredi 24 août, l'ampleur et le détail d'un plan de rigueur très attendu. Ce plan d'austérité a été précipité par un ralentissement de la croissance et vise à maintenir les engagements financiers de la France en matière de réduction des déficits.
...
Le total s'élève à 1 milliard d'euros pour 2011 et 11 milliards pour 2012, a détaillé le premier ministre. Il s'agit de la fourchette haute des réductions attendues, estimées entre 5 et 10 milliards d'euros. De même, les révisions des hypothèses de croissance annoncées par Matignon sont assez importantes : 1,75 % au lieu de 2 % pour 2011. Et 1,75 % pour 2012, soit 0,5 % de moins que prévu.
...
Sur TF1, le premier ministre a justifié ces mesures en expliquant qu'elles portaient à "83 %" sur "les détenteurs de patrimoine, les grandes entreprises et les ménages aux revenus très élevés".

That is a deficit reduction of 1 billion euros in 2011 and 11 billion in 2012. France also lowered their growth projections to 1.75% from 2% in 2011, 1.75% in 2012 from 2.25%.

About 83% of the deficit reduction will come from tax increases on corporation and high income earners.

by Calculated Risk on 8/24/2011 01:20:00 PM

A common criticism of the FHFA house price index (HPI) is that the index only includes GSE properties. Today the FHFA announced (PDF) an expanded series:

To further enhance public understanding of house price changes, FHFA is introducing in this release a new set of house price indexes that make use of additional sales price information from external data sources. The new indexes, denoted as the “expanded-data” HPI, use a data sample that has been augmented with sales price information for homes with mortgages endorsed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and real property county recorder information licensed from DataQuick Information Systems. In the past, price trends sometimes have been different for homes with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac financing than for properties with alternate financing. To the extent those differences exist, the new data sources will allow the expanded-data HPI to reflect price trends for a larger set of homes.

These expanded-data indexes are quarterly for states, census divisions, and the United States. The FHFA is considering introducing MSA indexes too. Here is the Q2 expanded series data.

Using the standard FHFA HPI:

U.S. house prices were 0.6 percent lower in the second quarter than in the first quarter of 2011 according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) seasonally adjusted purchase-only house price index (HPI). ... While the national, purchase-only house price index fell 5.9 percent from the second quarter of 2010 to the second quarter of 2011, prices of other goods and services rose 4.5 percent over the same period. Accordingly, the inflation-adjusted price of homes fell approximately 10.0 percent over the last year.

The expanded FHFA national series was down 1.1 percent in Q2 (Seasonally adjusted), and down 6.1% from Q2 2010 - and down 24.2% from the peak.

For comparison, the Case-Shiller national quarterly index was off 32.7% from the peak in Q1 2011.

In 2005, most reporting focused on NAR median house prices - however median prices can be distorted by the mix of homes sold. The most followed repeat sales price index in 2005 was the OFHEO HPI (now FHFA). The Case-Shiller index gained popularity in early 2007 since it seemed to better reflect observed changes in house prices. (as an example, the first mention of the Case-Shiller index in the LA Times appears to be on June 27, 2007)

Now the most followed house price indexes are Case-Shiller and CoreLogic; both repeat sales indexes. There are several other house price indexes that I track: RadarLogic (based on a house price per square foot method), FNC Residential Price Index (a hedonic price index), Clear Capital, Altos Research and Zillow.

With the addition of the expanded quarterly HPI, I will probably mention the FHFA indexes more often in the future. Also the NAR is rumored to be considering introducing a repeat sales index. The "most followed" indexes might change again ...

by Calculated Risk on 8/24/2011 10:31:00 AM

The Greek bailout deal is under pressure ... and the Greek 2 year yield increased to 44% and the 10 year yield increased to 18% this morning.

From the WSJ: German Adviser: We Must Help Greece

The euro zone must continue to stand by Greece while it carries out a decade of reforms ... Wolfgang Franz, chairman of the independent council of economic advisers to the federal government ... said in a telephone interview

Mr. Franz struck ... said he was "horrified" by the Finnish government's request for collateral against its next tranche of aid, saying that this could cause the whole deal to unravel.

"This is a discussion that should be ended as soon as possible," he said. "This is the exact opposite of solidarity."

From the Telegraph: Finland threatens to withdraw Greek bailout support

Jyrki Katainen, the Finnish prime minister ... said that if Finland's bilateral agreement with Greece over collateral payments was overruled, the Nordic country could back out of the rescue programme.

He told reporters that the private collateral agreement, in which Greece agreed to give Finland €1bn (£875m) in cash in return for its support, was "our parliament's decision that we demand it as a condition for us joining in".

The Portuguese 2 year yield is up some to 13.3%, otherwise there is no panic in the European bond markets.  Right now this is just an issue for Greece.

Here is a graph of the 10 year spread (Italy to Germany) from Bloomberg. And for Spain to Germany. The Italian spread is at 282, down from 389 on Aug 4th, and the Spanish spread is at 279, down from 398 on Aug 4th.

Also the Irish 2 year yield is at 8.9%. And the French 10 year is at 2.87%.

Here are the links for bond yields for several countries (source: Bloomberg):

Greece	2 Year	5 Year	10 Year
Portugal	2 Year	5 Year	10 Year
Ireland	2 Year	5 Year	10 Year
Spain	2 Year	5 Year	10 Year
Italy	2 Year	5 Year	10 Year
Belgium	2 Year	5 Year	10 Year
France	2 Year	5 Year	10 Year
Germany	2 Year	5 Year	10 Year