by Calculated Risk on 10/04/2014 01:11:00 PM

This will be a very light week for economic data although there will be plenty of Fed speeches (not listed).

Perhaps the most interesting releases this week will be the Fed's new Labor Market Conditions Index on Monday, and the Treasury Budget for September (end of fiscal year) on Friday.

----- Monday, October 6th -----
Early: Black Knight Mortgage Monitor report for August.

At 10:00 AM ET: The Fed will release the new monthly Labor Market Conditions Index (LMCI).

----- Tuesday, October 7th -----
10:00 AM: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for August from the BLS.

This graph shows job openings (yellow line), hires (purple), Layoff, Discharges and other (red column), and Quits (light blue column) from the JOLTS.

Jobs openings decreased slightly in July to 4.673 million from 4.675 million in June.

The number of job openings (yellow) were up 22% year-over-year. Quits were up 9% year-over-year.

3:00 PM: Consumer Credit for August from the Federal Reserve.  The consensus is for credit to increase $20.5 billion.

----- Wednesday, October 8th -----
7:00 AM: The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.

2:00 PM: FOMC Minutes for the September 16-17, 2014.

----- Thursday, October 9th -----
Early: Trulia Price Rent Monitors for September. This is the index from Trulia that uses asking house prices adjusted both for the mix of homes listed for sale and for seasonal factors.

8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for claims to increase to 293 thousand from 287 thousand.

10:00 AM: Monthly Wholesale Trade: Sales and Inventories for August. The consensus is for a 0.3% increase in inventories.

----- Friday, October 10th -----
2:00 PM ET: The Monthly Treasury Budget Statement for September.

----- Saturday, October 11th -----
5:00 PM ET, Speech by Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, The Federal Reserve and the Global Economy, at the 2014 International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings: Per Jacobsson Lecture, Washington, D.C. The speech can be viewed live at the IMF website.

by Calculated Risk on 10/04/2014 08:15:00 AM

This is an unofficial list of Problem Banks compiled only from public sources.

Here is the unofficial problem bank list for Oct 3, 2014.

Changes and comments from surferdude808:

Quiet week for changes to the Unofficial Problem Bank List as there were only two removals. After the changes, the list holds 430 institutions with assets of $136.1 billion. A year ago, the list held 685 institutions with assets of $238.7 billion.

Actions were terminated against Patriot National Bank, Stamford, CT ($552 million Ticker: PNBK) and New Millennium Bank, New Brunswick, NJ ($183 million Ticker: NMNB).

With the passage of the third quarter this week, it is time for the quarterly update to the transition matrix. Full details are available in the accompanying table and a graphic depicting trends in how institutions have arrived and departed the list. Since publication of the Unofficial Problem Bank List started in August 2009, a total of 1,673 institutions have appeared on the list. Since year-end 2012, new entrants have slowed as only 67 institutions have been added since then while 473 institutions have been removed. The pace of action terminations did slow during the latest quarter. At the start of the third quarter, there were 468 institution on the list and there were 27 action termination resulting in a removal rate of 5.8 percent, which well under the 11.9 percent rate for the previous quarter. A high termination rate is easier to achieve as the number of institutions starting each quarter has declined consistently from 1,001 at 2011q3 to the 468 at the start of 2014q3.

At the end of the third quarter, only 432 or 25.8 percent of the banks that have been on the list at some point remain. Action terminations of 646 account for 52 percent of the 1,241 institutions removed. Although failure have slowed over the past two year, they do account for a significant number of institutions that have left the list. Since publication, 383 of the institutions that have appeared on the list have failed accounting for nearly 31 percent of removals. Should another institution on the current list not fail, then nearly 23 percent of the 1,673 institutions that made an appearance on the list would have failed. A 23 percent default rate would be more than double the rate often cited by media reports on the failure rate of banks on the FDIC's official list. Of the $659.9 billion in assets removed from the list, the largest volume of $296.1 billion is from failure while terminations still trail at $270.8 billion.

Unofficial Problem Bank List
Change Summary
		Number of Institutions	Assets ($Thousands)
Start (8/7/2009)		389	276,313,429
Subtractions
	Action Terminated	141	(55,759,559)
	Unassisted Merger	34	(7,152,867)
	Voluntary Liquidation	4	(10,584,114)
	Failures	154	(184,269,578)
	Asset Change		(5,371,544)
Still on List at 9/30/2014		56	13,175,767
Additions after 8/7/2009		376	123,623,785
End (9/30/2014)		432	136,799,552
Intraperiod Deletions1
	Action Terminated	505	215,076,758
	Unassisted Merger	164	72,821,593
	Voluntary Liquidation	10	2,324,142
	Failures	229	111,876,012
	Total	908	402,098,505
1Institution not on 8/7/2009 or 9/30/2014 list but appeared on a weekly list.

by Calculated Risk on 10/03/2014 07:53:00 PM

Some interesting analysis from Hui Shan, Marty Young, Chris Henson at Goldman Sachs: Fed likely still holds $1 trillion MBS by the end of 2020

The QE program is set to end after the October FOMC meeting. In the updated exit strategy principles released on September 17, the committee announced that it anticipates (1) portfolio reinvestments will continue until after the first rate hike and (2) sales of MBS will not occur during the normalization process. The Federal Reserve currently holds close to $1.8 trillion agency MBS, accounting for one third of the total outstanding. Our US economics team forecasts the first Federal funds rate hike in 2015Q3 and the portfolio reinvestment continuing through 2015. This projection combined with the FOMC’s exit strategy principles suggests that the Federal Reserve is likely to remain the largest agency MBS investor for a long time.
...
The speed of the portfolio rundown when the Fed stops reinvesting depends on the speed of principal payments, both scheduled (i.e., through amortization) and unscheduled (i.e., through refinancing, home sales, and defaults). While scheduled principal payments are pre-determined, unscheduled principal payments depend on a host of factors such as interest rates, house prices, and economic conditions. ...

Under our baseline scenario, the Federal Reserve continues reinvesting principal payments through 2015. After that, the Fed portfolio declines slowly, with the Fed still holding $1 trillion MBS by the end of 2020. Such a gradual pace suggests that Fed portfolio rundown is unlikely to create a surge in the net supply of agency MBS for private investors to absorb after the end of QE.
emphasis added

by Calculated Risk on 10/03/2014 02:31:00 PM

Reis reported that the vacancy rate for regional malls was unchanged at 7.9% in Q3 2014. This is down from a cycle peak of 9.4% in Q3 2011.

For Neighborhood and Community malls (strip malls), the vacancy rate was also unchanged at 10.3% in Q3. For strip malls, the vacancy rate peaked at 11.1% in Q3 2011.

Comments from Reis Senior Economist Ryan Severino:

[Strip Malls] The national vacancy rate for neighborhood and community shopping centers was unchanged at 10.3% during the third quarter. This is similar to last quarter when the vacancy rate did not change. The national vacancy is now down 80 basis points from its historical peak during the third quarter of 2011. Of course, this means the pace of improvement is slow and consistent.

Completions during the quarter were low, even by the standards of this tepid recovery. Construction has yet to mount any meaningful recovery since the recession. Most of the construction occurring is small and almost always predicated on preleasing. There is still virtually no new speculative development five years removed from the start of the economic recovery.
...
Ecommerce remains a potent threat to many retail centers, but at this point, that is not what is holding the market back. The overwhelming majority of retail sales activity, roughly 94%, still occurs in physical retail locations. Surely that has imperiled some centers, but not the majority. Though ecommerce's share of the market will continue to grow and pose a larger threat over time, it will not prevent a recovery in the retail sector.

[Regional] Much like with neighborhood and community centers, the regional mall vacancy rate was unchanged this quarter at 7.9%. Although this is down 30 basis points from the third quarter of 2013, that was the last quarter during which the national vacancy rate for malls declined. Malls have been stuck at 7.9% for a year.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the strip mall vacancy rate starting in 1980 (prior to 2000 the data is annual). The regional mall data starts in 2000. Back in the '80s, there was overbuilding in the mall sector even as the vacancy rate was rising. This was due to the very loose commercial lending that led to the S&L crisis.

In the mid-'00s, mall investment picked up as mall builders followed the "roof tops" of the residential boom (more loose lending). This led to the vacancy rate moving higher even before the recession started. Then there was a sharp increase in the vacancy rate during the recession and financial crisis.

Mall vacancy data courtesy of Reis.

by Calculated Risk on 10/03/2014 01:05:00 PM

Earlier the Department of Commerce reported:

[T]otal August exports of $198.5 billion and imports of $238.6 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $40.1 billion, down from $40.3 billion in July, revised. August exports were $0.4 billion more than July exports of $198.0 billion. August imports were $0.2 billion more than July imports of $238.3 billion.

The trade deficit was smaller than the consensus forecast of $40.7 billion and the trade deficit was revised down slightly for July.

The first graph shows the monthly U.S. exports and imports in dollars through August 2014.

Click on graph for larger image.

Imports and exports increased in August.  

Exports are 19% above the pre-recession peak and up 4% compared to August 2013; imports are 3% above the pre-recession peak, and up about 4% compared to August 2013. 

The second graph shows the U.S. trade deficit, with and without petroleum, through August.

The blue line is the total deficit, and the black line is the petroleum deficit, and the red line is the trade deficit ex-petroleum products.

Oil imports averaged $96.32 in August, down from $97.81 in July, and down from $100.27 in August 2013.  The petroleum deficit has generally been declining and is the major reason the overall deficit has declined since early 2012.

The trade deficit with China increased to $30.2 billion in August, from $29.8 billion in August 2013.