Notice how all the bad news is somehow unexpected.

Sales of previously owned houses unexpectedly slumped in January for the second consecutive month, raising fresh concerns about the housing market’s potential for rebound even as a new report showed that the economy expanded more than previously forecast at the end of last year.

Sales of existing houses, townhouses, condominiums and cooperatives fell 7.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.05 million in January from December, the National Association of Realtors reported Friday. Many analysts had expected a slight gain.

Source/Full Story:   washingtonpost.com

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is bracing for a new wave of bank failures that could cost the agency many billions of dollars and further strain its finances.

With bank failures running at their highest level in nearly two decades, the F.D.I.C. is racing to keep up with rising losses to its insurance fund, which safeguards savers’ deposits. On Tuesday, the agency announced that it had placed 702 lenders on its list of “problem” banks, the highest number since 1993.

Not all of those banks are destined to founder, and F.D.I.C. officials said Tuesday that they expected failures to peak this year. But they also warned that the fund might have to cover $20 billion in additional losses by 2013 — a bill that could be even greater if the economy worsens.

F.D.I.C. officials say the fund has ample resources to cope with its projected losses.

“We think that we have the cash we need,”

Sheila C. Bair, the F.D.I.C. chairwoman, said in an interview on Tuesday. She said it was unlikely the F.D.I.C. would need to tap its emergency credit line with the Treasury Department, although she did not rule out such an action.

Source/Full Story NYTimes.com

Walmart has suffered its first fall in quarterly sales at its US discount stores, underlining the challenges facing future growth in its home market as the economy recovers.

During the important holiday quarter ending on January 31, net sales at Walmart’s 3,400 plus US stores fell 0.5 per cent year-on-year to $71bn, while comparable store sales declined 2 per cent. Customer traffic also fell.

The retailer blamed price deflation in food and electronics for lowering the overall value of its sales, as well as the impact of store refurbishment.

The decline contrasted with the strong sales and traffic growth during its first three quarters, as low prices attracted new budget-minded shoppers.

Tom Schoewe, chief financial officer, argued that the declines did not mean Walmart was losing some of the customers it had gained during the recession, saying the “modest decline” in traffic was “not in our mind an indication of trend”.

He highlighted the cautious mood of Walmart’s largely low-income shoppers, saying there was still a high level of anxiety over unemployment.

Source/Full Story: FT.com

We’ve been waiting on this one for a while now…

Over the next several years, failed commercial real estate loans could litter American cities with empty stores and office complexes, cause hundreds of bank failures and weaken the economy, a watchdog report says.

Banks face up to $300 billion in losses on loans made for commercial property and development, according to a report released Thursday by the Congressional Oversight Panel. The panel monitors the government’s efforts to stabilize the financial system.

The report says the defaults could lead to reduced lending and cause the eviction of families from rental properties. Bank failures also could contribute to job losses and hurt the economic recovery.

Smaller banks are more vulnerable to the losses than their larger Wall Street counterparts. That’s because commercial real estate makes up a larger portion of their portfolio.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

The unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly in January to 9.7
percent, while employers shed 20,000 jobs, according to a report that
offered hope the economy will add jobs soon.

The unemployment rate dropped from 10 percent because a survey of
households found the number of employed Americans rose by 541,000, the
Labor Department said Friday. The job losses are calculated from a
separate survey of employers.

The department also revised its past employment estimates to show
that job losses from the Great Recession have been much worse than
previously stated. The economy has shed 8.4 million jobs since the
downturn began in December 2007, up from a previous figure of 7.2
million.

That’s the most jobs lost in any recession, as a percent of total employment, since World War II.

The figure for November was revised higher, however, to show a gain
of 64,000 jobs. That was initially reported as a gain of 4,000.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

Moody’s Investors Service fired off a warning on Wednesday that the triple A sovereign credit rating of the US would come under pressure unless economic growth was more robust than expected or tougher actions were taken to tackle the country’s budget deficit.

In a move that follows intensifying concern among investors over the US deficit, Moody’s said the country faced a trajectory of debt growth that was “clearly continuously upward”.

Steven Hess, senior credit officer at Moody’s, said the deficits projected in the budget outlook presented by the Obama administration outlook this week did not stabilise debt levels in relation to gross domestic product.

“Unless further measures are taken to reduce the budget deficit further or the economy rebounds more vigorously than expected, the federal financial picture as presented in the projections for the next decade will at some point put pressure on the triple A government bond rating,” the rating agency added in an issuer note.

Source/Full Story: FT.com

The new foreclosure plague is tied more to the economy than bad mortgages. Here are 10 cities where defaults grew the fastest in 2009.

Boise, Provo, Portland OR, Green Bay WI, Brimingham Ala., Myrtle Beach, Honolulu, Roanoke, Sioux Falls, S.D., Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss.

Source/Full Story: CNNMoney.com

A record one in seven U.S. mortgages were in foreclosure or at least one payment past due in the third quarter, according to fresh data signaling the recovery in the housing market will be tepid at best.

U.S. mortgage delinquency rates and the percentage of loans that entered the foreclosure process also jumped to records from July to September, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Thursday.

Rising job losses were behind the increasingly bleak portrait of the housing market in a trend that will continue into next year, the group said in data that adds to recent evidence of a still-struggling housing market.

Housing and related business account for about 20 percent of the economy and recovery is essential to bring unemployment down from a 26-1/2-year high and kick-start economic growth.

Source/Full Story: Reuters

Retail sales unexpectedly fell in December, leaving 2009 with the biggest yearly sales drop on record and highlighting the formidable hurdles facing the economy as it struggles to recover from the recession.

A second disappointing economic report yesterday showed that the number of newly laid-off workers requesting unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week.

While many economists were puzzled by the decline in retail sales, they cautioned that the December figures do not necessarily signal a big consumer pullback and could be a blip.

Source/Full Story: Philadelphia Inquirer

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said in an interview with Reuters home prices will resume their decline by early next year as foreclosure sales pick up again.

“The housing crash is not over,” he said.

The U.S. housing market has suffered the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and its impact has rippled through the recession-hit economy as well as the rest of the world.

A setback for the hard-hit housing market could portend problems for the U.S. economy.

Home prices, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, will trough in the third quarter of 2010 after declining 38 percent, Zandi said.

The index peaked in the second quarter of 2006 and hit a trough in the first quarter of 2009, a drop of about 32 percent.

Source/Full Story: Zandi | Reuters

…
So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back.
The long-term picture for workers and families is even worse than current job loss numbers alone would suggest. Now as a way of sharing the pain, many firms are telling their workers to cut hours, take furloughs and accept lower wages. Specifically, that fall in hours worked is equivalent to another 3 million full time jobs lost on top of the 7.5 million jobs formally lost.

This is very bad news but we must face facts. Many of the lost jobs are gone forever, including construction jobs, finance jobs and manufacturing jobs. Recent studies suggest that a quarter of U.S. jobs are fully out-sourceable over time to other countries.

Other measures tell the same ugly story: The average length of unemployment is at an all time high; the ratio of job applicants to vacancies is 6 to 1; initial claims are down but continued claims are very high and now millions of unemployed are resorting to the exceptional extended unemployment benefits programs and are staying in them longer.

Based on my best judgment, it is most likely that the unemployment rate will peak close to 11% and will remain at a very high level for two years or more.

Source/Full Story: nydailynews.com

What economic challenges are still ahead? I thought the economy was recovering, and green shoots abound.

US unemployment surged above 10 per cent for the first time in more than a quarter of a century in October, increasing political pressure on the Obama administration.

According to figures revealed on Friday, the unemployment rate rose to 10.2 per cent, its highest since 1983, as companies continued to shed jobs in spite of a return to economic growth. Non-farm payrolls were down 190,0000, slightly more than analysts expected, taking the total of jobs lost since the recession began to 7.3m.

In a televised statement, President Barack Obama called the unemployment rate “a sobering number that underscores the economic challenge ahead”.

Source/Full Story: FT.com

White House economic adviser Paul Volcker said his meeting on Monday with President Barack Obama focused in part on reducing U.S. economic reliance on consumer spending.

The alternatives to help bolster future economic growth include boosting exports, applying innovative technology to green issues and improving the nation’s infrastructure, Volcker said.

The former Federal Reserve chairman, who now heads the White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said Obama understands that “We cannot have so much consumption.”

Consumer spending accounted for 70 percent of the U.S. economy before last year’s economic meltdown, a level that Volcker said was sustained only by “the magic of financial engineering.”

“We cannot rebuild the economy to the tune of 70 percent consumption or housing booms. It will just break down again,” Volcker said.

Source/Full Story:  Reuters
Technorati Tags: consumer spending

…
The government will release figures this week expected to show that the economy has awakened from its deepest slump since the 1930s and is in the early stages of a recovery. But the following week, the government will issue another set of figures expected to show unemployment continuing to rise toward and possibly above a clearly recessionary 10 percent.

How can both be possible?

The government releases third-quarter Gross Domestic Product figures on Thursday. Many forecasters say they will show GDP growing at an annual rate of about 3 percent, validating a widely held belief among economists that the recession ended in June or July.

But try telling that to the more than 15 million still unemployed, the small businesses and individuals who can’t get loans and the people whose homes are worth less than their mortgages.

Assertions by government and private economists that the recession is over — issued amid graphic examples of continuing wide distress — are raising fresh questions about economic scorekeeping.

Source/Full Story:  Yahoo! News

The US budget deficit is expected to hit a record $1.4 trillion this year, some $950 billion greater than the shortfall recorded last year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said.

Congress’s non-partisan financial watchdog said the forecast federal deficit for the fiscal year that ended last month was the highest shortfall – relative to the size of the economy – since 1945.

The deficit resulted from both declining revenues and increased spending, stemming mostly from aid to the financial system and fiscal stimulus to jolt the world’s largest economy from a prolonged recession, the CBO said.

Revenues were almost $420bn or 17 per cent below receipts chalked up last year, the lowest level in over 50 years.

At the same time, outlays increased by over $530bn or 18pc to the highest level also in over half a century. The federal deficit last year was $459bn.

The deficit estimates were based on data from daily statements from the US Treasury and CBO projections.

Source/Full Story:: Gulf Daily News
Technorati Tags: budget deficit