26 Mar 2004

Posted at 15:27h in The Friday Brief by
If the majority of Americans feel uneasy about their employment status as the media and certain politicians claim, they don’t show it when it comes to buying homes and taking on larger mortgages.  New home sales for February surprised to the upside while mortgage applications were down only .2% from historic highs.  Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nation’s two largest purchasers of mortgages, are forecasting another record year for home sales amid low interest rates.  The 30-year fixed mortgage is within a half a percent of the all-time low.

19 Mar 2004

Posted at 15:34h in The Friday Brief by
Offices and worksites are abuzz with NCAA college basketball talk as the tournament got off to a great start this week.  The event is characterized as “March Madness” or “March Mania” because of all the hoopla (no pun intended) and energy of 64 college and university fanatics converging on 14 American cities over the next three weeks.  Good luck if you have a pony in this race.

13 Feb 2004

Posted at 16:06h in The Friday Brief by
In his testimony before committees of the House of Representatives on Wednesday and the Senate yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan delivered essentially the same message.  The extraordinary pace of productivity has reduced the need for companies to hire workers, but the lengthy spell of jobless growth is "atypical" compared to previous cycles.  In his view employment should be "expanding at a reasonably good clip within a short period of time."