10/22/09

Good morning. Today mortgage prices are a shade worse than Wednesday afternoon’s levels. Yesterday was the Fed’s Beige Book report which comes out eight times a year and summarizes the Fed’s twelve districts. The Fed reported that the economy has shown signs of stabilizing or modestly improving, but the signs are still not enough to move the entire economy. The housing market and manufacturing activity have improved but commercial real estate remains a big concern. Inflation “ain’t no problem”, the labor market is still weak or at best mixed, and demand for bank loans was weak or declining.
This morning we had Jobless Claims, which rose more than expected last week. Yes, the employment area still looks slow. Initial claims for state jobless insurance increased to 531,000 after declining for two consecutive weeks. Analysts had forecast new claims going down to 515,000 last week. And later today we will have Leading Economic Indicators.