Eye On Housing
The third quarter Federal Reserve Flow of Funds report showed continued improvement in the financial position of U.S. households with real estate, as the market value of all owner-occupied residential real estate (household owned) rose to $25.6 trillion. According to NAHB tabulations of the quarterly series, the asset or market value of owner-occupied real estate held by U.S. households increased… Read More ›
As expected, at the conclusion of its September meeting the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee raised the short-term federal funds rate 25 basis to a range of 2% to 2.25% . Markets and forecasters are confident that an additional 25 basis point increase will occur in December. The change in monetary policy occurs as the 10-year Treasury rate, which generally moves… Read More ›
President Trump has nominated Jerome H. Powell to be the next Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In his role as Chairman of the Board of Governors (“the Board”), Mr. Powell would also chair the Federal Open Markets Committee (“FOMC”), the monetary policy decision making body composed of the other Federal Reserve Board governors and… Read More ›
In its statement, the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) left its key interest rate unchanged at a range of 1.0 to 1.25 percent. As signaled in its last statement, the FOMC, beginning in October, will initiate the balance sheet normalization program. The contents of this program are described in the June 2017 Addendum to the Committee’s Policy Normalization Principles and… Read More ›
In a statement following its two-day meeting covering July 25 and 26, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC or the Committee) decided to “maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 1 to 1.25 percent”. All FOMC members voted in favor of this decision. In its statement, the FOMC maintains that, at this level, “the stance of monetary policy remains… Read More ›
The BLS released the Employment Situation report for May. Payroll employment increased by 138 thousand, and the prior two months were revised downward by a total of 66 thousand. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3% from 4.4% in April, but only because the number of people in the labor force declined faster than the number of people employed in the… Read More ›
Beyond confirming that if economic activity continues to unfold as expected another increase in the federal funds rate would be appropriate soon (June), the minutes from the May meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) added relatively little to the picture of the path of monetary policy that was laid out in the post-meeting statement and previous policy discussions…. Read More ›
Economic activity sputtered in the first quarter, job growth stumbled in March, and inflation turned negative at both the headline and core (excluding food and energy) levels. Policymakers on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) “decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 3/4 to 1 percent” and pronounced “Near-term risks to the economic outlook appear… Read More ›
The minutes from meetings of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy setting body, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), traditionally released three weeks after the meeting, provide a closer look at the deliberations, than the brief statement released immediately following the meetings. The minutes from the March meeting provide deeper insights in two particular areas: the path of the federal funds… Read More ›
Expectations were high that the March meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) would end with an announcement of a 25 basis point increase in the target range for the federal funds rate. Those expectations were met, and at the press conference following the meeting, when asked why the third increase came so quickly, after the first two came… Read More ›