CR does requests ... Click on graph for larger image in new window. This graph shows the 4-week average of initial weekly unemployment claims (blue, right scale), and total insured unemployed (red, left scale), both as a percent of covered employment. This normalizes the data for cha ... ... Read more

From the WSJ: November Is as Bad as Feared Retailers reported some of the weakest sales figures in years for November, with many missing downbeat expectations, but Wal-Mart Stores Inc. continued its recent outperformance as it topped estimates on increased store traffic and transaction size. Layof ... Read more

The DOL reports : In the week ending Nov. 29, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 509,000, a decrease of 21,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 530,000. The 4-week moving average was 524,500, an increase of 6,250 from the previous week's revised average of 518, ... Read more

From the WSJ: Treasury Considers Plan to Stem Home-Prices Decline The Treasury Department is considering a plan to revitalize the U.S. housing market by reducing mortgage rates for new home loans ... The plan, which is in the development stages, would use mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Ma ... Read more

From Comscore : E-Commerce Spending Jumps 15 Percent on Cyber Monday to $846 Million, the Second Heaviest Online Spending Day on Record For the holiday season-to-date, $12.03 billion has been spent online, marking a 2 percent decline versus the corresponding days last year. However, Cyber Monday ... Read more

There were two stories published today concerning house prices and interest rates. The first story came out this morning, and quoted a report from Global Insight suggesting "the housing market is now slightly undervalued". Please stop laughing ... And later today, the WSJ reported that the ... Read more

OK, two ... “Our worry is that you have these very large players in distressed situations where they are going to have to sell assets at any price they can get. That can really weigh on the commercial real estate market.” Joel Bloomer, Morningstar analyst commenting on General Growth Proper ... Read more

From the Charlotte Business Journal: Charlotte CEOs see tough times, hope for recovery in 2009 Ken Lewis, CEO at BofA ... said he was hopeful conditions would improve in the second half of next year. He sees no bright spots for the economy before then. “Times are really tough, and we don’t ... Read more

Tanta and her sister were working on a line of Mortgage Pig™ Wear before Tanta passed away. Please see the note from Cathy (Tanta's sister). Check it out - a great holiday gift - and the proceed go to cancer cure and care organizations. Also, I'm putting together a chronological compendium ... Read more

I've heard from industry insiders (not confirmed) that Fannie Mae is putting a limit on the debt service -to-income (DTI) ratio of borrowers regardless of the Automated Underwriting System (AUS) decisions for loans requiring mortgage insurance (Loan-to-value (LTV) > 80%). This is apparently due ... Read more