From Reuters: Treasury says 650,000 in trial home loan workouts [The Treasury Department] said there were 650,994 active trial modifications through October under President Barack Obama's plan to help the housing market. That was up from 487,081 ... participating through September. The Treasury ... Read more

From the Ambac 10-Q : While management believes that Ambac will have sufficient liquidity to satisfy its needs through the second quarter of 2011, no guarantee can be given that it will be able to pay all of its operating expenses and debt service obligations thereafter, including maturing princip ... Read more

Lately I’ve been leaning against the view of a “V shaped” recovery. I think that growth will be decent in the second half of 2009, but growth will be sluggish in 2010. San Francisco Fed President Dr. Yellen has a similar view – from her speech this morning: The Outlook for the Economy and ... Read more

From Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart: Economic Recovery, Small Business, and the Challenge of Commercial Real Estate [H]ow serious is the CRE problem for the financial system and the broad economy? First, let me provide some overview comments: While the CRE problem is serious for parts of ... Read more

According to an article in the LA Times, it appears the 2009 holiday season will be worse than 2008 for the travel industry: Airlines, hotels face bleak holidays According to the Auto Club, 46% of those surveyed said they planned to spend the same amount on holiday travel as they did last year, wh ... Read more

Floyd Norris at the NY Times asks: Did Unemployment Really Rise? The economic reactions over the weekend to Friday’s employment report all started from the assumption that things grew much worse in October. The unemployment rate leaped to 10.2 percent from 9.8 percent. Another 190,000 jobs vanis ... Read more

Former Fed Governor Frederic Mishkin writes in the Financial Times: Not all bubbles present a risk to the economy There is increasing concern that we may be experiencing another round of asset-price bubbles that could pose great danger to the economy. Does this danger provide a case for the US Fed ... Read more

From the NY Times: Paterson Paints Grim Picture of N.Y. Budget Crisis "We stand on the brink of a financial challenge of unprecedented magnitude in the history of this state,” Mr. Paterson told lawmakers as he warned that New York was rapidly running out of cash ... While the state faces a def ... Read more

From the Fed: The October 2009 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices In the October survey, domestic banks indicated that they continued to tighten standards and terms over the past three months on all major types of loans to businesses and households. However, the net per ... Read more

Note: The Sacramento Association of REALTORS® is now breaking out monthly resales by equity sales (conventional resales), and distressed sales (Short sales and REO sales). I'm following this series as an example to see changes in the mix in a former bubble area. Click on graph for larger i ... Read more