| Last | Change | Percent | |
| S&P Futures | 1447.3 | -5.9 | -0.41% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 2545.6 | -22.1 | -0.86% |
| Oil (WTI) | 91.68 | -0.3 | -0.33% |
| LIBOR | 0.373 | -0.003 | -0.73% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 79.48 | 0.423 | 0.54% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 1.73% | -0.04% | |
| RPX Composite Real Estate Index | 194.1 | -0.1 |
Markets are lower this morning after some disappointing European reports and a soft initial jobless report. 383K people filed for unemployment last week, higher than the survey of 379k. Last week was revised upward as well. Later this morning we will get Leading Economic Indicators. Bonds are up a point and MBS are up 1/4.
It looks like HUD paid out over $1B in false claims for its Preforeclosure Sale Program. The program ran from 9/10 to 8/11 and paid out $1.7B in total. It was intended to help homeowners who must sell their home for less than it was worth, provided they had an unavoidable financial crisis, lived in the home and did not have sufficient income to make the payments. The IG sampled 80 random cases and found 3/4 failed to meet the criteria. Ironically, it may have been a blessing in disguise since the homes would have probably gone into foreclosure anyway and FHA would have lost more in that event.
FHFA has sent to the Federal Register its approach for setting guarantee fees on a state-by-state basis, to account for the fact that foreclosures take longer and are more expensive in some states than others. Housing advocates will undoubtedly object strongly to this measure. I guess they believe that borrowers in non-judicial states should subsidize borrowers in judicial states.
On the back of yesterday's WaPo story highlighting the difficulty the Fed is having getting the benefits of QE to Main Street due to bottlenecks in mortgage origination, Bank of America announced they are cutting 16,000 jobs by year end, of which 3200 are in new mortgage origination. It is astounding how much national capacity has been taken out of mortgage origination over the past 5 years. I suspect a lot of people will find themselves caught flat-footed when the turn happens.
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