Today, ADP, a provider of payroll services to 22 million Americans employed in the private sector, released their monthly jobs data which showed that the economy lost -23k jobs in March, but these numbers don’t include 2010 Census hiring. Expectations called for a gain of 40k jobs, and bond markets initially rallied on the news, [...]

Author Tattoos ‘NYT Bestseller’ On Chest When was the last time that you got a tattoo? Longtime mortgage and marketing expert Kevin Daum actually committed to his book ROAR!’s success by tattooing “New York Times Best Seller” on his chest backwards so he could see it every morning. We should all be that committed to [...]

The S&P Case Shiller January 2010 report of existing home sales showed year-over-year -0.7% price declines averaged across 20 major metropolitan areas (see table below). This is the closest to positive since January 2007. San Francisco and Minneapolis are 15.2% and 12.9% above their trough values, and notable declines for the year-over-year period were Las [...]

Can Mortgage Rates Actually Improve? Although we receive a break from the auctions this week, on Thursday the government announces the schedule for next week right ahead of Friday’s unemployment data. And of course tomorrow is the last day of the Fed purchase program – we end with the current coupon mortgage yield, spread to [...]

Overall Personal Consumption Expenditures, the Fed’s favorite measure of consumer inflation, were unchanged in February and 1.8% year-over-year through February. Excluding volatile oil and food costs from the readings, “Core” PCE price index for February was unchanged and 1.3% YOY through February. The Fed looks closely at Core PCE excluding food and energy prices because [...]

FHA Mortgage Insurance Increasing April 5 All investors (Citi, Chase, BofA, Flagstar, etc., etc.) are reminding their clients that, as a result of January’s FHA’s Mortgagee Letter 2010-02, the Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP) will increase to 2.25% effective for all case number assigned on or after Monday, April 5, 2010. This applies to FHA [...]

There’s been an interesting debate about blogging economics the last couple of days between financial blogging heavyweights Felix Salmon, writer for Reuters and Henry Blodget, editor in chief of BusinessInsider. There are many layers to the debate, but each man’s core position is as follows: Salmon believes that quality of content and reporting are how [...]

Dear Cody: I checked into your Happy Hour show yesterday on FoxBusiness and saw you cut your hair. I’m writing to say: good choice and keep it short. I know you’re a rocker by night and all that, but you were looking eerily like the UPS guy (a side-by-side visual aid provided here), and as [...]

As most know from our weekly coverage over the last 64 weeks, the Fed has been using a $1.25 trillion budget to buy mortgage bonds since January 1, 2009 in order to elevate mortgage bond prices and push rates down. Rates are 1.125% lower than they were when the program was announced, and the Fed [...]

HuffingtonPost did a great piece a couple days ago showing pictures of which celebs should play key players in a Too Big To Fail movie—for those who don’t know, HBO is making Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book of the same name into a movie, and that’s what prompted HuffPo’s slide show. But there’s one big error [...]