The central bank on Wednesday reduced its target for the federal funds rate, the interest banks charge on overnight loans, to 1 percent, a low last seen in 2003-2004. The funds rate has not been lower since 1958, when Dwight Eisenhower was president.
In a brief statement explaining Wednesdays action, the Fed said the “intensification of [...]
While real estate prices continue to hold near their highs, banks are preparing for a decline in property values by tightening mortgage requirements, making it harder for consumers to receive a loan.
“I’ve called all the banks, and each one said they were in the process of renewing their terms and regulations,” said Mikhail Sergeienko, a [...]
Gov. Jon Corzine today said the impact from the recent stock market plunge and credit crisis has yet to be fully realized and will likely bring “rising levels of unemployment,” adding New Jersey may even try to purchase homes to protect residents from foreclosure.
Speaking this morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Corzine proposed the federal [...]
San Francisco may be 3,000 miles from Wall Street, but the crisis that has engulfed the country’s biggest financial institutions is putting even more pressure on the Bay Area’s real estate market, making it increasingly difficult for home buyers to get credit.
Cheap credit played a dramatic role in fueling the housing boom of the late [...]
The Canadian government moved to shore up the nation’s banks by taking on some of their mortgages in a bid to ease higher borrowing costs that have crippled lending. Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia responded by cutting their prime rates.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., a government-run agency, will buy as much as C$25 [...]
Here is the prepared statement of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Wednesday, as released by the Treasury.
Good afternoon. Last Friday Congress finalized and President Bush signed into law the bipartisan Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. The EESA provides the Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC with important new authorities to complement existing ones. We [...]
WASHINGTON – Aug. 1, 2008 – Happy birthday, credit crisis. It was a year ago August that the world began to suspect the economy was heading into something worse than a slump. Now as another August heaves into view, the credit crisis is a year bigger and – like many 1-year-olds – indiscriminate about where [...]