– Home prices in major U.S. metropolitan areas increased for the second consecutive month in May, according to a report released by Standard & Poor’s on Tuesday, although prices continued to show a notable drop compared to same month a year ago.
The report showed that the S&P/Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Home Price Index rose 1.0 percent on a monthly basis in May following a 0.6 percent increase in April.
At the same time, S&P said that the 20-City Composite Home Price Index fell at an annual rate of 4.5 percent in May, the steepest year-over-year drop since November of 2009.
“We see some seasonal improvements with May’s data,” said David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices.
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With only a few days before the August 2nd deadline, any clear agreement on raising the U.S. debt ceiling is still not in sight. Both the Democrats and Republicans appear to be parked in their respective political corners, with the only thing they can seem to agree on is that they are deadlocked.
After all the sound and fury of the past few months around the debt ceiling, it is hard to imagine it was introduced less than a century ago as a mechanism to simplify sovereign borrowing. Article I Section 8 of the United States Constitution gives Congress the sole power to borrow money, and Congress used to have to authorize every single debt issuance. As a workaround to this cumbersome process, they created the debt ceiling, as we know it, by the Second Liberty Bond Act in 1917.
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– New unemployment claims in the U.S. showed a significant decrease in the week ended July 23rd, according to figures released Thursday by the Labor Department, with claims falling below the key 400,000 level.
The seasonally adjusted number of new claims came in at 398,000, a significant drop of 24,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 422,000.
The notable drop in jobless claims came as a surprise to economists, who had expected claims to increase to 425,000 from the 418,000 originally reported for the previous week.
Additionally, the level of new claims in the latest week comes in below the 400,000 mark, which is considered by many economists to be a benchmark for rising employment.
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The probability is very high that the US will not have a debt ceiling deal or a budget deal by the deadline next week, and the ratings agencies will pronounce the US in technical default. The politics don’t matter to either the financial markets or to the voters—it will be a failure of government and on Obama’s watch, offsetting entirely capturing Osama bin Laden. This is what the Republicans want—a big failure on Obama’s watch—and as noted above, they think it will cement the next election. Despicable though the strategy may be, they are probably correct. Pres Obama would have to take some bold action to avoid this outcome, like seizing power under the 14 th Amendment, and we have not seen that kind of boldness from him. It was prob
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The U.S. dollar fell against majors on Tuesday trading, especially safe havens, amid concerns U.S. officials will not reach to an agreement regarding the raise of debt ceiling before August 2 deadline.
Yesterday, the greenback showed a slight rise as it benefited from the jittery situation in the market yet with the escalation of the debt limit problem after Obama’s speech led the dollar to fall sharply against majors to hit a four months low against the yen and a new record low versus the Swiss franc.
Also the dollar slipped against high-yielding currencies which dragged the dollar index to reach 73.65 compared with the day’s opening level of 74.10.
President Obama warned that this may damage the economy, stating that if the ceiling was not increased before August 2 “deep economic crisis” will face the world’s largest economy.
Meanwhile, the main highlight is focused on the U.S. as Read more…
– New claims for U.S. unemployment benefits rose slightly more than expected in the week ended July 16th, according to figures released Thursday by the Labor Department.
According to the report, which adjusts for seasonal factors including annual factory shutdowns and other considerations, some 418,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment during the week.
That marks an increase of 10,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 408,000 and is slightly higher than the 415,000 predicted by most economists.
