Unemployment Rate

Last month The U.S. lost 663,000  and the unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent, the highest level since 1983.

From Bloomberg:

Job losses may continue all year even as the longest recession in the postwar era shows signs of reaching a trough. The release indicates employment cuts may come close to topping 650,000 for a record fifth straight month in April because today’s report covers the week of the monthly payroll survey.

It seems that the Auto industry is the biggest reason for the large amount of jobless claims.

The auto industry is at the forefront of manufacturing layoffs. General Motors Corp., operating on $13.4 billion in U.S. government loans, told employees that 1,600 salaried workers will be dismissed this week. Combined with 250 earlier job cuts and other resignations and retirements, the moves will complete “the bulk” of GM’s plan for eliminating 3,400 U.S. salaried positions, said Tom Wilkinson, a GM spokesman.

Bottom line: If you have a job, don’t quit!

MissingMoney.com

CBS Early Show did a spot on missingmoney.com. We have talked about this in the past on foundmoney.com.

Hopefully there is some money out there for you.

From Google;

Major banks are stepping up their efforts to curtail losses from souring mortgages, with Citigroup Inc. becoming the latest institution to adopt initiatives aimed at helping at-risk borrowers remain in their homes.

Is this great news or what? The economical situation forces banks to provide help to people that have problems paying their mortgage!

With defaults mounting, lenders including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. have become more aggressive about modifications to mortgage agreements. The government is also working on an ambitious plan to help around 3 million borrowers avoid foreclosure, but details have yet to be released.

More than 4 million American homeowners with a mortgage were at least one payment behind on their loans at the end of June, and 500,000 had started the foreclosure process, according to the most recent data from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Citigroup announced late Monday that it won’t initiate a foreclosure or complete a foreclosure sale on any eligible borrower who seeks to stay in a home if it is the borrower’s principal residence, the homeowner is working in good faith with Citi and has sufficient income to make affordable mortgage payments.

Citi said it is also working to expand the program to include mortgages the bank services but does not own.

Additionally, over the next six months, Citi plans to reach out to 500,000 homeowners who are not currently behind on their mortgage payments, but who are deemed as potentially needing assistance to keep current with their payments. This represents about one-third of all the mortgages that Citigroup owns, the bank said.

Citi plans to devote a team of 600 salespeople to assist the targeted borrowers by adjusting their rates, reducing principal, or increasing the term of the loan, steps known in the mortgage industry as a workout.

Of the four biggest U.S. banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo & Co. — Citi has been on the shakiest footing as a result of the mortgage crisis, reporting losses in the past four consecutive quarters while its rivals have managed to post profits. The steps announced Monday are designed to stem those losses.

Sanjiv Das, chief executive of CitiMortgage, said, “It is in our interest that borrowers stay in their homes and actually make the payments.”

Citi is targeting homeowners in geographic areas with higher-than-average unemployment and foreclosure rates, primarily in Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, Das said. The program is expected to affect about $20 billion in mortgages.

“As the unemployment rate is starting to creep up on us, there is going to be increasing distress in the marketplace,” Das said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It’s not going to distinguish between what type of mortgage they have.”

Since early last year, Citigroup has helped about 370,000 families avoid foreclosure, representing more than $35 billion in loans, the bank said.

By taking a proactive approach, Citigroup isn’t waiting until it’s too late to deal with delinquent borrowers, said Steve Curnutte, president of InsBank Mortgage in Nashville, Tenn. However, the problem is growing faster than most banks can handle, he said.

“It’s nearly an insurmountable undertaking,” said Curnutte. “The number of bad loans that they can modify using their resources is being quickly outstripped by the number of new loans that need to be modified.”

Late last month, JPMorgan expanded its mortgage modification program to an estimated $70 billion in loans, which could aid as many as 400,000 customers. The New York-based bank has already modified about $40 billion in mortgages, helping 250,000 customers since early 2007.

JPMorgan also said it will not put any loans into foreclosure as it implements the expanded program over the next 90 days.

Bank of America, meanwhile, has said that starting Dec. 1, it will modify an estimated 400,000 loans held by newly acquired Countrywide Financial Corp. as part of an $8.4 billion legal settlement reached with state officials in early October.

Fox News pushing hard on the ‘Black Panthers’ story

Fox News and other conservatives on the Web are pushing hard on the story that two black panthers may be intimidating voters at a polling place in north Philadelphia.

But an Obama campaign volunteer who’s been on the scene since 6:30 AM this morning tells me in a phone interview that there’s been absolutely no intimidation of voters at all today. And a Pennsylvania spokesperson for Obama said the two men aren’t in any way affiliated with the campaign.

Fox News’ story is right here

It says one of two black panthers on the scene was “allegedly blocking the door,” says another was “holding a nightstick.” and adds that “the concern was that they were intimidating people who were trying to go inside to vote.”

But Jacqueline Dischell, the Obama volunteer, tells me by phone that that’s false.

Dischell confirms that there were in fact two black panthers guarding the polling place, a nursing home on Fairmont Avenue in north Philadelphia, earlier this morning.

But she says one was an officially designated poll watcher (it was not immediately clear which municipal office had designated him in that role), and the second was his friend. The second panther, who left two or three hours ago, was the one with the nightstick, she says.

Dischell says that earlier this morning a few men who identified themselves as being from the McCain campaign came and started taking pictures of the two panthers on their cell phones. She suggested that they seemed to be baiting the panthers, and that the designated watcher may have given one of them the finger in response to the picture taking.

The police came roughly an hour and a half later

She says she talked to the cops and told them there had been no incident. The police drove away without getting out of the car, she adds.

Some time later, a second, larger group of men whose affiliation couldn’t be determined came with real cameras and started taking more pictures. Maybe 15 minutes later the cops returned. This time, they spoke to people on both sides, and told the panther not designated to watch the polls to leave, which he did without an argument.

“There was no fight, nothing,” she says.

Fox News arrived on the scene at around that time and started interviewing people near the entrance. The building manager asked the Fox reporter to leave, she says, and he moved further from the entrance.

That’s where things now stand. “There has been no fighting, no voter intimidation at all,” she said.

source; TPM Election Central

Sales of new houses in the U.S. were unexpectedly rising before credit markets froze this month, having rebounded from a 17-year low thanks to a drop in prices.

Purchases increased 2.7 percent in September to an annual rate of 464,000 from 452,000 the prior month that was less than previously estimated, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. The median sales price decreased to a four-year low.

The sales increase may be short-lived after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Inc. in the middle of last month led to a slump in lending among banks, making it harder to get a mortgage. Tumbling stock prices and mounting job losses signal some of these prospective buyers may walk away from their purchase contracts.

“Sales are likely to get a bit worse from here as the reports start to reflect the periods affected by the credit crisis,” said Russell Price, a senior economist at H&R Block Financial Advisors Inc. in Detroit. “Most of the contracts for new home sales in September were likely signed before the credit crisis really took hold.”

Economists had forecast new home sales would drop to a 450,000 annual pace from an originally reported 460,000 rate the prior month, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 59 economists. Forecasts ranged from 400,000 to 501,000.

Stocks dropped on concern the global economic slump would deepen. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was down 8 points, or 1 percent, to 868.4 at 11:56 a.m. in New York. Treasuries securities were little changed.

Prices Fall

The median price of a new home decreased 9.1 percent from a year earlier to $218,400, the lowest since September 2004. Sales were down 33 percent from September 2007, the Commerce report showed.

“Builders are seeing the light,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “They are cutting prices more aggressively.” Still, “there may be more cancellations than normal in September.”

On a positive note, builders cut inventories at a record pace. The number of homes for sale fell to a seasonally adjusted 394,000, the fewest since June 2004. The 7.3 percent decline from August was the biggest since record keeping began in 1963.

The supply of homes at the current sales rate fell to 10.4 months’ worth from 11.4 months. A five to six months’ supply is often cited as signaling a stable market.

`Another Down Leg’

“Over time, shrinking inventories should help stabilize prices,” Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York, said in a note to clients. “Conceivably, there is another down leg to home sales that is coming, in light of tighter financial conditions and greatly reduced economic growth prospects.”

The increase in purchases was paced by a 23 percent surge in the West. Sales dropped 21 percent in the Northeast and 5.8 percent in the Midwest.

Home resales rose a more-than-forecast 5.5 percent in September to a 5.18 million pace, the highest level in a year, the National Association of Realtors said on Oct. 24. The gain was driven by sales of distressed properties, which comprised up to 40 percent of the total, the Realtors group said. The median price fell 9 percent.

Sales of previously owned homes are compiled from closings and reflect contracts signed weeks or months earlier. New-home purchases, while accounting for only about 10 percent of total sales, are considered a timelier indicator because they are based on contract signings.

Signs of Stabilization

The biggest housing recession in a generation was showing signs of nearing a bottom in sales when financial markets began to implode in September, leading to the government takeover of mortgage finance companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. A $700 billion rescue plan and coordinated rate cuts by central banks around the world followed.

Home prices have fallen by about a fifth from their highs in mid-2006, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home prices index of 20 major cities. Falling prices mean more Americans can’t refinance their mortgages, prompting foreclosures to surge to record levels in the third quarter. That, in turn, may cause prices to fall further.

“This vicious feedback loop is still in play,” David Seiders, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders, said in an interview on Oct. 17. That, he said, is “putting a nail” in the coffin of the new-home market. New-home sales have declined 67 percent from their peaks in July 2005.

Work began last month on the fewest single-family homes in 26 years, the Commerce Department reported on Oct. 17. The number of building permits issued also fell, a sign that declines in construction will continue to hurt the economy.

Growing Pessimism

Confidence among U.S. homebuilders slid in October to the lowest level since record-keeping began in 1985, figures from the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo showed earlier this month.

At least a dozen homebuilders have sought bankruptcy protection since June 2007, including billionaire Carl Icahn’s WCI Communities Inc.

Pulte Homes Inc., the third-largest U.S. builder, last week reported a net loss of $280.4 million for the third quarter, more than double what analysts had projected.

“The homebuilding operating environment significantly worsened during the third quarter of 2008,” Richard Dugas, the chief executive officer of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-based Pulte said in a statement. “The industry continues to be plagued by tighter mortgage availability, a growing number of foreclosures, and a historically high supply of unsold homes.”

source; Bloomberg.com