All about risk
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The number of people with a disability who were employed in January spiked by 27% from January 2020, to 7.29 million in January — with December at 7.37 million having been the highest in the data from the BLS going back to 2008:
Author(s): Wolf Richter
Publication Date: 3 Feb 2023
Publication Site: Wolf Street
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The relatively puny amounts of actual purchases show that the BOE is trying to calm the waters around the gilts market enough to give the pension funds some time to unwind in a more or less orderly manner whatever portion of the £1 trillion in “liability driven investment” (LDI) funds they cannot maintain.
The small scale of the intervention also shows that the BOE is not too upset with the gilts yields that rose sharply in the run-up to the crisis, triggering the pension crisis, and have roughly remained at those levels. The 10-year gilt yield today at 4.44% was roughly unchanged from yesterday and just below the September 27 spike peak.
And it makes sense to have these kinds of yields in the UK, and it would make sense for these yields to be much higher, given that inflation has spiked to 10%, and yields have not kept up with it, nor have they caught up with it. And to fight this raging inflation, the BOE will need to maneuver those yields far higher still:
So today, BOE Governor Andrew Bailey, speaking at the Institute of International Finance annual meeting in Washington D.C., warned these pension fund managers that the BOE will only provide this level of support, however little it may be, through the end of the week, to smoothen the gilt market and give the pension funds a chance to unwind in a more or less orderly manner the portions of their LDI funds that they cannot maintain.
Author(s): Wolf Richter
Publication Date: 11 Oct 2022
Publication Site: Wolf Street
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The home price data released today by the S&P CoreLogic Home Price Index represents the three-month average of closed home sales that were entered into public records in January, February, and March, reflecting deals that were agreed to a few weeks earlier, roughly in December, January, and February, funded with mortgages that were pre-approved before then, and had rate locks from when they were pre-approved.
These rate locks were based on interest rates in effect roughly from November into February, when the average 30-year fixed rate ranged from 3.2% to 4.2%, with the majority of the time being below 3.8% (green box in the chart). These are the rates that funded home purchases reflected in today’s home price index.
There have already been numerous indicators that the markets for existing home sales and new home sales have run into difficulties at the current holy-moly mortgage rates of over 5%, including sharply lower sales volume and rising inventories in existing homes and falling sales and record spiking inventories in new houses.
Author(s): Wolf Richter
Publication Date: 31 May 2022
Publication Site: Wolf Street
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I don’t remember anything that has ever drawn so much fraud to itself, like an industrial magnet attracting ferrous scrap metal, as the federal government programs to support the unemployed and struggling businesses.
When it comes to this twin-spike in business applications, the forgivable Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loans and Economic Injury Disaster loans come to mind immediately – especially since the spike into July, and then the renewed spike this year, are timed with the two PPP generations.
Businesses that applied for the PPP loans had to submit documentation of wages paid over specified periods. The first-generation PPP program ended on August 8, 2020. The second-generation PPP program started this year and remains open.
The dates were structured so that it would be impossible by honest people to create a business entity after the announcement, pay wages for long enough to qualify for a PPP loan, and then apply for a PPP loan. Applicants had to submit historical wage documentation to the lenders whose job it was to check all this out.
Author(s): Wolf Richter
Publication Date: 16 April 2021
Publication Site: Wolf Street