Refinance Free Credit

Despite second quarter results that were better overall than analysts had expected, Wells Fargo & Co. (: ) remains under growing pressure from a deteriorating $84 billion home equity portfolio, bank executives said Wednesday morning. Second quarter profit slipped 23 percent to $1.75 billion, or $.53 per share, compared to $2.28 billion, or $.67 per [...]

Holding out for a rebound in the mortgage securitization market hasn’t worked out so well for many of Wall Street’s finest; a year ago, many were suggesting publicly that the lock-up in the non-agency securitization market was a temporary affair, and that the markets would soon rebound. Some former subprime lending giants even went so [...]

Holding out for a rebound in the mortgage securitization market hasn’t worked out so well for many of Wall Street’s finest; a year ago, many were suggesting publicly that the lock-up in the non-agency securitization market was a temporary affair, and that the markets would soon rebound. Some former subprime lending giants even went so [...]

it really is.  Consumer prices rose the most since 1982 as the consumer price index (CPI) surged 1.1% led by increased fuel and food costs.  May’s increase was .6% meaning inflation doubled month-over-month, never a good sign.  But hey with all the money being printed out of the treasury, bailouts being handed out left and right and interest rates being kept artificially low to save our Wall Street institutions what else could you expect?

From the New York Times:

The increase in June caps a year where inflation has risen to proportions seen by some as threatening the stability of the American economy. In the last 12 months, the price index has risen 5 percent, the biggest year-over-year jump since 1991. Core inflation is up 2.4 percent compared to June 2007.

The report reinforces what many economists, including those at the Fed, have warned about for months: Americans are being forced to pay significantly higher prices for retail goods and services, even as the job market weakens and big employers like General Motors are laying off thousands of employees.

The number adds to the financial woes of the last week, which has seen the near-meltdown of the nation’s biggest mortgage finance companies and continued turmoil in the stock markets. Investors are also awaiting the release of minutes from last month’s Fed meeting, expected Wednesday afternoon.

From The Big Picture:

Medical care prices, meanwhile, increased a modest 0.2%, while clothing prices rose just 0.1%. These were the only bright spots, as other components posted sharp gains:

Transportation prices rose 3.8%
Airline fares swelled 4.5%
Energy prices jumped 6.6%
Gasoline prices spiked 10.1%
Natural gas prices rose 4.9%.
Food and beverage prices rose 0.7%
Commodity prices soared 1.9%  (a record monthly high).

The core rate increased 2.4% from June 2007, also far more than consensus expectations.

Adding insult to injury, the Labor Department noted that “average weekly earnings of U.S. workers, adjusted for inflation, fell 0.9% in June.” This means that the typical American household income is failing to keep up with rising prices.

Check out The Big Picture for inflation-related charts.

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Let’s play a game of hyptheticals: what if the fall of Bear Stearns was really due to market manipulation by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS: 165.34 +4.78%) and other Wall Street firms, directly or indirectly spreading false rumors that sent the company’s shares into a tailspin? And what if the same sort of chicanery were [...]

Mortgage applications rose slightly as interest rates appear to have eased, with the Mortgage Bankers Association saying on Wednesday that its composite index of purchase and refinance activity jumped 1.7 percent for the week ended July 11 to 522.2. Applications were 17.4 percent below year-ago levels. The MBA application index is calibrated to March 16, 1990; [...]

Sometimes fiction mirrors reality — read this at the Onion and tell us there wasn’t a part of you that said “absolutely.” An excerpt: A panel of top business leaders testified before Congress about the worsening recession Monday, demanding the government provide Americans with a new irresponsible and largely illusory economic bubble in which to invest. “What America [...]

Yves Smith writes at Naked Capitalism Tuesday that a pretty significant shift is taking place — Treasuries are looking similar to senior debt of the GSEs. From her post: As we indicated, a deterioration in Treasuries was the likely outcome of affirming the implied Federal backing of Fannie and Freddie debt. And as we said, we [...]

No fee mortgage refinancing simply doesn’t exist. You’ll see advertisers on television like Bank of America bragging about their no cost, no fee mortgages; however, no cost mortgage refinancing is a lie. Here is the truth you need to know about no fee mortgage refinancing to prevent falling ...

American Home is back. Or, at least, its servicing arm is. Fitch Ratings said late Monday that it had assigned initial ratings to American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc., the servicing arm once tied to now-defunct American Home Mortgage Corp., which went bankrupt last year. An affiliate company tied to billionaire investor Wilbur Ross purchased the lender’s [...]