NPR Correspondent Chris Arnold is based in Boston. His reports are heard regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. He joined NPR in 1996, and was based in San Francisco before moving to Boston in 2001.
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The Federal Reserve could have paid less to banks that made risky deals with insurance giant AIG, a government watchdog reports. Treasury officials say the Fed was acting to avert a crisis and that it needs better financial regulatory tools.
Federal Reserve Chairmen Ben Bernanke pledged to keep interest rates low so the economic recovery will stay on track. In remarks to the Economic Club of New York Monday, Bernanke said he was worried that a weak job market could prevent the expansion from being as robust as he would like.
Bruce Marks has been running a nationwide tour to help people avoid foreclosure. Stopping in Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Francisco, the tour has managed to lower loan payments for nearly 100,000 homeowners so far.
Homebuyers could benefit from a program unveiled Monday by the Treasury Department. The goal is to provide hundreds of thousands of affordable mortgages for working families, and to allow the development or rehabilitation of tens of thousands of affordable rental properties.
The Dow cruised past the 10,000 mark this week, a vote of optimism — from investors at least — about the direction of the economy. But the recovery is fragile, and if the job market continues to deteriorate, profits are likely to suffer. And the bulls could be in for a dose of disappointment.
With U.S. unemployment near 10 percent, small businesses — which the government says created 64 percent of new jobs in the past 15 years — will need to play a major role in the recovery. But, as they try to gear up for the holidays, some owners — like The Chocolate Truffle's Carlo Bacci — say banks and credit card companies are stunting their growth.
Many first-time home buyers are scrambling to pick a house and close the deal by Nov. 30, the deadline for an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homeowners. A lot of real estate agents think the tax-credit program has been a huge success and are urging Congress to extend it. But not every economist is convinced it's a great idea.
The September unemployment report suggests the economy may be in for a worse-than-expected fourth quarter. Some economists are now saying we are heading into a double-dip recession. Others believe this was just a bump in the road to recovery.
When it comes to the ailing housing market, one of the key vital signs is the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index. For the past couple of years, it's been reporting record price drops. The latest round of data released Tuesday shows that between June and July, prices actually increased in the majority of cities tracked by the index.
Many real estate agents and home appraisers are complaining that new rules for appraisers are having an unintended consequence: a lot of bad appraisals. Many agents and mortgage brokers say problems are delaying sales and refinancings, and could be costing homeowners up to $3 billion each year.
For anyone who didn't refinance when rates were super low earlier this year, now might be the chance. The Mortgage Bankers Association says last week the average rate for 30 year fixed rate loans was 4.97 percent. Mortgage applications have jumped 50 percent from where they were early this summer.
A day after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke declared the recession "very likely over," there are signs that consumers are still feeling the pressure. Credit card charge-offs — the amount judged by banks to be uncollectable — went up in August.
The Treasury Department has begun releasing a monthly foreclosure report card for the nation's major banks. It tracks how they're implementing President Obama's "Making Home Affordable" plan. The latest report card shows that lenders have lowered loan payments for more than 360,000 people.
One year after the financial crisis hit, the foreclosure mess hasn't improved. Economists repeatedly have said that preventing foreclosures is good for the housing market and the economy. But despite a major effort by the Obama administration, many loan modifications aren't going through.
The Labor Department reports the latest jobless figures Friday morning. Analysts expect the unemployment rate to increase to 9.5 percent in August from 9.4 in July.
