Tag Archives: Federal Reserve

Although about 50,000 checks from the recent foreclosure settlement have been cashed or deposited as of Monday, according to the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), not all recipients were able to cash their checks due to insufficient funds. In a statement issued Wednesday, the Fed announced ""early problems with some checks have been corrected"" and ""funds are available to cash all checks."" The Fed stated early recipients of the checks called the Fed's consumer helpline on Tuesday after being told their checks could not be cashed.

A compromise, certainly in politics, is usually a result which both sides in a dispute find equally unsatisfactory. It usually comes after some protracted negotiations from extreme positions. In the budget unveiled this week, President Obama, as he has in so many policy initiatives, attempted to reshape the political lexicon and landscape by beginning a compromise, not from an extreme, but from the middle. There is a lot for both sides to dislike in the Obama budget plan and there will be more as the document is scoured by both sides. The devil is always in the details.

As the housing market recovers from the impact of foreclosures, the New York and northern New Jersey region is still struggling with a growing backlog of foreclosures, according to a blog from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The first wave of checks for eligible borrowers covered by the recent foreclosure agreement with 13 mortgage servicers will be sent April 12, the Federal Reserve and the OCC announced Tuesday. About 4.2 million borrowers should expect to receive checks ranging $300 to $125,000. The first phase of payments will include 1.4 million checks, with the final phase of payments scheduled to be sent in mid-July 2013.

The Bipartisan Policy Center's Housing Commission painted an interesting picture of the future role of the federal government in housing finance in a recent report. The report helped to define the gap between a healthy private housing finance system and what we have now. The good news is that many of the elements of a healthy system seem to be just around the corner. However, there is one part of the secondary market that is far from recovered--monoline insurance companies.

When federal regulators announced the abrupt ending of the Independent Foreclosure Review in place of a new agreement, the conclusion to the review process led to more questions than answers. To identify challenges in the foreclosure review process, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) undertook its own investigation. In a report, the GAO identified three hurdles that prevented federal regulators from achieving their goals through the foreclosure review: complexity of the reviews, overly broad guidance, and limited monitoring.

Since the foreclosure crisis, several studies have linked foreclosures to falling property values for neighboring homes. However, one researcher from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston recently set out to discover the impact of foreclosed properties on neighbors who aren't looking to sell their homes. The study found the likelihood of a neighbor complaining about a particular home doubles once a homeowner enters the foreclosure process. Once a property is in REO, the likelihood increases nine-fold, according to the study.

With an upbeat assessment of the economy, the Federal Open Market Committee voted 11-1 Wednesday to leave interest rates unchanged and to continue its program of purchasing agency mortgage backed securities and longer term Treasury securities ""to maintain downward pressure on longer-term interest rates, support mortgage markets, and help to make broader financial conditions more accommodative.""

It's been two weeks since the dreaded sequester took effect, and so far, the only casualty has been the White House tour. There actually have been some positives, with both parties presenting budgets. However, both the GOP budget and the Democratic plan have one major similarity: Each is dead on arrival and destined to at best be a one-house budget, which leaves the country back where it was. Setting a target for practical balance would bring us closer to reducing the deficit and with less pain.

Out of 18 large banks, the Federal Reserve announced 14 banks received approval for their capital plans, while the plans of two banks, Ally Financial and BB&T Corp., were rejected. According to the results, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase were not rejected but are required to submit new capital plans.