Deep Fakes, Loan Perform, Q1 GDP
AI Scams – cyber executive fraud has been around for a while. Typically, an employee is tricked into wiring large sums of money into a scammer’s bank account. Often these requests are for ‘special projects’ and involve urgency. The average value of these scams was $100,000 but the stakes are getting higher and sneakier. At a […]
Mortgage Bonds Struggle, Rents Strong, Supply Creeps Up
Mortgage Rates ticked up over the previous week as the price of Mortgaged Backed Securities continues to decline. Rates are up approximately 0.75% from this time last year. Rents – CoreLogic released their Rental Report for February which showed that rent prices are up 3.4% year over year, a big increase from 2.6% in the […]
Foot Long Inflation & Fed Update
Foot Long Inflation – long gone are the days of the $5 foot long, or even consistent pricing throughout their restaurants. Now Subway is focusing on advertising length of price, including foot-long cookies and churros. Wendy’s is investing $30M into AI powered digital menus that track consumer habits and will increase profit, whether it is […]
CC Antitrust, Home Values Improve, Strong Jobs Report
After nearly 2 Decades Visa and Mastercard announced $30 Billion antitrust settlement over fees charged to businesses every time a credit or debit card is swiped. This settlement caps fees until 2030 and then companies will need to re-negotiate. Swipe fees typically include small, fixed fees plus a percentage of total sales, which average 1.5% […]
March Madness, Loans Perform, Homes Appreciate
Should Schools be Paying their College Athletes? Dartmouth, who finished last in the Ivy League this season, became the first team in college athletics to unionize. Are college athletes students playing sports or are they employees of their schools? A 2021 White house memo said if students are performing a service in exchange for compensation, […]
IRS Updates, Fed Dot Plot, Home Sales Strong
Taxes – have you filed yet? April 15th is less than a month out! The IRS claims this season is going smoothly after investing billions of dollars to improve customer service and target wealthy tax cheats. This season a call back function was added to the 1-800 number. As of March 15th, the IRS has […]
Affordable Child Care? Inflation Tepid, Manufacturing Slow
Bidenomics – 3 Economic indicators from Biden’s plan: Affordable Child Care – Canada recently enacted a program that offers $10 a day childcare ($7 US). Biden and Harris are looking to provide a similar program as well as free pre-school for four-year-olds. Currently American’s pay approximately $15,000 annually or roughly $60 per day. Credits for […]
Tax Credits for Buyers & Sellers? Home Values Strong
Biden addresses housing in his State of the Union, calling for a $10K credit/rate buydown for middle class buyers and a $10K credit for middle class sellers who sell homes below the local median price point. Additionally, Biden announced a proposal to provide tax credits for builders to construct or preserve 1.2M affordable rental units […]
CFPB Targets Medical Debt, Inflation Update, Home Values Increase
The Financial Regulator known for going after banks who lend unfairly, is going after Medical Debt? When Obama founded the agency in 2010 he said they should be “looking out for people, not big banks, not lenders, not investment houses.” Approximately 100M Americans are dealing with Medical debt. CFPB researchers found that medical bills are […]
Inflation Update, Housing Starts, Retail Sales
Mortgage Rates – the price of Mortgaged Backed Securities (MBS) continued their decline this week in response to higher than anticipated inflation reports. Mortgage rates are up by 0.5% from this time last year. Inflation – the Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures wholesale or producer inflation, rose 0.3% in January. Year over year inflation […]