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Summary List Placement Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary under former President Donald Trump, raked in at least $53 million from private companies while working in the administration and earning a taxpayer-funded salary, according to a Huffington Post report. While leading the Department of Commerce, Ross reported making a minimum of $53 million to $127 million […]

Summary List Placement This Father’s Day, there’s a crucial message about gender equality and economics that should be blasted across the country: To recover from the “she-cession” — the recession that has disproportionately hurt women — one of the steps businesses need to take is to treat men as equal caregivers. Amid devastating job losses […]

Summary List Placement The American Dream has long paired ideals — opportunity, liberty, and equality — with some material items. A TV. A white picket fence. A yard. Material prosperity has been part of the equation ever since the US emerged as an economic superpower after World War II in 1945. When rations and restrictions […]

Summary List Placement Tiina Lee, CEO of Deutsche Bank UK and Ireland, wants investment banking graduates to be in the office five days a week, even as the company adopts a hybrid-working model. “My personal view in terms of grads and interns is that they should want to spend as much time in the office […]

Summary List Placement California is facing its worst drought in over four years. Over 37 million people have already been impacted by the “megadrought” and nearly 95% of the state has been classified as experiencing “Severe Drought,” which puts the land in significant danger of wildfires, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS).  […]

Summary List Placement Last week, the “New York Times” ran a story about a small menu price increase at a fast-casual food chain. Written by Julie Creswell, the piece began, “Executives at Chipotle said on Tuesday that the fast-food chain had raised menu prices by about 4% to cover the cost of the increased employee […]

Summary List Placement High-earning millennials are feeling broke. Sixty percent of millennials raking in over $100,000 a year say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, according to a new survey by PYMNTS and lending company LendingClub which analyzed economic data and census-balanced surveys of over 28,000 Americans. It found that the more than half (54%) Americans […]

Summary List Placement Partisan politics, Congress’ legislative language, and interest group lobbying are about to turn America’s 160 million workers into guinea pigs. We’re all about to be part of a huge study on whether unemployment insurance keeps people out of the labor market. The biggest variable in this 50-state experiment is the new unemployment […]

Summary List Placement Colorado passed a law that required employers tell prospective employees how much a job pays — and six months later companies are rejecting applicants from the state altogether. Johnson & Johnson, McKesson, CBRE Group, and Cardinal Health recently posted job listings seeking workers in every US location “except Colorado,” The Wall Street […]

The housing market is no stranger to supply constraints. A toxic combination of wildly inflated lumber prices, a lack of new and existing homes, and the sheer number of borrowers willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars over ask on homes they’ve never seen in person, has created a pandemic-driven problem that the industry […]

This article first appeared in the June 18th newsletter Lending Life. Sign up here to receive each weekday. On Thursday, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law, declaring June 19th, or Juneteenth, a federal holiday. Biden’s order commemorates the date the last enslaved African-Americans were informed that they were free. Wonderful news, right? Wrong. […]

For Jason Vanslette, a lawyer who specializes in foreclosure litigation, everything came to a screeching halt on March 27, 2020. President Donald Trump had just signed the CARES Act into law, and with it, a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions had locked into place. Vanslette, a partner at Kelley Kronenberg in Fort Lauderdale, said a […]

Summary List Placement At the time ocean shipping took over the world, America gave up on the shipping industry. In 1960, when the world moved 1.2 million tons of goods via ship, the American fleet comprised 16% of the world’s total cargo shipping power. By 2019, global trade shot up to 10.7 million tons — but […]

Summary List Placement The number of job openings in the US reached a record high of 9.3 million in April. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate remained elevated at 5.8%, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The disconnect between these two figures has been the source of debate for many economists and market […]

Summary List Placement Abigail Disney knows what lurks in the minds of the wealthy. She’s one of them, after all. The heiress and outspoken wealth-tax advocate penned an essay in The Atlantic about the staggeringly low tax rates that a ProPublica expose revealed many billionaires have been paying. She said it reveals a mindset at […]

Mortgage applications for new home purchases fell 9% month-over-month in May at a seasonally unadjusted pace ― the second consecutive month sales of new homes have dropped, according to data released Thursday by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Compared to May of last year, MBA’s Builder Application Survey (BAS) revealed purchases are down 5.9%. On a […]

Summary List Placement Lumber prices are so high they’ve created an entire black market. US lumber prices are currently more than double last year’s, after they hit a record high last month. Jim Yarbough, a supply-chain expert from British Standards Institution, told Bloomberg the soaring prices have created a massive opportunity for an underground lumber […]

Summary List Placement Sen. Bernie Sanders, chair of the Senate Budget Committee, drafted a $6 trillion infrastructure package that Senate Democrats are considering approving without GOP support, per two people familiar with the matter. The sources, who described it as an early blueprint, were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The figure […]

The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell three basis points from the week prior to 2.93%, according to data released Thursday by Freddie Mac‘s PMMS. This marks the first time in over two months mortgage rates have fluctuated outside a five basis point range above or below 3%. “Mortgage rates continued to drift down as markets concur with […]

Summary List Placement Food prices are surging in grocery stores as well as on restaurant menus. Last week, Chipotle hiked prices for menu items by about 4%, as the cost of labor and ingredients continues to rise amidst a spike in demand. Red Robin and Cracker Barrel have also increased prices by about 3%, The […]

Summary List Placement Filings for unemployment insurance increased last week, indicating new snags in the labor market’s recovery. Weekly jobless claims came in at an unadjusted 412,000 last week, according to the Labor Department. The median estimate from economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for 370,000 claims. The reading snaps six straight weeks of declines that […]

Summary List Placement Democrats are weighing tucking immigration reform into a large infrastructure package using reconciliation this summer, a step that could significantly expand the scope of a Democratic-only package. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said that Democrats were interested in fully financing Biden’s $4 trillion infrastructure plans instead of deficit-spending, meaning the cost of […]

Summary List Placement A group of ten Republican and ten Democratic Senators announced on Wednesday that they supported a bipartisan proposal for the infrastructure spending package. Sens. Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Chris Coons, Lindsey Graham, Maggie Hassan, John Hickenlooper, Mark Kelly, Angus King, Joe Manchin, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney, Mike Rounds, […]

Another month of steadily increasing home prices and insatiable demand led Fannie Mae‘s Economic and Strategic Research Group to alter many of its 2021 predictions – in particular, its outlook on the symbiotic relationship between the housing market and inflation measures. While the housing research group believes current inflation acceleration could be considered transitory, price […]

Summary List Placement Dynastic wealth is growing — and it’s growing faster than the average American family’s wealth. Ten times faster, to be exact. That’s according to a new report from the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies titled “Silver Spoon Oligarchs,” which examined the growing concentration of wealth in the US. It found that America’s […]

Summary List Placement Republicans are holding strong on their opposition to President Joe Biden’s proposed spending to aggressively combat climate change, along with social investments already on the table. They have long resisted expanding the definition of infrastructure beyond physical items like roads, bridges, and highways. An emerging $1 trillion infrastructure framework that’s being drafted […]

Summary List Placement As one of his first actions in office, President Joe Biden extended the pause on student-loan payments through September to give borrowers financial relief during the pandemic. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Wednesday hinted at the possibility of extending the pause even further. “We are continuing conversations about if that’s the best […]

Summary List Placement As one of his first actions as Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona cancelled student debt for about 72,000 borrowers defrauded by for-profit schools. On Wednesday, 18,000 more got student-debt relief. The Education Department announced in a press release that it had approved 18,000 borrower defense to repayment claims for borrowers who attended ITT […]

Summary List Placement The deeply reported New York Times investigation into Amazon’s workforce issues contains a lot of fascinating data, but one number jumped out at me the most. In 2019, even before the pandemic, the turnover rate for Amazon’s hourly workers was 150%, meaning it needed to hire enough workers to replace that entire […]

Summary List Placement El Salvador’s move to classify bitcoin as legal currency has the potential to completely collapse its economy, Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, said in a Kitco News interview on Tuesday.  After describing President Nayib Bukele and members of government who voted to pass the bitcoin law as […]

After three straight weeks of declines, mortgage applications increased 4.2% for the week ending June 11, 2021, according to the latest report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Both purchase and refinance applications increased, with refinances notably up 5.5%, according to Joel Kan, the MBA’s vice president of economic and industry forecasting. “The jump in refinances […]

Summary List Placement Pizza joints may soon have to raise their prices to cope with soaring ingredient costs, a New Jersey restaurant owner said. The restaurant industry is currently paying more for some ingredients because of supply-chain problems and falling production — and a shortage of workers is forcing them to push up wages, too. […]

Summary List Placement America’s richest family dynasties had a lucrative pandemic year. The top 10 richest saw their net worths grew by a median 25%, while family dynasties’ wealth grew at a rate 10 times greater than that of a typical family, according to a new report from the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). […]

Women in brokerage aren’t common, but Rocket Pro TPO aims to change that. By integrating programs that enhance inclusivity, the company encourages female leadership. HousingWire recently spoke with Keri Stichler, Divisional Vice President at Rocket Pro TPO, about why female leadership is crucial in the mortgage industry and how companies can advocate for inclusivity. HousingWire: […]

Non-QM lender Sprout Mortgage is setting up a distributed retail operation, and it’s picked a veteran of Wells Fargo to lead the new division. Sprout hired former Wells Fargo executive Michael Johnson to expand Sprout’s consumer and retail sales channel, the company said Tuesday. Johnson, who most recently led the depository bank’s Southeast division, will […]

Summary List Placement As bipartisan infrastructure talks plod on, funneling money to beef up IRS enforcement looks like it’ll be sticking around. Sen. Angus King, an independent of Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, told Insider on Tuesday that deciding what pay-fors make it into the final package is difficult — but suggested that funding […]

Summary List Placement With the pause on student-loan payments during the pandemic set to lift in three months, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio reintroduced a bill to defer those payments an extra year — but only if the borrower survived a terrorist attack. Last week, Rubio reintroduced the Terrorism Survivors Student Loan Deferment Act, which would […]

Houston-based nonbank mortgage lender Cornerstone Home Lending is buying Roscoe State Bank, a traditional depository bank headquartered in Roscoe, Texas. The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed and it’s unclear when the deal will close. The prospective merger – relatively rare for a nonbank mortgage lender – […]

Summary List Placement Lumber prices slid again on Tuesday before mounting a recovery as the pandemic-driven boom in the commodity continues to show signs of weakness. Specifically, lumber futures fell as low as $944 per thousand board feet on Tuesday before recovering above $1000. The recovery helped lumber avoid the 10th straight down day for […]

Summary List Placement At least half of US states will soon put a halt to benefits that many unemployed or underemployed workers have relied upon to keep their heads above water financially through the pandemic.  More than two dozen Republican governors have announced that their states would soon begin to opt out of federal pandemic […]

Summary List Placement From fighting the climate crisis to strengthening protections against racial discrimination, President Joe Biden’s regulatory agenda released on Friday covers a lot of ground. Significantly, unlike his budget, it even mentions student-loan forgiveness. But for borrowers waiting for clarity on what will happen to their debt loads, the details are scanty. The […]

Summary List Placement Spending at US retailers slumped for the first time since February last month as more economic restrictions were reversed and Americans settled into a new sense of normal. US retail sales fell 1.3% in May, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg held a median estimate for a 0.7% decline. […]

Summary List Placement Chicken wings are getting much more expensive because farms are struggling to hire staff during a national labor shortage, a Buffalo, New York, restaurant owner told Fox Business Monday. “The chicken wing farms in America, they’re having trouble retaining and recruiting employees,” Greg Duell, the co-owner of a Duff’s Famous Wings restaurant […]

Summary List Placement Americans waiting to rejoin the workforce have a lot going for them. Businesses rushing to rehire are raising wages and throwing in other incentives ranging from signing bonuses to free iPhones. It’s another story for employed Americans. By some measures, their work lives are actually worsening. The sudden reopening of the US […]

Mortgages in forbearance fell for the 15th consecutive week last week to 4.04% of servicers portfolio volume ― a 12 basis point decline, according to a survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association. As of June 6, the MBA now estimates 2 million borrowers are still in some form of forbearance. Last week witnessed a steeper […]