HUD: Opportunity and Revitalization Council Report Issued
During the North Carolina “Opportunity Now” Summit, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson issued a report to the President on behalf of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council (“Council”), of which Secretary Carson is the Chair. This report includes 180 action items that have already been undertaken by the Council…
Census Bureau: Census Business Builder Updated to Version 3.0
Now Includes Shapefile Download and Upload The U.S. Census Bureau released an update to Census Business Builder (CBB) Version 3.0. The updated version now utilizes the latest Esri technology that improves the user experience and adds new functionality. Functionality updates for both the Small Business Edition (SBE) and the Regional Analyst Edition (RAE) include: Users can now browse data for every…
FDIC: Comprehensive History of Risk-Based Pricing Published
First in a series of staff studies chronicles 85-year evolution of deposit insurance premiums In the first of a series of staff studies to be released to the public, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) today published a comprehensive history of how the agency assessed banks to build FDIC’s now 85-year-old Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF)…
ABA: Report Shows Credit Card Use Expanded in Third Quarter 2019
Credit card use increased in the third quarter of 2019, according to the American Bankers Association’s latest quarterly Credit Card Market Monitor. Seasonally adjusted purchase volumes rose among prime (+0.8% or $3.85/month) and super-prime (+0.2% or $1.07/month) accounts compared to the previous quarter, consistent with solid consumer spending growth during the same period, while subprime…
Federal Reserve: Do Minorities Pay More for Mortgages?
Read the full paper here. Abstract: We test for racial discrimination in the prices charged by mortgage lenders. We construct a unique dataset where we observe all three dimensions of a mortgage’s price: the interest rate, discount points, and fees. While we find statistically significant gaps by race and ethnicity in interest rates, these gaps…
Federal Reserve: Evaluating the Success of President Johnson’s War on Poverty
Revisiting the Historical Record Using a Full-Income Poverty Measure Read the full report here. Abstract: We evaluate progress in President’s Johnson’s War on Poverty. We do so relative to the scientifically arbitrary but policy relevant 20 percent baseline poverty rate he established for 1963. No existing poverty measure fully captures poverty reductions based on the…
Census Bureau: Release of Economic Census Data for Island Areas Begins
The U.S. Census Bureau released the first statistics from the 2017 Economic Census of Island Areas. Island and local area estimates are now available for American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI). The data for Puerto Rico will be released in December of 2020. Island and…
FHFA: House Price Index Up 0.2 Percent in November; Up 4.9 Percent from Last Year
U.S. house prices rose in November, up 0.2 percent from the previous month, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI). House prices rose 4.9 percent from November 2018 to November 2019. The previously reported 0.2 percent increase for October 2019 was revised upward to 0.4 percent. For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly…
HUD and Census Bureau: Residential Construction Activity Report for December 2019
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Census Bureau jointly announced the following new residential construction statistics for December 2019. Building Permits Privately owned housing units authorized by building permits in December were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,416,000. This is 3.9 percent (±1.6 percent) below the revised…
ABA: Bank Economists Foresee Continued Economic Growth, Stable Interest Rates
The U.S. economy will continue to grow, add jobs and support wage gains in 2020 and beyond, according to the latest forecast of the American Bankers Association Economic Advisory Committee. There is broad agreement among the group’s 15 chief economists from some of North America’s largest banks, however, that the rate of growth is moderating….