Economic Trends

Filling you in on the current state of the economy.

Featured Article

  • Consumer Credit Markets
  • Timothy Bianco and Ozgur Emre Ergungor
  • Signs so far suggest that Fed programs designed to revive consumer credit markets are having a positive impact. The market for consumer asset-backed securities (ABS), which effectively shut down in September 2008, has returned to pre-crisis levels after the Fed lent $25 billion to investors against their ABS portfolios. With the Fed’s purchase of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and Treasury bonds, Treasury yields as well as the spread between Fannie Mae MBS and Treasury securities have declined in recent months. Read more

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