Housing Market, Federal Reserve | featured news

To quell the latest financial crisis, the Federal Reserve smashed interest rates to the floor by buying bonds with money it effectively prints. Since 2008 assets on the Fed’s balance sheet, including those bonds, have tripled, to $3 trillion. (Hey, people needed encouragement, and low rates are encouraging.) The mixed results: Entrepreneurs and homeowners got some relief, while savers got whacked along with the value of the U.S. dollar. Starving for yield, investors piled into stocks, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its all-time high, absent inflation.

The improving housing market is "far from being out of the woods," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday, arguing that overly tight lending standards are part of the problem.

With the Federal Reserve buying billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities, you might think that mortgage rates are poised to fall even lower than the current rock-bottom levels. Maybe you should wait on that refinancing, you wonder, or delay purchasing a house until the market is even more favorable.

The average 30-year mortgage rate rose to 3.98 percent Thursday, reflecting a 0.10 percentage point jump after setting a new historic low last week, according to Freddie Mac. Despite the jump, the 30-year fixed rate has remained below 4 percent for eight weeks, and the Federal Reserve yesterday indicated it plans to keep interest rates at zero for some time.

Ben Bernanke presided over his first meeting as Federal Reserve chairman in March 2006 believing the nation's economy could pull off a "soft landing" from falling home prices. Three months later, Bernanke had begun to grasp that he and others had underestimated the risk housing posed to the economy....

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that long-term unemployment is a “national crisis” and suggested that Congress should take further action to combat it. He also said lawmakers should provide more help to the battered housing industry.

The U.S. economy is not fully recovered from its deep recession with housing still weighing on growth, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Friday in a speech on the importance of community development.

The Federal Reserve chairman says the review is 'seeking to determine whether systematic weaknesses are leading to improper foreclosures.'

The transfer, a record sum, was the result of the central bank’s actions to support the fragile housing market.