Tag Archives: Ben Bernanke

The Fed Starts A 2-Day meeting. How Do They Influence Mortgage Rates?

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Fed Funds Rate vs Mortgage Rates 1990-2012

The Federal Open Market Committee begins a 2-day meeting today in the nation’s capitol. It’s the group’s third of 8 scheduled meetings this year. Mortgage rates are expected to change upon the Fed’s adjournment.

Led by Chairman Ben Bernanke, the FOMC is a 12-person, Federal Reserve sub-committee. The FOMC is the group within the Fed which votes on U.S. monetary policy. “Making monetary policy” can mean a lot of things, and the action for which the FOMC is most well-known is its setting of the Fed Funds Funds. Continue reading →

What Mortgage Rates Are Doing This Week : April 23, 2012

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FOMC meets this weekMortgage markets were mostly unchanged last week, breaking a three-week winning streak. Wall Street grappled with surprising demand on Spain’s debt issuance and a series of weaker-than-expected data points on U.S. housing.

Conforming mortgage rates across California rose slightly according to the weekly Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey. Continue reading →

What Mortgage Rates Are Doing This Week : March 5, 2012

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Net Non-Farm Payrolls (2010-2012)Mortgage markets worsened last week as the U.S. economy continued to show that it’s in recovery, and as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke publicly hinted at the same.

In a congressional testimony Wednesday, Chairman Bernanke suggested that new, Fed-led stimulus may not be imminent, surprising Wall Street analysts and market traders who, for months, have expected a third round of quantitative easing from the Fed. Continue reading →

Rates Improve! A Simple Explanation Of The Fed Statment Today

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Putting the FOMC statement in plain EnglishWednesday, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee voted to leave the Fed Funds Rate unchanged within its current target range of 0.000-0.250 percent. To add impact, the Fed has indicated that they will “likely not raise interest rates until at least late 2014”.

The Fed Funds Rate has been near zero percent since December 2008. To be fair, on Jan 13th we saw rates at their lowest mark in over a year, only to see them deteriorate over the last week and a half. With the Fed news today, we are seeing a marked improvement – but not to the levels we saw January 13th.

For the third consecutive month, the Fed Funds Rate vote was nearly unanimous. Just one FOMC member dissented in the 9-1 vote, objecting only to the language used in the Fed’s official statement.

Continue reading →