Source: money.cnn.com


Gasoline demand
: The government’s inventory report reinforced a weekly survey released Tuesday from MasterCard Advisors that showed demand for gasoline at the pump had hit its highest level since the beginning of the year, though it still remained significantly lower than the same week a year ago.

“It seems the hard lessons that were learned at $4 a gallon (gasoline) and above have faded,” said John Kilduff, energy analyst with MF Global in New York.

Average prices for regular gasoline in the U.S. fell for the 13th straight day Wednesday to $3.926 a gallon after hitting a peak of $4.114 on July 16. Still, prices remain more than 35% higher than they were a year ago, according to motorist group AAA.

Source: Reuters

The minimum wage in the world’s richest country has just been raised by almost 12 percent. That followed a 13.6 percent hike last year and looks like major progress for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. At first sight, at least.

Examined more closely, the figures highlight poverty and economic inequality of Third World proportions.

The latest increase took effect last week and brought the minimum wage to $6.55 an hour. Adjusted for inflation, this is less than it was in 1964, the year President Lyndon Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty in America.”

Poverty won, as free-market champion Ronald Reagan put it a quarter of a century later.

Then, 13 percent of the U.S. population lived below the official poverty line. In 2006, the most recent year for which the U.S. Census Bureau has statistics, it stood at 12.3 percent, or 36.5 million people. On the other end of the scale, the U.S. economy produced billionaires at a steady pace.

Source: Reuters

As home foreclosures rise and property values slump, U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday signed into law a rescue package that includes emergency backstops for mortgage financing companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Despite opposition to a provision that offers $4 billion in grants to states to buy and repair foreclosed homes, Bush reversed his opposition to the overall legislation because it included numerous other key housing reforms.

The new law boosts oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee almost half the country’s $12 trillion in home mortgage debt. It also expands a temporary line of U.S. Treasury credit and gives the government the option to buy shares in them if they ran into trouble.

“We look forward to put in place new authorities to improve confidence and stability in markets, and to provide better oversight for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

Bush signed the measure in the Oval Office shortly after 7 a.m. EDT with his economic team on hand, including Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who helped negotiate the package with the Democratic-controlled Congress….

Source: FT.com

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced that it was extending two emergency lending facilities for banks until the end of January of next year.

Both had previously been scheduled to expire at the end of September, and the announcement means that the emergency measures will stay in place until after the next president takes office.

Markets responded positively to the move, which came before trading opened in New York, and the dollar strengthened on the news. While the moves had been expected, the timing – a week before the Federal Open Market Committee is due to meet on monetary policy – came as a surprise.

The Term Securities Lending Facility, which provides loans of Treasuries, and the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, which provides direct loans to securities firms, were both introduced in March at the same time as the Fed revealed special financing to allow the purchase of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase.

“These pre-emptive moves underscore that the liquidity tensions are with us for a while yet,” said Ciaran O’Hagan, strategist at Société Générale.

Source: BBC NEWS

With the American housing market in its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Bush is authorising new legislation to pave the way for massive new government intervention designed to slow the slide.

The intervention would come as a little known quirk of US law threatens to drive down house prices even faster.

Faced with seemingly never-ending falls in the value of their properties, some American home-owners are taking radical action; they are choosing to walk away from homes and their mortgages.

In May 2006, at the height of the housing boom, Karen Trainer bought a $500,000 apartment in California - with money borrowed from her bank.

By this year, Karen still owed $500,000 on her mortgage, but her apartment was worth $200,000 less.

So she was deep in negative equity and, to make matters worse, the interest rate on her loan was about to increase.

“I thought ‘this is crazy’,” Ms Trainer says. “It just does not make financial sense.”

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