Blackstone Mortgage Trust and KKR Real Estate Finance Trust, two of the largest mortgage-focused real estate investment trusts, originated no new loans during the first half of this year, The Wall Street Journal reported. Starwood Property Trust, another key private source of mortgages for the commercial sector, also has slashed its pace of lending over the past......
In this year’s second quarter, U.S. banks booked $18.9 billion in losses, the most in any quarter since the second quarter of 2020 when anti-COVID lockdowns crashed the economy. The number is up 17 percent from the first three months of this year and 75 percent compared to the same period last year. About $10.7......
The U.S. consumer price index grew at an annual pace of 3.2 percent last month, a slight rise from June’s 3.0 percent but still lower than many analysts had forecast.
A “historic” shortage of venture capital has cut off money for start-ups, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Following the Great Recession and during the COVID War, the U.S. Federal Reserve bought trillion of dollars in bonds to keep the credit market alive, seeing its portfolio peak at $8.55 trillion in May 2022.
The U.S. banking sector saw stock prices sink on 7 August after Fitch Ratings lowered its credit ratings on 10 small and midsize lenders and put 17 other institutions under review.
When Fitch Ratings downgraded the U.S.’s credit rating from AAA to AA+ on 1 August, analysts were quick to dismiss it as meaningless to investors, citing the stock market’s lack of reaction.
Two-thirds of respondents in the latest Market Pulse survey of 410 major investors expect the U.S. economy to slip into a recession before 2025.
It’s summertime, and the living is easy.
Much of the world, particularly those in the northern hemisphere, is in a summer state of mind.