JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank by assets, agreed to pay $75 million to the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The agreement is part of a string of suits by people and organizations claiming to have been victims, in one way or another, of the jet-setting sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The U.S. housing market has been “a slow-building disaster,” Glen Kelman, CEO of real estate website Redfin, said in a CNBC interview last week.
Last spring’s boom in home construction has finally been stomped by high interest rates.
The highest mortgage interest rates in 23 years have sunk demand for new mortgage loans to their lowest in 27 years.
Americans shopping for car loans are finding those debts carry interest rates more than twice what they were two years ago. Those same high interest rates are pricing potential home buyers out of the market. (See “Rising Interest Rates Sink Mortgage Market” and “Rally in Home Construction Stalls” in this issue.)
Many companies with special needs for cash or less-than-perfect credit profiles borrowed when interest rates were low to keep their financial houses in order. Now that the U.S. Federal Reserve has not only raised rates but also has vowed to keep them aloft for as much as another year or more, those companies are increasingly at risk.
The U.S. Federal Reserve’s message that it will not cut interest rates any time soon has finally convinced investors.
It’s all in the numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 430 points today and the S&P 500 fell to its lowest level since the start of June.