The average national interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 5.99 percent Friday after Donald Trump posted on social media that he will mandate government-linked home loan agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds.
The U.S. services sector continued growing in December, aided by holiday spending, the Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing managers index (PMI) showed.
The U.S. economy added 50,000 nonfarm jobs in December, closing out the worst year for hiring since the COVID panic in 2020.
The U.S. will maintain or even widen its lead in economic productivity this year, according to 75 percent of economists in China, the Eurozone, U.K., and U.S. who responded to a December Financial Times survey.
The big news in the U.S. today was the inflation report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.3 percent in December.
On 12 January, the U.S. dollar ended a five-day streak of gains in its value on news that Donald Trump’s justice department has opened a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve.
This winter heating season, Americans will pay about 9.2 percent more for the electricity and natural gas that heat more than 90 percent of U.S. homes, bringing the cost of keeping warm this winter to about $1,000 per household, The New York Times reported.
By the end of this year’s second quarter, the U.S. trade deficit stood at 3.3 percent of GDP, close to its level a year earlier, according to an analysis by the Financial Times.
Last month, sales of existing U.S. homes edged up 0.5 percent from October’s total but fell 1 percent short of the figure in November 2024, the National Association of Realtors reported.
The U.S. Consumer Price Index increased by 2.7 percent in November, down from 3.0 percent in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported.