Home Price Drop
Stocks and bonds moved sideways today, recuperating from yesterday’s big move up.
All the futures markets jumped up again. The Euro tacked on over 2 cents, oil pushed up a little, and gold jumped up $16, starting their way to new highs.
In the news today….
Consumer confidence in March dropped to 64.5 from 76.4 in February. This is a big drop, and reflects just how much the average consumer will spend his free money on the economy. This could easily mean that those “rebate checks” coming out in 6 weeks from the IRS might just not be spent on frivolous things as much as the government thinks it should.
The FDIC announced today that it was going to hire 130 people to work in its “bank failure department.” They currently have 76 banks on the “watch list” and expect at least 10 banks to fail this year. (Will one of those be yours??) Last year we had only 2 bank failures. It’s been a long time since we had so many banks fail. This should scare the general public too when it happens. Banks are failing mostly for having too much real estate construction loans that are in trouble.
Here are today’s Numbers:
Dow Jones 30 Industrial – 12,533 (Down 16 points)
10 Year Treasury Bond – 3.49% (Down 0.03%)
Euro – $1.5648
Gold – $935 (Up $16)
Oil – $101.22 (Up $0.36)
Gasoline – $2.68 (Up $0.04)
