Turmoil in Congress is making headlines, but will it impact the economy – and the mortgage industry – more broadly?
The House this week voted 216 to 210 to remove Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from his position as speaker. He was the first speaker to be ousted through a vote in the middle of a congressional term.
No new speaker has been appointed, though several Republicans have put themselves in the running.
“It’s uncharted territory because we’ve never done that in the history of the United States,” Matthew Green, a politics professor at Catholic University, told CBS News.
The short-term impact of this week’s turmoil has been felt immediately in the mortgage market.
Redfin Economic Research Lead Chen Zhao said that…
As the country approaches D-Day for defaulting on its debts, analysts are breaking down the impact of such a scenario on the economy.
The Treasury Department said in January that the U.S. was close to its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit. As a result, it announced “extraordinary measures” to keep the government’s funding above water through spring.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other experts are now saying the U.S. could default on its debt as early as June in a worst-case scenario.
Dramatic as the news may be, it’s highly unlikely that Congress would actually allow a breach of the debt ceiling.
“While we have a highly polarized Congress negotiating, it isn’t in either party’s interest to let a default happen,”…
The housing market in red states is white-hot compared to their blue counterparts, a new analysis finds. As U.S. housing prices remain high and experts predict the trend will continue, states led by Republican legislatures and governors are disproportionately represented among the hottest housing markets in the country, with experts offering a variety of explanations as to why that might be. Data analyst firm CoreLogic noted this month that “home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased year over year by 18.1% in August 2021 compared with August 2020, marking the largest annual gain in home prices in the 45-year history of the CoreLogic Home Price Index.” That price spike was driven by a sharply constricted housing supply that saw homebuyers scrambling to…
Economists and housing industry experts are keeping a close eye on Washington D.C.’s debate over raising the debt ceiling and what it might mean for interest rates. Congressional Democrats are heading into what even Speaker Nancy Pelosi acknowledges is a turbulent week or two, in which her party will attempt to use its narrow majorities to pass two massive spending bills. At the same time, Washington’s about to hit the limit of debt it can issue to keep paying its bills. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the nation will run up against the debt ceiling sometime in October. Democrats are demanding the GOP follow the tradition of previous debt-ceiling votes and support an increase. Republicans, angry over the Democrats’ decision…
