The Sun's Financial Diary

The U.S. job market keeps weakening. According to the latest unemployment report released by the Labor Department this morning, U.S. employers slashed 651,000 nonfarm positions in February 2009, pushing the monthly unemployment rate to 8.1%, the highest level since December 1983. February marks the third straight month that job losses exceeded 600,000, the first time [...]

Major stock indices dropped to new multi-year lows on Wednesday as financial, again, and tech stocks weighed on the market. At the close, Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 89.68 points to 7,465.95, breaking the November 20, 2008 low. The last time the Dow closed lower was on October 10, 2002 when the blue-chip benchmark was [...]

The House has already voted to approve the $789 billion economic stimulus plan (called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) President Obama has sought since he took office less than a month ago. The Senate will take on the bill later today and it could be sent to the President for his signature as soon [...]

Soon, it’s going to cost you a little more to mail that 1st class letter. The USPS today announced the new prices for first-class mail. Effective on May 11, 2009, the one-ounce first-class mail postage will be 44 cents, up from the current price of 42 cents. Prices for other mailing services, such as Standard [...]

The Labor Department reported on Friday that U.S. monthly unemployment rate hit 7.6% in January, the highest level since September 1992. The unemployment rate in December 2008 was 7.2%. In January, employers cut a total 598,000 jobs, the most monthly job losses in more than 34 years. Both the number of job losses and unemployment [...]

The Commerce Department yesterday released U.S. Personal Income and Outlays for December 2008. Among the published data, the one that caught my attention was personal savings rate. According to the report, personal savings rose to $378.6 billion in December from $299.1 billion in November. In terms of percentage, personal savings rate in December is 3.6%. [...]

From the rates point of view only, now may be the time to shop for a new mortgage or refinance your existing mortgage. Freddie Mac today released its Weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey, which showed that average rates of 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has dropped to a new low at 4.96% from 5.01% a week ago, [...]

Has the housing market bottomed? It doesn’t look like so, at least not from what we can see from the S&P/Case-Shiller Index. Standard & Poors today leased its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index for October 2008 which shows a 18% plunge of U.S. residential home prices in the past 12 months. The index has fallen every [...]