Treasury Secy. Henry Paulson spoke on financial policy today. Frankly, the speech was a bit dull. So we asked some experts to take it apart and tell us what was significant. Kai Ryssdal has more.
Today, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson talks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about the state of the economy. But despite talk on the mortgage markets, Alisa Roth reports that an economic overview is off the agenda.
Much of the talk about the economy has involved whether the United States is in a recession. Even if it is, says commentator and economist Susan Lee, things could, and might, get worse.
It's not just wannabe homebuyers who are keeping an anxious eye on the real estate market. State pension funds lost billions when the subprime loan crisis hit and the market collapsed. But now they smell a bargain and they're getting back into the game. Stacey Vanek-Smith reports.
To prop up the economy, the Federal Reserve has put $260 billion into banks' hands through auctions on short-term loans since December. What happens to all that money? John Dimsdale reports.
So, consumer confidence is down and home prices are still sliding. Maybe it's time for some counterintuitive behavior — like thinking about getting into the housing market. Kai Ryssdal checks out that notion with Dan McGinn of Newsweek.
The slide in real estate was punctuated today by a report that home prices were down more than 11% in January from a year earlier — the steepest drop in more than 20 years. Nancy Marshall Genzer has the story.
Consumer confidence hit a five-year low in March, another victim of tightening credit, rising prices and a crummy job market. We sent Jeremy Hobson to the National Mall in Washington to ask Americans how confident they are.
As the banking crisis continues to unfold on Wall Street, a lot of fingers are pointing at Washington and asking what happened to the people who're supposed to keep an eye on the market. Jeremy Hobson reports.
If $2 a share in the JPMorgan-Bear Stearns deal engineered by the Fed wasn't enough for stockholders, will $10 a share satisfy them? And is this now officially a bailout with a capital B? Kai Ryssdal takes a look with Marketplace's Bob Moon.
