Tag Archives: mortgages

There are a lot of reasons why interest rates may have risen recently. The federal government is expected to post a larger deficit this year – and in future years – due to the tax cuts. Further exacerbating those concerns is the ongoing shrinkage of the Fed’s balance sheet. Increased supply and potentially decreased demand is not a recipe for higher prices. In addition, there is some fear that the ongoing trade...

In the aftermath of the housing collapse, U.S. consumers did something they hadn’t done in years: they drastically reduced their debt loads. After peaking in 2008 at just over $11.5 trillion, household debt (the sum of mortgages, home equity lines of credit, auto loans, and credit card debt) was whittled down to under $10 trillion by the second quarter of 2013. But that, apparently, is when the deleveraging stopped. Over the past two years, household debt has once again been on the rise. But...