Weekly mortgage applications to purchase a home drop 3%, even as falling rates spark rush to refinance

Another drop in mortgage interest rates continued to confound expectations, but current homeowners saw a clear path to savings. Mortgage application volume rose 2.8 percent last week, all thanks to refinances. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally...

Big banks cheered Trump’s plans to loosen regs, but here’s why they don’t expect change anytime soon

Wall Street banks on Tuesday cheered U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans to loosen the leash put on them in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis but they do not expect significant change anytime soon. The Trump administration has said the bulk of its plan for...

UK pay squeeze breaks all sorts of records for all the wrong reasons | Larry Elliott

Cast your mind back to March 2008. The financial markets have been in turmoil since the previous summer and in the previous month the Labour government has been forced to nationalise the troubled bank Northern Rock. Few realised it at the time but the economy had...