US President Barack Obama’s administration on Wednesday unveiled the details of a US$75 billion rescue plan to stem rising home foreclosures as grim data suggested a deepening recession.
The Treasury Department said between 7 million and 9 million homeowners could be helped through the program through either home loan modifications or mortgage refinancings.
“It is imperative that we continue to move with speed to help make housing more affordable and help arrest the damaging spiral in our housing markets,” US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement.
Even with mortgage rates now at historic lows, the US housing market continues to slump as prospective buyers are scared off by falling home prices, a recession firmly in its second year and rising unemployment.
The government’s release of a detailed blueprint for stabilizing the housing sector came amid news of a further deterioration in the job market that signaled a poor reading from the Labor Department expected on Friday.
Data from payrolls firm Automatic Data Processing (ADP) showed the private sector shed 697,000 jobs last month, accelerating the hemorrhaging from January and far exceeding most analysts’ expectations of 630,000 jobs eliminated.
The reading was the worst since ADP began tracking the data in 2000.
Before ADP’s report, most analysts had expected the government to announce the economy shed a seasonally adjusted 650,000 jobs, after 598,000 in January.
The unemployment rate is forecast to jump to 7.9 percent from 7.6 percent in January, the highest level since 1992.
Another report by a private firm highlighted further contraction in the service sector, which, in comparison with manufacturing, had resisted the economic headwinds until recent months.
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said that its non-manufacturing index contracted for the fifth consecutive month to 41.6 percent last month from 42.9 percent in January, showing the contraction was accelerating.
An index reading below 50 indicates a decline in activity, while a higher figure indicates growth.
“The pace of contraction of business activity is likely to pick up a little in March as inventory sentiment is still quite negative,” said Brian Bethune, economist at IHS Global Insight.
The US Federal Reserve said in its Beige Book report on Wednesday that US economic activity “deteriorated further” through last month, lowering prospects of a quick recovery.
The report, to be used at the upcoming meeting of Fed policymakers from March 17 to March 18, said the troubles were broad-based, citing weak consumer spending, tight credit and further declines in manufacturing.
“Looking ahead, contacts from various districts rate the prospects for near-term improvement in economic conditions as poor, with a significant pickup not expected before late 2009 or early 2010,” the report said.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
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