We may have hit a wall in interest rate increases, (at least for the time being) but that hasn’t stopped consumers or businesses from taking advantage of rate hikes we have seen. From December 2016 through December 2018, the Federal…
Category: Jumbo Rate News
New Credit Union Star-Ratings This Week
The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) released mostly positive year-end 2018 financial data on Wednesday (March 6th). The aggregate capital ratio for all federally-insured credit unions increased to 11.30% – up from 10.95% a year earlier. Over 98% reported a…
All New BANK Star-Ratings This Week
By most measures, 2018 was a good year for U.S. banks. After earning $59.1 billion in the fourth quarter, net income for the calendar year was $236.7 billion. That was 44% higher than 2017 net income. However, after adjusting for…
Household Debt 6.9% Higher than 2008 Peak
At $13.54 trillion, consumer debt today is $869 billion higher than its 2008 peak of $12.68 trillion. It is 21.4% higher than its 2013 trough (see chart). Housing is not the culprit this time around. Based on a recent report…
President Lincoln Could Have Banked Here
The past couple of weeks we have been concentrating on banks and credit unions that are struggling. Between that, and the new mega-merger announcement between BB&T and SunTrust (February 7th) that we will get into later, we thought this was…
Bankers Challenge Credit Union Buyouts
At first glance, a federally-insured credit union may not appear to be much different from a federally-insured bank. Both carry the same deposit guarantees, backed by the federal government and both often offer similar deposit and loan products. The primary…
Troubled Banks: The Long Goodbye
Even though there are fewer banks rated 2-Star or below than there have been since 2007, there are still too many (83 to be exact) to list on page 7. Instead we listed all banks rated 1-Star or Zero-Stars OR…
Wanted: New Community Banks
In spite of efforts to encourage more de novo bank applications, only seven new banks were chartered last year. In fact, to demonstrate how difficult the environment is… of the 70 banks that have been opened in the past ten…
Government Shutdown Trumps Economic Gains
The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book is a survey of opinions. While qualitative in nature, those surveyed do tend to have their fingers on the pulse of their part of the country. The latest Beige Book was based on information collected…
Consumer Debt: the Good, the Bad and the Scary
We promised last week that we would be paying close attention to consumer debt this year, and what better time to begin. The Federal Reserve conveniently just released its Consumer Credit statistics report for last November. This latest release shows…