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A top Treasury official defended the federal government’s $700 billion bank bailout financial crisis-response program at a hearing where the effort was criticized by members of a watchdog panel insisting that it did more for Wall Street than Main Street. “The cost of TARP is likely to be no greater than the amount spent on […]

The year 2010 saw 956 megawatts worth of solar panels installed in the United States, providing a cumulative capacity of 2.6 gigawatts – enough to power 500,000 homes. Even though the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) says solar is a fast-growing business, it still provides less than one percent of the nation’s electrical capacity.  In […]

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently called for the end of false debate over climate science, saying that we should not assume that China will create green technologies that Americans can adopt and to admit that global warming will impact the globe in coming years. In a speech at the APRA-E Energy Innovation Summit in […]

CMBS activity came back strongly during February with more than $6.5 billion in new securitization reported. Additionally, Freddie Mac brought two multifamily-backed offerings totaling $1.86 billion to market.  February’s level of activity is almost two-thirds of all CMBS deals offered in 2010.  The level resembles 2007, when commercial mortgage-backed securities offerings were at their peak. […]

The Obama administration and the Treasury Department have decided that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the public-private housing finance model in place for the past four decades – will come to an end, although they pledged to continue backing the agencies’ existing obligations. “The GSE (government-sponsored enterprise) model is dead,” an Obama administration official […]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is knocking heads with Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), the new chairman of the House Budget Committee, about how to best control inflation while buying billions of dollars worth of Treasury bonds to build up the economy in a process called quantitative easing 2 (QE2). As the nation’s debt climbs to […]

President Barack Obama recently visited Penn State University to introduce his Better Buildings Initiative, an incentive program intended to stimulate energy-efficient retrofits to existing commercial buildings.  The initiative is also designed to create jobs in the construction and manufacturing industries. Despite the long-term economic benefits of energy efficiency, many building owners often run into difficulty […]

Implementation of the historic Dodd-Frank bill – which President Barack Obama signed into law last July to regulate Wall Street against the excesses that led to the Great Recession — is in danger of being gutted if Republicans’ proposed deep spending cuts become a reality.  Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) pointedly criticized Republicans’ proposal to slash […]

New-home construction fell 4.3 percent in December compared with November to its lowest level in more than a year to a seasonally adjusted rate of 529,000 starts for 2010.  December saw the lowest level of new home starts since October of 2009, according to Department of Commerce statistics.  Starts ended the year 8.2 percent below […]

The United States’ 2010 GDP soared at an annualized rate of 3.2 percent, as consumer spending rose by the greatest levels in four years.   “The consumer really drove the economy in the 4th quarter,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia.  “The economy has moved beyond recovery to a […]