The Federal Reserve Board Discount rate meeting
minutes from May 19 and June 23 show that ten out of twelve
reserve banks voted to leave the discount rate unchanged. The Dallas Fed
and the Kansas Fed requested to have the discount rate increase by
0.25%.
Speaking at the New York Public Library, U.S. Treasury Secretary
Henry Paulson said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are vital
to the U.S. financial system, and that he remains confident Congress will
pass GSE legislation sometime this week.
Inflation in the U.S. is “too high” and inconsistent with the goals of
the Federal Reserve, whose accommodative policy must be
reversed, said Charles Plosser, President of the Philadelphia
Fed, on Tuesday.
Canadian retail sales and employment insurance data tops the economic
news for the day as U.S. markets will receive the OFHEO’s housing
market index, along with the Richmond Fed’s manufacturing index
and comments from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Philly Fed
President Charles Plosser (voter).
Less than a week after Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Christopher Cox invoked the Commission’s emergency powers to regulate
short selling of certain stocks including Freddie Mac
and Fannie Mae, complaints were surfacing from financial institutions.
The complaints were not because those financial institutions were on the
list of troubled banks in need of shoring up, but because they were
not.
U.S. house prices fell 0.3% month-over-month in May
following April’s 0.8% pullback, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise
Oversight (OFHEO) reported Tuesday.