There are times when it’s a good move to refinance your mortgage. Simply put, refinancing means you borrow the money to pay off your current mortgage. This is generally done in order to lower mortgage payments and/or take advantage of lower interest rates. If you have an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) it will save you [...]
In the last week, many encouraging signs have been on the economic radar: The Bush administration has stated that a consensus has been reached about the impending $145 billion economic stimulus package, the Federal Reserve has cut their most important interest rate by the largest margin in a quarter century, and bond insurers are to [...]
Northern Rock plc was nationalised by the UK government and the shares suspended on 18 February 2008. There are several groups of interested parties in Northern Rock. They are the shareholders, depositors and mortgage holders. Shareholders Nationalisation is devastating news for shareholders. There were several options for a rescue plan, and the City considered the [...]
In recent days, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, and the Swiss National Bank have teamed up to auction $110 billion off to world money markets in order to ease the recent liquidity crisis. But what is liquidity? Why should banks auction off money to deal [...]
Although the majority of mortgage lenders have very high standards, some practices bear watching. Consumers that fail to thoroughly inspect the contracts they’re signing may find that they’ve incurred unwanted and unnecessary expense. The most common ripoff is an ‘interest lock’. After you’ve shopped around for a lender and decided which one to use, they [...]