The Federal Reserve since June has been buying $120 billion in bonds each month to keep downward pressure on long-term interest rates as a way of giving the economy a boost as it struggles to emerge from a deep recession.
Trading volumes have been elevated in what is normally a calm week. More than 12 billion shares changed hands on Monday, up 75% from the Monday before last year’s holiday.
The central bank said it “would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy.”
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the threat also means that Congress and the White House should provide more stimulus spending to support the unemployed, states and cities, and small businesses, and to keep the economy afloat.
Initial Public Offering advisers are expecting to see a record amount of listing activity during the period between the U.S. Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
Office space, the largest single slice of the commercial real estate sector, already is seeing rents fall as vacancies rise. Property values eventually could plummet 20% to 35%, according to a recent Barclays report. Hotels and retail properties have been hit even harder.
Muncie-based First Merchants plans to acquire Hoosier Trust for $3.2 million in a deal that is expected to close early next year.
The increase included a $3.98 billion increase in credit card borrowing, the first rise since February. Credit card use had fallen for six straight months as households cut back on use of credit cards once the pandemic hit.
High levels of uncertainty, along with other pandemic-related factors, have pushed U.S. commercial bank deposits to record highs since the beginning of the year.
The Federal Reserve kept its benchmark interest rate at a record low near zero Thursday. It announced no new actions after its latest policy meeting but left the door open to provide further assistance in the coming months.
The S&P 500 rose 1.9%, its fourth straight gain of more than 1%, and is now up 7.4% for the week. That would be its best week since the market was exploding out of the crater created in February and March by panic about the coronavirus pandemic.
Carmel-based CNO Financial Group Inc. saw a sharp increase in profit during the third quarter, partly because its customers deferred seeking medical care and, as a result, submitted fewer health insurance claims.
Analysts said the gains came as markets saw the upside of political control in Washington, D.C., remaining split between Democrats and Republicans.
The cars had been owned by Najeeb Khan, the former CEO of Interlogic Outsourcing Inc., an Elkhart-based payroll processing firm that was sold after filing for bankruptcy protection last year.
J.P. Morgan had claimed that the three former employees improperly solicited clients to follow them to their new firm.
The Fishers-based parent of First Internet Bancorp had a milestone quarter thanks to a boom in mortgage activity, the company reported Wednesday afternoon.
The funding is part of the firm’s $75 million global commitment to better prepare young people for jobs and a new $30 billion commitment “to advance racial equity and drive an inclusive economic recovery.”
More Americans than ever obtained a basic bank account in 2019, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Monday. But data was gathered before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
Although redlining—discrimination in banking and lending based on someone’s race or where they live—has been illegal since the Fair Housing Act passed in 1968, analysts at Indiana University’s Public Policy Institute found that inequities in home-loan lending still exist.
Reluctance to put money to work took hold when the pandemic struck and has shown few signs of easing.
