Okay, what name doesn’t belong here?

Gov. Elliot Spitzer	Rep. Mark Foley
Rep. Anthony Weiner	Rep. Gary Studds
Sen. John Edwards	Sen. Gary Hart
Rep. Wilbur Mills	Sen. Bob Packwood
Rep. Daniel Crane	Hon. Millard Fillmore

Hint, all but one committed political suicide because of inappropriate behavior (i.e. they couldn’t keep their pants zipped up.) Millard Fillmore is the exception.

Who wrote this? “The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest (we) become Bankrupt.” Was it (a) Ben Bernanke (b) Allan Greenspan, (3) William McChesney Martin or (d) Captain Kangaroo? While Captain Kangaroo would have been a reasonable choice, it was actually Cicero writing about Rome in 55 B.C.

In his latest speech, Ben Bernanke draw particular attention to the long-term unemployed as a matter of particular concern.

Particularly concerning is the very high level of long-term unemployment--nearly half of the unemployed have been jobless for more than six months. People without work for long periods can find it increasingly difficult to obtain a job comparable to their previous one, as their skills tend to deteriorate over time and as employers are often reluctant to hire the long-term unemployed.

We're not surprised, as we highlighted this very chart last week when the last jobs data came out.

How big is Wal-Mart? According to Fortune, Wal-Mart sold $421 billion worth of stuff last year. If all Wal-mart sold were new homes (assume a national average of $269,000), that would be almost 1.6 million homes. By comparison, D.R. Horton is the largest U.S. homebuilder, and they built about 21,000 homes last year.

If Wal-mart were a country, it would be the 25th largest economy in the world. And with 2.1 million employees, that means there are about as many Wal-Mart employees sprinkled across the globe as there are people living in the African country of Namibia (yes, that Namibia, where Angelina Jolie gave birth).

If you’re a real dork (like a few of us), you’ll find the FDIC Quarterly fascinating reading. One of the highlights of the latest issue is that the percentage of non-performing loans at U.S. banks dropped for the 5^th straight quarter. Since you can’t have a healthy economy without a healthy banking system, this is good evidence that the recovery is probably sustainable.

Tourism is the biggest part of the Hawaiian economy, with visitors from Japan being hugely important. Visitors arriving from Japan are down 24% from a year ago, and who’d ever think a bank’s small business customers would be affected by an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown 4,000 miles away?

The official start of Summer comes next week, bringing with it warm, lazy days and thoughts of vacation. That is, unless you're the Federal Reserve, who meets next week to ponder what comes of the economy as its QE2 program of purchasing $600 billion in Treasury bonds comes to fruition.
There's plenty of evidence that we're entering the summer months on a slow note. The expiration of whatever additional stimulus QE2 added to the economic climate will certainly soften growth a little bit more. At the same time, there is reason to expect that growth move higher later in the year.

For their part, mortgage rates spent a good part of the spring on following the economy down but do seem to be leveling off as we step into Summer.

Certainly, there is a lot for the Fed to consider. Although the economy has slowed, the hangover effects from strong oil prices continue to press inflation a bit higher. There are concerns and unknown effects from a potential Greek (and possibly other) government-debt default. Given an ocean of red ink, there is little likelihood that new forms of fiscal stimulus will make their way out of Congress (and even if they were so inclined, the effects of any such moves would be months away at best).

The Fed must now ponder how best -- and when -- to start to remove all of the extraordinary "policy accommodation" added over the past couple of years to try to steer the economy away from depression and recession. Minutes of the last Fed meeting suggested that there was a lot of conversation to this regard, but the outlook has changed over the last six weeks, and not for the better. It is likely that this meeting will feature more concrete planning on how the Fed will extricate itself -- agreeing in principle on which levers to pull and in what sequence -- but the timing of any actions will be left for future consideration.
With optimism flagging and economic expectations being ratcheted down to a great degree, mortgage rates have probably fallen about as far as they can at the moment. Given present levels for rates, and if they hold, entering the summer doldrums might give some folks a chance to refinance or even buy a home before heading to the beach. Aside from the Fed, there is a very light calendar of economic data on tap. On balance, that means less bad news in the headlines, and mortgage rates may firm up by a couple of basis points.

A blonde calls Delta Airlines and asks, "Can you tell me how long it'll take to fly from San Francisco to New York City?"
The agent replies, "Just a minute."
"Thank you," the blonde says, and hangs up.