Financial FYI: More Record Foreclosures, Ebay Prices Falling, $490 Billion Deficit, Upside-down SUV’s, Tax Gap, Retiree Income Sources
FinancialFYI.com: Creating Financial Buzz With Interesting Financial News, Statistics, And Research
Foreclosures Continue To Soar
As foreclosures continue to soar, 220,000 homes were lost to bank repossessions in the second quarter, according to a housing market report Friday issued by RealtyTrac. Source: biz.yahoo.com. Full Story.
Selling Price Decreasing On Ebay
Online giant eBay has suffered from this trend. Though the company saw more shopping activity on its site during the last three months, consumers spent fewer dollars. The number of items sold was up 10% from the prior year. But the average selling price of items decreased 6%, resulting in significantly slower growth in the company’s shopping business. Source: businessweek.com Full Story.
Inheriting A $490 Billion Deficit
The next president will inherit a record budget deficit approaching $490 billion, according to a new Bush administration estimate. A deficit approaching $490 billion would easily surpass the record deficit of $413 billion set in 2004. Source:money.cnn.com Full Story.
Upside Down Truck Owners
Wholesale auction prices for used, full-size SUVs averaged $10,507 in June, according to Carmel (Ind.)-based Adesa, a used-vehicle auction company. That was down an average of $3,167, or 23.2%, vs. the year-ago month. Full-size pickups were down $3,203, or 27.3%, to $8,513. For the industry, U.S. car and light-truck sales were down 10.1%, to 7,411,682, in the first half, according to AutoData. Within the total, cars were down only 1.5%, but trucks were off 17.9%, including crossovers. Source: businessweek.com. Full Story.
Tax Gap
Back in 2001 the tax gap — the difference between what the Internal Revenue Service is owed in taxes from individuals and businesses and what it actually takes in, was estimated at around $300 billion, but seven years later it’s widely assumed that the number is much larger. Source: Kiplinger.com. Full Story.
AARP Study on Retiree Income trends
- 34.8 million people age 65 and older (96.6% of the older population) had income during the year, with a mean of $26,878 and a median of $16,902
- About 31 million individuals (86.4%) had Social Security income, with a mean of $11,723 and a median of $11,682
- About 11 million people (30.7%) had income from pensions and retirement savings (mean $14,566, median $10,080)
- About 18 million people had interest income from personal savings (mean $4,932, median $978)
- About 6.7 million people (18.6%) had earnings income (mean $33,758, median $19,250)
- About 1 million individuals age 65 and older (2.8%) received Supplemental Security Income, and the median SSI benefit was $4,512
- Overall, the data show that older persons with low income depend heavily on Social Security and that earnings have become a more important income source for the older population over the last 11 years.
Source: AARP.org. Full Story.
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FinancialFYI.com: Problem Bank List, Universities and Credit Cards, US On The Wrong Track, Vacation Home Prices, Tax Evasion, Rolls Royce $442,390
Financial FYI: Creating Financial Buzz With Interesting Financial News, Research, and Statistics.
Problem Bank List and Statistics
There were 90 banks on the FDIC’s “problem list” in the first quarter of 2008, up from 76 at the end of last year. The number has been increasing since the third quarter of 2006, when it hit a historic low of 47. Total assets at the problem institutions stand at $26.3 billion. How many banks on the list actually fail? Only 13% on average. So far this year, five banks have failed – a far cry from the turbulent times of the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s, when more than a thousand institutions shut down. Source: Money.cnn.com. Full Story.
Universities Preying On Students Through Credit Cards
Universities and their alumni associations have discovered an unlikely and disturbing source of revenue: Increasingly, they are selling students’ personal information to big credit-card companies eager for young customers. Some of the country’s best-known and largest schools have multimillion-dollar credit-card deals, including the Universities of Michigan, Minnesota, and South Florida. Private schools also have these typically secret deals, but information about public institutions is more readily obtainable under disclosure laws. Source: Businessweek.com. Full Story.
85% Of People Believe Country Is On The Wrong Track
85% of respondents in an exclusive TIME/Rockefeller Foundation poll believe that the country is on the wrong track. Among blacks and Latinos, the dissatisfaction levels are 96% and 88%, respectively. And fewer than half of Generation Y believes that the country’s best days are ahead. The kids are not all right. Nearly half of those between ages 18 and 29 say America was a better place to live in the 1990s and will continue to decline. Some of them are living that decline already: 58% of Gen Yers said they have had to borrow money to make ends meet in the past year. Source: Time.com. Full Story
Car Shopping? Convertible Rolls Royce $442,390
Just in case you were car shopping and had a few extra bucks lying around and weren’t concerned about gas mileage, the new convertible Rolls Royce has a total suggested retail price of $442,390 (including gas guzzler tax of $3,000), gets 11 miles per gallon in the city, 18 miles per gallon on the highway, and weighs more than 6,700 pounds. Source: Fortune.cnn.com. Full Story
Vacation Home Prices Falling
In 2007, the median price for vacation homes fell 2.5%, reports the National Association of Realtors. But that understates the magnitude of the slump in the market because it doesn’t account for the vast number of sellers who are reluctant to discount prices enough to make a sale. Vacation-home sales actually plummeted by more than 30% in 2007, to 740,000 from a record million-plus in 2006. Source: Kiplinger.com. Full Story.
Cost of Tax Evasion
According to the Senate, experts estimate that the total loss to the Treasury from offshore tax evasion could be as high as $100 billion a year, including $40 billion to $70 billion from individuals and some $30 billion from corporations. Source: Time.com. Full Story.
A History On Fannie and Freddie
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are America’s two largest mortgage companies, together holding or guaranteeing some $5 trillion in debt. A history on Fannie and Freddie. Source: Time.com. Full Story.
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FinancialFYI.com: Teen Financial Literacy, Summer Employment, Most Profitable Companies, The Cost of Charitable Giving
Financial FYI: Creating Financial Buzz Through Interesting Financial News, Statistics, & Research
Teen Financial Literacy
In the 2008 survey of high school seniors by the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, the average score was 48%, down from 52% in 2006. Separately, more than 20,000 high school students in 20 states took the spring 2008 Financial Literacy Certification Test, sponsored by the group Working In Support of Education. After studying a personal-finance curriculum for a minimum of seven to eight weeks, about 74% of the students were able to pass WISE’s proficiency exam. Source: Kiplinger.com. Full Story
Summer Employment
According to an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data by global outplacement consultant Challenger, Gray & Christmas, teen employment grew by only 683,000 jobs in June, 38.7% below the 1.1 million new positions that teens were able to fill in June of last year. If the average holds, total summer hiring in May, June, and July would be about 1.2 million, which would be the smallest gain in teen summer employment since 1958Source: Money.cnn.com. Full Story
Most Profitable U.S. Companies
Sky-high oil prices have led to extraordinary profits for Exxon Mobil, with $40.61 billion in earnings last year, or nearly $78,000 per minute. That topped its previous record of $39.5 billion in 2006. Source: money.cnn.com. Full Story
The Cost of Charitable Events
According to a 2007 survey of charitable events by New Jersey watchdog group Charity Navigator, the average fund-raiser in 2005 lost 33¢ for every dollar raised. (By comparison, IRS filings show that, overall, the average charity spent only 13¢ on fund-raising efforts for every dollar it raised.). Charitable giving in the U.S. topped $300 billion for the first time last year, according to a report released on June 23 by the Giving USA Foundation in Glenview, Ill. The study found that Americans gave $306.39 billion, up 3.9% from 2006. But there are concerns that as the economy slows, so will the pace of giving. Source: Businessweek.com. Full Story
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