We Were Economic First Responders: The Podcast

The payment by the Federal Reserve of interest on bank reserves may sound like an abstruse matter of economic theory, but these payments are critical to bank operations and the Fed's conduct of monetary policy.

The rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.83% this week. The rate for a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.03%.

Housing starts decreased by 11.4% in March from the month prior to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.32 million, the Commerce Department reported.

With the tariffs announced by President Trump much higher than anticipated, the same is probably true of their economic effects, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said.

Industrial production decreased 0.3% in March from the previous month, the Federal Reserve reported. The March figure was up 1.3% from a year prior.

Builder confidence in the market for single-family homes in May was 40, up one point from the previous month, according to the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index.