• The number of homes in foreclosure topped one million for the first quarter ever, as delinquencies rose even among prime borrowers and nearly half of all holders of modified mortgages, whose monthly payments had been lowered, defaulted again. The depressing figures, released on Monday by the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, restate the difficulty facing the real-estate market going forward, as continuously high unemployment makes regular mortgage payment difficult for millions of homeowners.

• The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing a computer-security breach targeting Citigroup Inc. that resulted in a theft of tens of millions of dollars by computer hackers who appear linked to a Russian cyber gang, according to government officials.

• Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 2.2 percent in the third quarter of 2009. GDP was revised down from the advance estimated of 3.5% to the preliminary estimate of 2.8%, and now to 2.2%. You have to wonder how the government could be off by 1.3%. Motor vehicle output added 1.45 percentage points to the third-quarter change in real GDP after adding 0.19 percentage point to the second-quarter change. What this means is that Cash for Clunkers was an even larger factor than previously understood. As it stands, by a basic calculation without motor vehicle output, third quarter GDP would have been only 0.75%.

Tags: Economic News, economic recovery

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