According to a recent news story in Associated Press, It is highly unlikely that Federal Reserve Bank will change the key interest rates any time soon. Since the interest rates are currently at historic low for some time now and practically this is as low as Fed can keep them to kick start the jammed US economy. Despite the faint signs of improvement in economic activity, Fed is not likely to touch the rates at least not for next two quarters.

After spending more than a year in deep recession, US economy finally started to grow in the last quarter. The rate of growth is very minimal and no one knows if the growth can sustain itself over next few quarters or not. So far the economy is running on essential life support system provided by federal government.  It is yet to be seen how it performs without oxygen mask.

The Core policy making team at Federal Reserve Bank of America resumed its meeting on Wednesday morning. They are likely to discuss and analyze available economic and financial data over the period of next two days.

Although their is some data that indicates the recovery but still the rising un-employment and non-availability of easy credit to individuals and small business owners are some of the factors that are putting a drag on faster recovery from recession. Commercial and residential real estate markets have yet to coup with the impact from loans that went bad and took along them many a banks.

Mortgage rates are still very high. In September, when the key policy makers of Fed met, the team outlined  a very pragmatic plan to bring the mortgage rates down for the main street consumers and try to kick start the housing sector. It is very likely that we will see some positive movement in the same direction at end of current meeting.

Since the inflationary effect of recent stimulus packages is almost none, Fed might try to take some drastic measures to keep Prime Mortgage Rates at or around 3.25 percent. These measures, that would seem stupid if seen out of context, include pushing the target rate for it bank lending further down and keep it between zero percent and 0.25 percent. This will impact all aspects of economy as the commercial bank’s prime lending rate is used as a yard stick to determine interest rates  for home equity loans, credit cards and other types of consumer finance products.

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Defaults and Late payments on home-equity loans and credit cards are climbing to the highest levels. According the the American Banker’s Association the figures are alarming and disturbing.  The worst hit area is home-equity loans. If this trend continued, it has a potential to develop into a major credit crisis in near future.

How This Happened?

In my opinion availability of cheap credit and rising house prices during early part of this decade created a window for home owners to take home-equity loans. Consumers were literally treating their homes like they were liquid assets (cash in bank or ATM). They were buy consumables and services(insane). All was well until the home prices started going down and down. The market collapsed and the consumers were left in pile of debt.

The data shows that default rates on home equity loans have climbed to more than 3.5 percent in first quarter of 2009. The late payments on credit cards is also touching 2% levels. This is a big jump compared to the figures this time last year.

One in 9 American is Jobless

The major contribution in this mess is Un-employment. According to official data, every 1 in 10 person is out of job. This is national average. there are states where every 1 in 8 people is out of job. worse thing is that is just a beginning. Job losses will keep on rising and people’s ability to pay their bills will come to a grinding halt.

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