FOMC Chairman, Ben Bernanke, is scheduled to speak on the Fed’s new talking points in just over an hour and a half.  I would expect the Chairman to say something like inflation is their primary concern (duh) and that they are slightly concerned still with revelations in the credit markets. At some point we will have all of the information about the derivative action that the hedge funds have been involved in with relation to the MBS market. I don’t expect that will be the case for another couple of months.  However, the news this morning from Freddie Mac that they have suffered a $2B loss in Q3 of 2007 should make a lot of the people out there who have been saying we have all of the information and this problem is only a “sub prime” problem, take notice.  I would expect that many new “revelations” will take place after Thanksgiving and before Christmas when the markets are typically pretty quiet.

Housing start numbers were off this morning as well as the new home permit numbers were down and the only numbers that were up a bit were new multi-family starts in some areas.

tags: bernanke, fed, fomc, freddie mac, mortgage