The bargain hunters are back at Circuit City’s Western Henrico headquarters *trying* to find deals.


Circuit City HQ Liquidation from Richmond Biz Sense on Vimeo.

The decade’s housing boom rendered FHA irrelevant. Americans raced to aggressive lenders, seduced by easy credit and loans with no upfront costs. But the subprime mortgage market has crashed and borrowers are flocking back to the FHA, which has become the only option for those who lack hefty down payments or stellar credit. The agency’s historic role in backing mortgages is more crucial now than at any time since its founding.

With the surge in new loans, however, comes a new threat. Many borrowers are defaulting as quickly as they take out the loans. In the past year alone, the number of borrowers who failed to make more than a single payment before defaulting on FHA-backed mortgages has nearly tripled, far outpacing the agency’s overall growth in new loans.

Among FHA loans with instant defaults, the upward trend is especially pronounced in refinanced deals. The number of refinancings that defaulted after zero payments or one have more than quadrupled since then end of 2007 and now represent two-fifths of all instant defaults.

Many industry experts attribute the jump in these instant defaults to factors that include the weak economy, lax scrutiny of prospective borrowers and **most notably, foul play among unscrupulous lenders looking to make a quick buck**.

[Read](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/07/AR2009030702257.html “Read the Article”) (Washington Post)

More than 600,000 Americans filed claims for jobless benefits for a fifth straight week, the worst performance since 1982, pointing to a deteriorating job market that may deepen the spending slump.

The Labor Department reported 639,000 first-time unemployment applications, the fifth straight week above 600,000. The agency also said worker productivity, a measure of employee output per hour, fell at a 0.4 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2008. Separate data showed factory orders slumped.

[Read](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a_7FklNQXOTM&refer=home “Read the Article”) (Bloomberg)

*…worst performance since 1982. 1982 – that’s when I couldn’t find a job and enlisted in the Army…*

Nationwide, the Chinese government estimates that the number of jobless migrants looking for work may reach 26 million — a gargantuan figure even by Chinese standards, greater than the population of Texas. Some of them returned home to lush but poorer places like Bamboo Pole that largely missed out on China’s economic boom of the past two decades, forcing officials in Beijing and elsewhere to find a way to reincorporate them into the labor force — or face possibly dramatic consequences.

The average income for Chinese farmers is about $690 a year — less than a third of what is paid in urban areas. The shortage of well-paying jobs explains why as many as half of the laborers in Bamboo Pole, population 50,000, decided to seek factory jobs — and why their return is so problematic now.

[Read](http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-02-16-chinamigrants_N.htm?csp=34 “Read the Article”) (USA Today)

With revenue that rivals Iceland’s gross domestic product, Philip Morris contributed $632 million to Virginia’s economy through employee wages alone in 2007 and paid $87.1 million in payroll, property, and corporate taxes.

Now, Gov. Tim Kaine is leading an aggressive campaign to promote public health, perhaps at the expense of a homegrown industry that until last week was considered almost invulnerable.

But many lawmakers and their constituents have been wary of imposing taxes or smoking bans. Mindful of the jobs and state revenue generated by Philip Morris, they warn against doing anything to hurt one of the commonwealth’s most lucrative businesses.

[Read](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/07/AR2009020701979.html?wpisrc=newsletter# “Read the Article”) (Washington Post)