Tax Credits and Recovery
Posted on 8:06 AM by Unknown
People who haven't owned a home that they've lived in for 3 years can still take advantage of the $8,000 incentive to make the move from renter to owner through April of 2010. Uncle Sam also decided to throw a financial bone in the form of a $6,500 tax credit to owners of existing homes who sell and purchase another between this past November 7 and the end of next April.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke assured the markets last Monday that the recovery is moving slowly and rates will most likely remain low for a long time into the future. The credit markets, of course, love hearing that the recovery is, at best, lumpy gravy, knowing that the smoother and stronger it flows, the sooner interest rates will start to climb. So the 10-year Treasury note’s yield declined by about 10 basis points on Bernanke’s words.
The next day, though, Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker asserted that the economy has moved strongly into recovery and that the Fed is on the ready to take steps to keep inflation from rising. (Higher interest rates are among such steps, of course. The Fed needs only to whisper the words to the markets and interest rates will take flight.)
