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49 » VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM FED: U.S. ECONOMY IS 'NOT RUNNING HOT' e Federal Reserve announced it would wait for the U.S. economy to stabilize a bit more before raising interest rates. e Fed released the minutes of its June Federal Open Market Committee meeting saying that given the pace of improvement in labor market conditions, which slowed in April and May, and the faster-than-expected rise in the gross domestic product, "consumer price inflation continued to run below the Committee's longer-run objective of 2 percent." at 2 percent figure was mentioned by Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo shortly before the minutes came out. At a Wall Street Journal event in Washington, D.C., Tarullo said that there is no need to raise interest rates until he is "more convinced that the underlying rate of inflation is around 2 percent." e latest inflation rate, from May, is 1.02 percent. "is is not an economy that's running hot," he said. Much of what the Fed is waiting on is the job market. According to the June minutes, "although the rate of private-sector job openings remained elevated, the rate of hires declined in both March and April and the rate of quits was unchanged." is translated into slightly higher, but still-low, initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits compared to April, "Labor productivity growth remained slow over the four quarters ending in the first quarter of 2016," the minutes stated. Tarullo told the Journal that the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, the Fed's main barometer for gauging inflation, rose to 1.6 percent year-over-year in May, from 1.3 percent last October. e whole package, he said, "is not enough to this point to convince me that the rate [of inflation] is headed in a non-transitory way" towards the wanted 2 percent. Rates remaining low, he said, should not trigger any bubble-and-bust dynamics in the near future. Still, he worried about pessimistic views of the market. "If markets do regard economic prospects as only modest or moderate going forward," he said, "then raising short-term rates is almost surely going to flatten the yield curve, which generally speaking is not good for financial intermediation, and in some sense could exacerbate financial stability concerns." OCWEN AMPS UP BORROWER OUTREACH EFFORTS Ocwen Financial Corporation and Oakland-based NID Housing Counseling Agency will team up for a late-July event aimed squarely at low- to moderate-income and minority communities in California. In July, as a way to discuss home ownership and prevent foreclosures in lower-income areas, Ocwen home retention agents and certified NID housing counselors met with distressed homeowners face-to-face to "explore options to make their mortgages more affordable through sustainable loan modifications." "We understand the pride and gratification derived from owning a home and the devastating consequences of losing it to foreclosure," said Ray Carlisle, President of NID. "e foreclosure process does not just harm borrowers, but entire families and communities." e event offered assistance with preparing Request for Mortgage Assistance (RMA) packages; information on borrower eligibility for state and federal foreclosure assistance programs; counseling on possible mortgage solutions tailored to fit their unique situations; and information on free follow-up housing counseling and education with NID. Worries about California's housing crisis have been growing over the last year or so. e state was hit hard by the recession, but bounced back to being a market of swift sales and rapidly escalating house prices. e downside to that growth has been limited inventory and increased competition that is especially daunting to younger buyers. Last year, the Los Angeles Daily News reported on the growing problem millennials are having trying to crack California's housing market, and in February, Forbes named Riverside as one of the five overvalued markets (by 17 percent) that could be ground zero for the next housing bubble—and pop. NID claims it has worked with approximately 1,250 homeowners annually over the last eight years, with an average balance of $135,000 among its clients, translating more than $168 million in home value designed to keep wealth concentrations within local neighborhoods and mitigate against destabilization. Ocwen, which is still grappling with the $30 million fallout revolving around accusations that accused the company of falsely certifying its compliance with federal mortgage programs services more than 265,000 mortgages in California during the recession, claims to have helped more than 625,000 families avoid foreclosure. In California alone, Ocwen has granted more than 80,000 loan modifications, of which 51 percent received a principal reduction.

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