By Jennifer Yousfi Managing Editor The next move from the U.S. Federal Reserve will be to increase the Federal Funds rate, although the timing of that hike remains to be decided. “A number of participants worried about the possibility that core inflation might fail to moderate next year unless the stance of monetary policy was tightened sooner than currently anticipated by financial markets,” according to the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s Aug. 5 meeting released yesterday (Tuesday). The FOMC voted to slash interest rates seven times from 5.25% last September, before voting to hold steady at the current 2.0% rate at the last two consecutive meetings. While it seems clear the Fed is anticipating a change in course to a tighter monetary policy in order to battle inflation, the majority of FOMC members still feel weak economic growth remains the larger ...

By Jennifer Yousfi Managing Editor Housing starts made a sizeable 11.6% jump in June, the Commerce Department announced yesterday (Thursday). However the surprising surge was explained by a change in New York City code law, rather than a true turnaround in the troubled housing market. "This report is much weaker than it looks," Ian Shepherdson, an economist at High Frequency Economics, a research firm, wrote in a note, The New York Times reported. "All the increase in headline starts and permits reflects a rush to begin multi-family construction projects ahead of a change in the N.Y.C. building code." Even with the large number of condo and apartment starts the revised New York laws added to the report that caused the double-digit increase from May, June starts were 23.9% lower than the same period in 2007. Adding to the mixed ...