With hundreds of billions in stimulus spending up for grabs shortly after the holidays, Congress is being deluged with wish lists for tax breaks for specific industries.

Business lobbying groups ranging from carpet and rug dealers to hotels to biotech companies all want to make sure they do not get left out of the bounty. They are making their voices heard with lawmakers and members of the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Biden, joined by Summers, pledged not to back earmarks in the stimulus. (Associated Press)

The size of the package, which could reach as high as $1 trillion, and the lack of details on its contents have led to an unusual profusion of lobbying activity.

“The most staggering thing to us about this stimulus is that it’s a big number without any definition,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of the spending watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. “When you have that lack of definition, it brings a large number of lobbyists to the table to try to fill in the blanks.”

Vice President-elect Joe Biden told reporters Tuesday that the Obama administration will not support “earmarks” in the package. While an earmark is usually considered to be a lawmaker’s pet project, Biden didn’t define what he meant.

“There will be strict accountability here. And there also will be no Christmas tree, notwithstanding the season,” Biden said, before a meeting with Obama economic advisers.

Furniture dealers and rug and carpet retailers want Congress to provide consumers with a $500 to $1,000 refundable tax credit they can use to buy home furnishings. The credit would be available only to those with incomes of $50,000 or less, but higher-income families would be able to deduct 10% of home furnishing costs, according to a one-page industry proposal.

Such a tax credit “fits conceptually within the Obama economic stimulus plan and the Obama economic philosophy of strengthening the economy from the bottom up,” the industry paper says.

Biotech firms, which typically face losses in their early years because of the intense research needed to bring a product to market, are looking for additional research subsidies through the tax code.

Biotech groups have proposed a refund for net operating losses, essentially giving them cash upfront if the firms agree to forgo the larger tax benefit to which they would eventually be entitled. That benefit could be limited to smaller firms and come with a dollar cap, according to an industry white paper.

Meanwhile, hoteliers want an enhanced tax credit for hiring individuals that have been receiving unemployment benefits.

The Work Opportunity Tax Credit, now used widely by hotels and restaurants, offsets 40% of the first year’s wages — up to $6,000 — of certain employees, including families eligible for welfare assistance, ex-felons, and youths living in empowerment zones. The hotel industry wants to add individuals who are receiving unemployment benefits, or who have exhausted those benefits.

Since many companies are not profitable in the slumping economy, proposals to make tax credits refundable are particularly popular. Wind and solar energy groups are pressing for renewable energy tax credits to be made refundable.

In addition to narrowly targeted provisions, large business groups are lobbying for tax breaks that would benefit firms across sectors.

Leading proposals include extending the period businesses are able to carry back net operating losses, from two years to five years; renewal of one-year “bonus” depreciation benefits, which allow companies to write off 50% of new equipment costs in the year that equipment is purchased; and a tax holiday for offshore income that would allow pharmaceutical, high-tech and other manufacturing firms to bring profits back to the U.S. at a reduced rate.

Obama administration officials are expected to send their stimulus proposal to Congress soon. Congressional leaders have said they want to pass legislation before Jan. 20, the day Obama will take office.

Many details of the package are yet to be decided, including how much of it will go toward individuals, how much to businesses through the tax code, and how much through direct appropriation for infrastructure spending, state aid, and other priorities.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.) this month said he believes business tax relief in the bill could total as much as $350 billion. –Martin Vaughan

For U.S. consumers, 2009 is likely to be the year of saving, rather than spending.

Although some burdens, such as gasoline prices, have lightened considerably, the cons for the household sector still outweigh the pros. That’s why economists are downbeat on overall economic activity in 2009. A full-fledged recovery will depend on a resurgent consumer, who even after the recent pullback still accounts for 71% of all spending.

The biggest headwind for consumers is, not surprisingly, the weakening labor market.

It isn’t just the loss of 1.9 million jobs so far in 2008; it’s the job jitters triggered by those layoffs. If consumers worry they may be laid off, they will spend less whether or not their fears turn into reality. But less spending weakens the economy and job markets further.

Mending the job markets will be pre-eminent to turning around the economy. That’s why President-elect Barack Obama has upped the ante in his stimulus package, now promising to create three million jobs, instead of 2.5 million.

But an offshoot of the weak labor market — wage freezes, benefit cuts and smaller pay raises — also will hamper consumers.

The Conference Board reported last week that since the credit markets have gone into the tank, businesses have scaled back on their 2009 salary plans.

When the board surveyed companies in April and May, pay increases of 2.86% were planned for hourly nonunion workers; executive pay raises were set at 3%. But the board’s survey in October showed the raises were lowered to 2.5% for hourly workers and 2.8% for executives.

Financial blog Calculated Risk posted a listing Tuesday of media reports of salary freezes, ranging from energy group Duke Energy Corp. and tech services group Unisys Corp. to city workers in San Francisco and teachers in South Carolina.

Luckily for consumers, their purchasing power should improve as prices fall or increase at slower rates.

The plunge in energy prices is the biggest plus going for consumers right now.

Gasoline prices are down about $2 per gallon since the peak in July. Joseph LaVorgna of Deutsche Bank estimates that every $1 drop in gasoline adds about $100 billion to household cash flow — meaning households have an extra $200 billion to spend on items besides gasoline. That amount is bigger than the rebate checks sent out earlier in 2008.

In addition, heating-oil and natural-gas prices are down since the summer. So the coming winter should prove to be less onerous than was feared when crude oil shot past $140 per barrel.

The holiday shopping season has also brought a ton of bargains for consumers. Although door-busters and 20%-off coupons are the kiss of death for retail profits, consumers looking for flat-screen television sets, cashmere sweaters, or toys, are benefiting greatly.

Finally, there are trends that cut both ways across the consumer sector.

Extremely low interest rates, for instance, are great for borrowers. Homeowners in good financial shape and with equity in their homes have rushed to refinance their mortgages now that rates have fallen close to 5% for a 30-year loan.

But low rates are a drag for savers. Data from the Federal Reserve show that households — spooked by the stock markets — have boosted their holdings of interest-bearing accounts by about $250 billion so far this year. But interest income has fallen by $25 billion over the same time, hurting retirees and others on fixed incomes.

Interest earnings will fall further in 2009, now that the Fed has cut its lending rate to near zero.

Falling home prices are a boon for house-hunters; but a bane for sellers and for homeowners who have seen their home values plummet. Dropping stock prices, meanwhile, are good for those newly enrolled in 401k plans; but they have been a disaster for people in or near retirement.

What may be the biggest plus for the U.S. consumer sector is its ability to look forward. A survey by the Investment Company Institute in October showed that despite market volatility, investors remain committed to saving for retirement. Only 3% of participants have stopped making contributions this year.

And consumers are hopeful about the coming stimulus plan. A survey by the Center for American Progress indicates 70% of Americans think government spending on infrastructure is “the right thing” to do given current economic circumstances. Infrastructure spending will go a long way to create jobs in 2009.

Many households also should benefit from the other stimulus ideas being bandied about. A middle-class tax cut, aid to state and local governments, and investment in education should be pluses for the consumer sector in 2009. –Kathleen Madigan

The financial crisis may get to take credit for the downfall of Bernard Madoff, and more scams may come to light as some of what John Kenneth Galbraith called “the bezzle” works its way out of the system.

A bigger contributor to the bezzle than Galbraith could have imagined. (European Pressphoto Agency)

In his 1954 book “The Great Crash of 1929,” Galbraith wrote, “At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in — or more precisely not in — the country’s business and banks. This inventory — it should perhaps be called the bezzle — amounts at any moment to many millions of dollars. It also varies in size with the business cycle.”

Galbraith said that in good times (he was discussing the 1920s but it applies in the case of Madoff in the early 2000s) the bezzle grows by a combination of greed and more lax oversight. But “In a depression all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow suspicious eye,” he said.

Diminishing trust is bad for bank lending and the movement of credit in the economy, but it is a boon for ferreting out embezzlement and other financial crimes. “Should the American economy ever achieve permanent full employment and prosperity, firms should look well to their auditors,” Galbraith wrote. “One of the uses of depression is the exposure of what auditors fail to find.” –Phil Izzo

The Federal Reserve’s unprecedented switch to a range for its key target rate has propelled rate markets into uncharted territory.

The exact impact of the move to a range won’t be clear for some time. Investors and traders need to fully digest the implications of the change, and markets still need to make their way through the sticky year-end period. Nonetheless, it’s safe to say that Tuesday, Dec. 15 marked the start of a new chapter for rates markets.

“This is a different world,” said George Goncalves, chief Treasury, TIPS and agency strategist at Morgan Stanley in New York. “The Fed has moved toward the quality of money in the form of targeting specific assets. When you do that it’s a different ball game.”

The Fed Tuesday lowered its key rate from 1% to a historically-low range of 0% to 0.25% and committed to keeping it there for “some time.” It also said it will seek to support financial markets and the economy by measures that sustain the size of its balance sheet at a high level, listing a range of programs, from purchases of agency debt to mortgage-backed bonds to the possible purchases of Treasurys.

The decision, in effect, signals the end of interest rate cuts as a way to promote economic growth and points to the start of a new period in which expansion of the money supply has become the Fed’s primary tool. And a range is easier to manage, particularly as the effective fed funds rate has been trading close to zero recently.

In that sense, “a target range allows [the Fed] to accomplish basically the same policy objectives as it could under a fixed target regime,” said Kevin Giddis, managing director, head of fixed income sales, trading and research at Morgan Keegan & Co.

Overall, the Fed decision should help to suppress volatility in the front end of the curve, paving the way for more risk appetite. Lower volatility would help market participants to take advantage of market dislocations by allowing them to put on bigger trades.

“That is what helps to stabilize markets,” Goncalves said.

Treasurys rallied on the Fed’s statement and are likely to remain well-supported, particularly on the long end, as investors expect the Fed eventually to buy longer-dated securities. In addition, mortgage-related hedging needs will also support the Treasury market, as the Fed’s program to buy mortgage bonds kicks in.

The decision also lends itself to an even flatter curve. After the rate cut, Treasurys benchmark yield curve — the spread between the two- and 10-year yields — pushed to plus 161 basis points from plus 177 Monday.

For the repo market, a key secured lending market for banks and other financial institutions, the Fed move is unlikely to have a huge impact, strategists said, as rates there have already plunged to low levels. Establishing a fed funds range and implying rates will be low for a while means the general collateral rate, the rate to borrow non-specific Treasurys on an overnight basis, will stay in a low range as well. The Fed move “is a confirmation of what the GC market has been telling us,” Goncalves said.

That leaves the problems of failed trades unresolved, which some have feared could pick up again as fed funds fall toward zero as the penalty for holding onto scarce Treasurys remains minimal.

The Fed’s move should bring further relief to unsecured interbank lending markets. The London interbank offered rate has been falling since mid-October amid aggressive Fed efforts to provide liquidity to the financial system, and the key three-month Libor will likely plunge further. That’s good news for corporations and consumers, as Libor is the benchmark for adjustable-rate borrowing, including ARMs.

Eurodollar futures activity, which shows where the market expects the underlying three-month dollar Libor to settle as a result of Tuesday’s Fed action, indicated that banks are likely to significantly loosen the purse strings. March Eurodollars were pointing to an expected 1.215% yield at the contract’s March 16 expiration, down sharply from the latest cash setting from the BBA for the three-month dollar Libor, which stood at 1.8475%.

The now ultra low rates also have implications for how traders of fed-funds futures behave: they now have much less of a reason to bet or hedge against changes in interest rate expectations. Participants can still hedge on expectations for the 30-day average of the overnight effective cash funds rate though, which is the underlying index for fed-funds futures contracts.

In fed-funds futures, it’s likely “the volume of trading could drop off substantially,” said Stan Jonas, director of Axiom Management, a brokerage firm specializing in interest rates, as the Fed reduces the emphasis on the funds rate to stimulate the economy or control inflation. “No one is going to care much about fed-funds one way or the other,” the broker said.

However, the quarter percentage point range for the target means there’s still “plenty volatility,” said Peter Barker, a director of interest rate products at CME Group Inc.

For money market funds, particularly those that invest mostly in Treasurys, the low level of fed funds and the Fed’s commitment to keep rates low for an extended period could create problems.

Net yields — the returns these funds make on investments minus their expense ratios — could fall to zero or turn negative, forcing the funds to either waive fees or cut expenses to retain investors.

Recently, some money market funds that invest mostly in Treasurys have closed their doors to new investors as yields on Treasurys have fallen to historic lows. Just last week, three-month bill yields turned negative and an auction of four-week bills yielded zero.

In another move, the Fed also cut the interest it pays on reserves to 0.25 percentage point in an effort targeted at the traded fed funds market, where rates have been hovering close to zero. One reason for the low level of traded fed funds is that institutions such as mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which don’t earn interest on their reserves, have been lending these funds out in the fed funds market.

“Banks will be less inclined to absorb surplus reserves from [these] institutions, which means that some of the trading that has given the funds rate such a heavy downward bias in recent weeks may disappear,” Wrightson ICAP economists noted. –Deborah Lynn Blumberg

No question that the Charlie Brown Christmas Special is a timeless classic. We were happily watching it last night, getting into the holiday spirit. Then we caught this exchange between Charlie Brown and Lucy:

Lucy: I know how you feel about this Christmas business, getting depressed and all. Yeah it happens to me every year. I never get what I really want. I always get a lot of stupid toys or a bicycle…

Charlie Brown: What is it you want?

Lucy: Real estate.

Would Lucy still want real estate if she were celebrating Christmas in 2008? Readers?

–Emily Friedlander

As the Federal Reserve prepares to release its December interest-rate decision, the consensus forecast expects a half-percentage point cut in the federal funds rate. However, much of the focus has turned to the policy statement, as the Fed in a meeting already extended to two day from one discusses the ramifications of a target rate quickly approaching 0%. The following are selections of comments from economists:

We think the case for cutting even further is very strong, but Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues may want to keep something in reserve. Ian Shepherdson, High Frequency Economics

The Fed now has a nasty, snarly, self-feeding recession monster on its hands, and must apply maximum force at this point to combat further downside growth and deflation risks in the 2009 outlook. Brian Bethune and Nigel Gault, HIS Global Insight

The drama is what the FOMC will say in its policy statement. In addition to providing a pithy synopsis of the threatening state of the economy, this policy statement will probably also break new ground in terms of policy direction. We expect a wide range of initiatives to be forthcoming in subsequent weeks as the Fed pursues an unconventional approach to monetary policy, but this policy statement is expected only to hint at these possibilities. The FOMC will probably be more specific about its intent to leave policy rates accommodative for a considerable period, as it did the last time the risk of deflation featured in the policy statement. Brian Fabbri, BNP Paribas

The most important message was that the Fed has plenty of ammunition left and there is no limit to any future expansion of the central bank’s balance sheet. A similar message may appear in Tuesday’s statement, but we’re not really sure how the FOMC will characterize the recent shift toward quantitative easing. Indeed, this may be a sensitive subject because it appears to have been implemented by the Board of Governors in Washington and the New York Fed without any formal vote by the FOMC. Some analysts appear to be looking for the FOMC to offer a formal commitment to keep rates low for an extended period. We believe, however, that there is considerable reluctance among Fed policymakers to pre-commit to an extremely accommodative stance for a specified length of time. After all, isn’t that what helped to get us into this mess in the first place? David Greenlaw, Morgan Stanley

We expect the Fed to cut its formal target funds rate by 50 basis points to 0.5% at this week’s meeting. The size of the move is in large part ‘psychological’, as the Fed is now engaged in quantitative easing. But amid extreme economic weakness, we expect a significant target rate cut despite perceived risks to the money market fund industry. The FOMC statement will likely include a sentence or more on quantitative easing, stating that its monetary policy goals now include both achieving its funds rate target and explicit growth in its balance sheet. The Fed statement may add that it plans to purchase securities in markets that particularly need liquidity. Peter E. Kretzmer, Bank of America

Given how fed funds have been trading in recent weeks, the target rate is of little relevance these days, in our opinion — note that since the FOMC cut the target rate to 1.0% on October 29th, the effective fed funds rate has averaged 67 basis points below the target rate (and the effective rate averaged just 0.13% last week)… We are skeptical that Tuesday’s statement will refer to quantitative easing specifically — instead, the policy statement might include a more general comment similar to that made when the Fed last (very briefly) conducted quantitative easing in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. RDQ Economics

There may be some more explicit language in the policy discussion portion of the statement, signaling that the focus of policy is shifting toward actions that were referred to in the previous statement as “extraordinary liquidity measures.” Barclays Capital

We believe it will be difficult to be very specific in a communiqué that is generally only a few small paragraphs in length. The verbiage of the FOMC statement could be pretty general. The substance of the FOMC discussion will come from the minutes of the meeting, which will be released in three weeks and likely take on greater-than-usual importance. We doubt the Fed statement will explicitly mention the words quantitative easing. Rather, the statement is likely to be sufficiently dovish to convince financial markets that monetary policymakers will maintain low rates as long as needed and adopt additional measures, including unconventional policies, in order to ensure both financial market stability and a return to trend growth. We are uncertain of the degree to which the Fed will mention this explicitly. Joseph A. LaVorgna, Deutsche Bank

Chauntay Barnes, 30, moved into a single-family home with her two kids in November 2007 on a quiet street in Hamden, Conn. She never missed a payment on her $800 rent — never had so much as a late fee — and yet in mid-September she opened her mail to find an eviction notice.

“I was shocked,” she said. “I called up my landlord and said ‘what’s going on?’” He wasn’t exactly straightforward about the situation, she said, but ultimately she found out that he had defaulted on his mortgage payments and the property had gone into foreclosure and was now owned by the lender, Fannie Mae.

“I didn’t know what to do — we couldn’t just leave, we didn’t have anywhere to go,” she said, noting that her rental home was a great deal and she wouldn’t be able to find similar properties in her price range. Ms. Barnes also enrolled this fall in nursing school and is now working only part-time as a customer service representative for a truck leasing company, making a move additionally difficult.

“A guy came by from Fannie Mae offering me cash for keys,” she said, referring to his offer of $1,000 for her to leave the property, a common policy within Fannie Mae and other companies who say it’s easier to resell a vacant property. “I would have taken it but it just wasn’t enough,” she said. She turned to her local legal aid office, New Haven Legal Assistance, where attorney Amy Marx told her to stay put and go through the court system, which would give her the maximum time under law to look for a new place. Now, she’s hoping Fannie Mae’s moratorium on tenant evictions in the case of foreclosure means she can stay put at least until the house she’s renting is sold to a new buyer. (See related article.)

But others are less fortunate. A Fannie Mae spokesman estimated that around 5,000 or so households would be able to stay in place as a result of their new policy — which benefits only a slice of tenants currently in the same circumstance as Ms. Barnes, as most others had landlords who took out loans with other companies. “I’m glad I’m not in their position,” Ms. Barnes said. – Kelly Evans

A plan to stabilize home prices by luring nervous buyers into the housing market with federally subsidized mortgages may seem radical, but it is not unprecedented.

During President Gerald R. Ford’s administration, the U.S. government provided below-market-rate mortgages for some borrowers in hope of sparking enough building activity to lift the economy out of the sharp downturn of the mid-1970s.

The results of that effort, which only applied to newly built homes, might give pause to policymakers considering a similar intervention in the mortgage market today. The U.S. Treasury Department is mulling a proposal to lower rates on all newly-issued mortgages by about one percentage point, to 4.5%.

The only major study of the 1970s program concluded that it had a negligible impact on the housing market and the broader economy.

“To argue that it did much to stimulate the housing sector as a whole is a bit of a stretch,” said George von Furstenberg, the study’s author and the former White House economist to President Ford charged with coordinating the program’s implementation.

Today, policymakers aren’t likely looking to stimulate new home construction until the housing market works its way through a glut of empty homes, Thomas Lawler, a housing economist in Leesburg, Va., argued.

Still, they are under pressure to stop a slide in home prices that has ravaged consumer confidence and generated millions of “under water” homeowners, whose mortgages exceed the value of their homes.

Tempting buyers into the housing market with federally subsidized mortgage rates could be one way to slow or halt the fall in prices, proponents say. Lower rates would also enable people to afford bigger mortgages, allowing sellers to fetch higher prices.

The plan being considered by Treasury would apply to all new mortgages, not refinancings. Critics say it would not directly address one of the biggest threats to the economy: mounting foreclosures.

The federal government has already taken dramatic steps to ease mortgage rates, including the Federal Reserve Board’s recent announcement that it would buy up to $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities.

Yet the housing industry is prodding officials to go further. The National Association of Home Builders is lobbying for legislation to push mortgage rates down for all home purchases to 2.99% in the first half of next year and 3.99% in the second half of the year. The trade group also wants Congress to enact a tax credit on all home purchases of between $10,000 and $22,000.

“We certainly welcome Treasury’s proposal to try to stabilize mortgage rates, but we would like to see a legislative proposal that would drive them down even further for a period of time,” said the trade group’s chief economist, David Crowe.

The Ginnie Mae Tandem Program, begun in January 1974 and reauthorized several times through 1975, also aimed to combat what was then the worst downturn in the U.S. housing market in decades. Soaring mortgage rates, which topped 10% at the end of 1974, were acting like a giant weight on home sales. The inventory of empty homes reached a record high of 422,000 in 1973.

Under the program, Ginnie Mae was given authority to purchase mortgages with rates one to two percentage points below the market rate from lenders for a fee. Knowing they wouldn’t be stuck with the loans, lenders were encouraged to lend at artificially low rates to borrowers.

The program was limited to mortgages no larger than $42,000 and only loans used to purchase newly-built homes, with the goal of spurring construction of low- and moderately-priced homes.

Initially, only loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration qualified for the lower rates. But the program was expanded in October 1974 to include conventional loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac agreed to buy such loans at a discount and was then reimbursed by the government for providing the subsidy.

All told, Ginnie Mae was authorized to spend up to $18 billion to buy below-market rate mortgages from January 1974 through June of 1975. Only around $11.5 billion worth of mortgages were ultimately originated under the program. The agency later recouped much of its costs by reselling the loans in the market at a discount.

Still, the outlays were large compared with the cash benefits conferred to borrowers and mortgage lenders. The total subsidy was likely between $600 million to $800 million, von Furstenberg estimated in his 1976 study.

Despite its costs, the program did not achieve the housing market turnaround that policymakers had hoped: Housing starts fell to 1.16 million in 1975 from 1.34 million in 1974. They climbed to 1.54 million in 1976, after the Fed moved to ease interest rates.

Von Furstenberg argued that, rather than stimulate the housing market, the program transferred money to mortgage lenders borrowers. About 86% of the 380,000 people who received below-market rate mortgages would have bought new homes at the higher rates anyhow, he concluded. As a result, the program raised housing starts by at most 5%, he found.

“It was a windfall, a nice surprise” for those who would have been willing to buy anyway, von Furstenberg said.

The study has its critics. Robert Buckley, a former World Bank housing economist, contended it failed to account for a possible drop in broader interest rates caused by the market intervention. This would have benefitted all borrowers, not just participants in the program, he argued in a 1978 rebuttal to the study.

Proponents of subsidizing mortgage rates argue that strong medicine is needed to cure a far more severe housing downturn than in the 1970s. Since rates are also far lower today, federal subsidies to push them down by one percentage point would have a much bigger bang for their buck than they did thirty years ago, they say.

Also, home prices got so out of whack relative to incomes during the housing boom that falling prices aren’t enough to tempt many buyers into the market, argued Brian Chappelle, a former Department of Housing and Urban Development official who is now at mortgage banking consultancy Potomac Partners.

“Unless we expand affordability, the concern is, they’re going to decline more,” he said. –Jessica Holzer

Michael Corkery reports:

Despite early indications of more housing market gloom October – a month in which one home builder executive declared that “home buyers had essentially gone on strike” — pending home sales were not as low as many predicted.
The National Association of Realtors’ measure pending sales were down 0.7%. in October from the previous month, compared with Wall Street’s estimate of a 3% decline.

The reason for the analysts’ miss is likely to due to foreclosure sales.

Credit Suisse analyst Dan Oppenheim said his survey of real estate agents showed signs of dismal sales in October, but those real estate agents might have missed the foreclosures being sold by banks in bulk or through auctions in the hard hit markets of California, Las Vegas and Florida.

The better than expected pending sales are a mixed blessing. The foreclosure sales continue to drive down prices and are taking away business from home builders and people trying to sell their houses. But it does suggest that the foreclosure overhang is being whittled away, especially in the South – primarily Florida – where pending sales were up 7.8% in October.

A roundup of economic news from around the Web.

Compiled by Phil Izzo