Author: Brian Lund
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Thirty-year mortgages averaged 6.71 percent last week, the highest reading of 2026 and up from 6.50 percent a year ago.
The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage climbed to 6.71% last week, the highest weekly reading Freddie Mac has recorded so far in 2026. That’s up from 6.66% the week before and 6.50% at this time a year ago, according to the mortgage giant’s own weekly survey. For anyone shopping for a home loan…
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Federal student-loan auto-pay has collapsed from more than 80 percent of borrowers before the pandemic to 40 percent today.
Most people who took out a federal student loan before 2020 had their monthly bill pulled automatically from a checking or savings account every month. That habit broke during the multi-year pandemic freeze on federal loan payments and interest, and for a majority of borrowers it never came back. The Department of Education says that…
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One large bank’s overdraft revenue reached $279 million last year, eight percent above 2023
PNC Bank’s overdraft and non-sufficient-funds revenue reached $279 million in 2025, up 8% from what it collected in 2023, according to bank-reported figures compiled by the National Consumer Law Center. PNC is far smaller than the two biggest overdraft collectors in the country, but its two-year growth rate is the kind of detail that gets…
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Regions leads big banks in overdraft revenue per account, about $30 a year
Among the 20 largest consumer banks in the country, Regions Bank collected more overdraft fee revenue per checking account than any other in 2025, about $30 a year on average. That figure comes from the same federal call-report data that regulators and consumer advocates use to track the industry, and it answers a more useful…
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A Mississippi blues club will pay $35,000 over a co-owner accused of harassment
A Biloxi, Mississippi music venue has agreed to pay $35,000 to settle a federal lawsuit accusing one of its co-owners of sexually harassing an employee and accusing the company of firing her for reporting it. The case, brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Ground Zero Biloxi LLC, is a reminder that federal harassment…
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Openings covered 4.4 percent of all American jobs in July, a rate that has barely moved since spring
Beneath the raw count of 7.3 million job openings that made headlines on September 1 sits a simpler number: the job openings rate, which measures openings as a share of all jobs, filled and unfilled combined. In July, that rate was 4.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it has stayed inside…
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Employers hired 5.1 million people in July, let 1.7 million go, and watched 3.1 million walk out on their own
The government’s clearest monthly snapshot of hiring and firing showed a labor market still moving in both directions at a steady clip in July. Employers hired 5.1 million people, let go of 1.7 million through layoffs and discharges, and watched another 3.1 million walk out the door on their own by quitting. All three figures,…
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Capital One, Citibank, American Express and Ally charge no overdraft fee at all
Four of the country’s biggest consumer banks charged their customers nothing at all for overdrawing an account in 2025, even as banks and credit unions nationwide collected more than $12 billion in overdraft and non-sufficient-funds fees for the year. The gap between those two facts is not an accident of size or region: it’s a…
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The Federal Reserve lifted a two-year enforcement order on a Dallas bank and a three-year one on an online bank
Two long-running supervisory actions against banks came off the books on September 4, when the Federal Reserve Board announced it had closed them: a cease-and-desist order against United Texas Bank in Dallas that had stood since August 2024, and a written agreement tied to the holding companies of Quontic Bank, a consumer-facing online bank based…
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The Federal Reserve told the banks it supervises to weigh lost work authorization as a repayment risk
The Federal Reserve told the banks it directly supervises, in a formal letter to its own examiners dated August 13, to treat a borrower’s lack of legal authorization to work in the United States as a factor that can raise the credit risk on a loan. The letter does not create a new rule, and…
