The number of U.S. residents and businesses that filed for bankruptcy rose 28.9% to 976,831 for the year ended June 30, 2008, according to U.S. court data released Wednesday.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reported that non- business filings comprised 96.5% of that total...

Mortgage interest rates broke through the gridlock of the last few weeks and, with the exception of one-year adjustable rates, moved lower.

Mortgage activity as measured by the volume of loan applications increased by a marginal 0.5 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from a week earlier and decreased by 0.9 percent unadjusted. Volume was down 31.2 percent compared to the same week in 2007.

Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the FDIC said, "By any yardstick, it was another rough quarter for bank earnings, but the results were not unexpected as the industry coped with financial market disruptions, the housing slump, worsening economic conditions, and the overall downturn in the credit cycle."

Higher provisions for loan losses were cited as the primary reason for the drop in industry profit. These provisions totaled...

German inflation data and comments from ECB's Lucas Papademos will top the macroeconomic release menu for the European session as U.S. markets prepare for durable goods, weekly oil inventories and a two-year bond auction. Canada's main releases for the day include some employment data followed by a real return bond auction at noon.

Weekly mortgage applications in the United States increased in the week ending Aug. 22, according to data released from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) on Wednesday, which reported a 0.5% week-over-week rise in applications.

In the previous week, applications also fell by 1.5%.

Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart welcomed the recent rise in the U.S. dollar, but said home prices in the U.S. could fall another 10-15%.

Following a speech at an Economic Outlook Conference in Atlanta Wednesday, Lockhart said "housing prices will continue to decline," perhaps by as much as 15%.

The minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) Aug. 4-5 meeting show that board members "did not see the current stance of policy as particularly accommodative." It also revealed that most members anticipate the next policy move to be a tightening of rates, but the timing and extent of any change would depend on evolving developments.

Consumer confidence continued to rise in August, which economists largely attribute to a drop in gas prices over the past several months. However, despite the improvement in recent months, they say the index remains at depressed levels.

Despite 46k of downward revisions in the previous two months, which pushed the pace of new home sales lower than expected even with a 2.4% monthly rebound, economists said the Department of Commerce's July report was positive as the level of inventories saw a notable reduction.

Eric Lascelles, chief economics and rates strategist at TD Securities, said "there was an undeniably cheery quality to the report," as the overhang of supply fell to a 10.1-month supply, down from June's upwardly revised 10.7-month supply and marking a six-month low.

Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at HFE, added: "[W]e still can't say with any confidence that sales have hit bottom..."

In spite of the beating the stock market took on Monday with the Dow Jones down 242 points and even though financial stocks were among the biggest losers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae shares came roaring back from their awful performance on Friday.

Jim Cramer said on NBC news Tuesday morning that Wall Street was actually anticipating that Freddie and Fannie would be taken down by regulators over the past weekend. When that didn't happen, investors came flocking to the GSE stocks...