Government

Churchill Mortgage, a provider of conventional and government-insured mortgages, announced the opening of a new branch in Atlanta, Georgia. For the new opening, Churchill recruited Johnny Meany and David Carr, who together have more than 26 years of industry experience.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced Steve Antonakes will serve as acting deputy director while the agency continues searching for a replacement for departing deputy director Raj Date. CFPB announced in November that Date would depart at the end of January 2013.

Fixed mortgage rates took a major leap up last week amid news of a growing economy led in part by the recovering housing market.

Personal income jumped a staggering 2.6 percent in December, almost four times the 0.7 increase economists forecast, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday. Part of the December increase, BEA said, was due to "accelerated bonus payments and other irregular pay in private wages in anticipation of changes in individual income tax rates." Personal consumption spending rose 0.2 percent, slightly below the expected 0.3 percent increase. The increase in personal spending--$22.6 billion --came primarily in spending on services.

First-time claims for unemployment insurance jumped 38,000 to 368,000 for the week ending January 26, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists expected a smaller increase to 350,000 from the prior week's 330,000 initial claims. The weekly jump in initial claims was the first in three weeks. It reflected, in part, a drop in the seasonal adjustment factor the Labor Department applies to the raw data, which includes holiday workers whose jobs were eliminated.

Federal Housing Administration commissioner Carol Galante announced Wednesday a series of changes to be issued this week that will allow the agency to better manage risk and strengthen its anemic Mutual Mortgage Insurance (MMI) Fund. The announced changes include consolidating FHA's reverse mortgage program, raising of mortgage insurance premiums, and requiring borrowers to continue paying annual insurance premiums for the entire life of their mortgage loans.

With a nod to the report the nation's economy had contracted in the fourth quarter, the Federal Open Market Committee ("FOMC") voted Wednesday to continue its program of purchasing $40 million a month of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and to maintain the target Fed Funds rate at 0 to 0.25 percent. The FOMC vote was 11-1 with only Kansas City Fed President Esther George (in her first meeting as a voting member of the committee) voting "no."

McLean Mortgage Corporation, a privately held full-service mortgage lender based in Fairfax, Virginia, announced that the company closed more than $1.5 billion in mortgage volume in 2012, a 140 percent increase in production levels over 2011.

Irvine, California-based CoreLogic announced the availability of CoreLogic Bond Tracker, a new bond assessment service for non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).

Lincoln, Nebraska recorded a best-in-the-nation 3.4 percent unemployment rate in December as unemployment rates dropped in 290 of the 372 metropolitan areas in the county, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Wednesday.