The Federal Reserve Board’s second district, which encompasses New York state and portions of Connecticut, is showing some strengthening in its economy according to the Fed’s Beige Book report released today. But while hiring activity appears to be picking up so far this year, the report says, the housing market in the district has weakened somewhat. “Housing markets appear to have softened in early 2010, after hints of a pickup in late 2009,” the report says. The commercial market was even worse, according to the Fed report, with Manhattan commercial rents down this February an average of around 20 percent from a year earlier. TRD

From the February issue: When the Federal Reserve Board invites comments on proposed changes to
one of its regulations, a few hundred responses typically trickle in.
But before its recent deadline for feedback on amendments that
would revise the disclosure rules for closed-end mortgages, or
mortgages that can’t be paid off until they mature, the agency was
deluged with nearly 4,000 comments.
Many came from loan originators, in New York and elsewhere, who
alleged that the Fed’s proposal to restrict a compensation practice
known as yield-spread premiums –YSPs for short — will put mortgage
brokers out of business and hamper lending.