It pushed claims to their highest level since summer, when a General Motors strike temporarily boosted unemployment. The increase, from 6.77 percent, was the second consecutive weekly rise in the mortgage rate after a five-week slide from 6.93 percent on Nov. 12. The average reached a 31-year low of 6.49 percent in early October. The rates do not include add-on fees known as points, which averaged at or just over 1 percent of the loan amount for all three types of mortgages. Following a new agreement between China and the U.S., silk garment exporters will no longer require an official export license, the Xinhua News Agency said.
China expects the move to help it simplify export procedures and cut operations costs.
With Russia still mired in crisis, many private economists expect the rate for 1999 to be as high, if not higher. The government has agreed to postpone some loan payments for hog farmers, now reeling from record-low prices, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said Thursday. The low prices mean many pork producers are facing bankruptcy and foreclosure because they cannot recover the cost of production in order to repay loans, Glickman said. Thursday's loan deferment announcement covers 1998 farm ownership and operating payments that would have been due Friday. Instead, these payments will be added on to the end of the repayment period.