Labor/Economy

The Federal Reserve reported in its October 2013 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices that U.S. banks have eased their lending standards in some cases, while experiencing little change in the demand for some kinds of loans over the past three months.

Activity in the U.S. manufacturing sector expanded in October for the fifth month in a row, and the nation’s overall economy grew for the 53rd consecutive month, according to in the Institute for Supply Management’s latest Report On Business.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury said that the federal government ran a $75 billion surplus during September, which was the last month of fiscal 2013.

The Federal Open Market Committee said that it plans to continue to stimulate the United States via its continuous (monthly) bond-buying program—at $85 billion a month—and isn’t going to taper that figure just yet.

Standard & Poor’s released the latest Case-Shiller home price indexes on Tuesday, and as expected, they indicated rising prices in a lot of markets.

The National Association of Realtors said that its Pending Home Sales Index dropped to 101.6 in September from a downwardly revised 107.6 in August.

The Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index—which has looked something like a seismograph needle jumping up and down in recent years—dipped downward again to end October at 73.2, down from the end of September reading of 77.5.

The Federal Reserve proposed a rule to make too-big-to-fail banks and other deep-pocket entities less likely to fail.