The American Dream is escaping further out of reach for much of the country as mortgage rates soar, but the left-wing media largely squelched the story for five days straight. Americans who get their news from the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows weren’t informed that mortgage rates hit record highs for five days straight.
Mortgage rates ratcheted up to their highest level since 2009 during the Great Recession, according to CNBC. But not a single member of the “Big Three” in evening news — ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News — bothered to cover the new mortgage rate explosion during their May 2, May 3, May 4 and May 5 evening broadcasts.
NBC and CBS only covered the housing crisis on their May 6 broadcasts for a miniscule 17 seconds in total. The evening nets seem intent on protecting President Joe Biden from any bad news that could further wreck his already ailing credibility on the economy.
CNBC also noted that “[h]omebuying affordability has not been this bad since July 2006, when rates were around 6.75%. Then, it took about 34% of the median income to cover the monthly mortgage payment, including principal and interest, for a home purchased with a 20% down payment.”
To put the mortgage rate spike into perspective, just a year ago the average rate on “America’s most popular home loan,” a 30-year fixed-rate home loan, was 2.96 percent according to The Wall Street Journal. That means 30-year mortgage rates on average skyrocketed a whopping 2.66 percent since 2021, compared with current rates, according to Mortgage News Daily.
Recent moves by the Federal Reserve may send them even higher. Another Journal article explained that the Fed’s decision to raise interest rates “will make it more expensive to buy a home or a car, or carry a credit-card balance.”
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell announced a historic hike in interest rates during a May 4 press conference. The Fed under Powell’s leadership jacked up interest rates to the highest level in more than 20 years in a desperate attempt to curb a 40-year high in inflation, according to NPR.
But the new sky-high mortgage rate was apparently not newsworthy enough for the Big Three.
Bankrate.com chief financial analyst Greg McBride reportedly told CNBC: “‘Until we see sustained evidence of inflation pressures moderating, the risk is very much toward higher mortgage rates.’”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact ABC News (818) 460-7477, CBS News (212) 975-3247 and NBC News (212) 664-6192, and hold them accountable for their evening news shows largely ignoring the sky-high mortgage rates.
MRC News Analyst Kevin Tober contributed to this report.
