The Fed's gives assistance to the sector of commercial real estate

The Federal Reserve of the United States announced Friday the launch of aid to the commercial property sector shows signs of weakness with the economic crisis.

The assistance of the central bank will go through one of its financial support programs to the existing economy: lending to asset backed securities (TALF), designed to facilitate the refinancing of a number economic agents.

This program officially launched in March has a total of 200 billion dollars and is designed to unlock credit markets.

So far, it allowed the Fed to pay interest rates beneficial to investors wishing to acquire securities issued by companies specializing in consumer credit, credit cars, student loans and loans to small companies.

The changes will open this Friday the program to securities backed by commercial real estate lending, said the Fed, which hopes to avoid defaults in this sector.

U.S. consumer confidence is rising

The confidence of American consumers has "improved significantly" in April, gaining more than twelve percentage points to 39.2 points, according to the index published Tuesday by the Institute of economic private Conference Board.

Analysts were expecting a more modest increase of this indicator, to 29.9 points. The Conference Board has revised its figures for the previous month, up 0.9 points to 26.9 points.

Figures from the Institute seem to show that consumer confidence rose to its highest level since November 2008, after touching a low in February to 25.3 points, its lowest level since 1967 and the beginning of the publication this series.

The rebound in April due to a slight improvement in the component measuring the assessment of the situation, increased from 21.9 points to 23.7 points and a strong increase of the component measuring consumers' expectations, increased from 30.2 to 49.5 points, its highest level since the peak of the financial crisis in September 2008.

According to the Conference Board survey, conducted until 21 April 5000 to U.S. households, the proportion of respondents describing it as "bad" economic conditions fell below the 50% to 45.7% (against 51.0% in March). That of households are "good" increased slightly, from 6.9% to 7.6%.

The share of households considered "difficult" to find work has fallen slightly, to 47.9% (against 48.8% in March), but the proportion of those holding offers of jobs "plentiful" also declined to 4.5% (against 4.7% in March).