The ten-year U. S. government note this week made it above 4.50% and, as economist Mohammed El-Arian notes, took the yield higher than its been for three months. This has helped to move the dollar index higher, although not all that much. The effect on interest rate sensitive stocks has been negative. (The 30-year U. S. government bond almost climbed back to the 5%, a level last seen in January.) The interest rate sensitive Real Estate Select Sector SPDR Fund has spent the month of May declining from its March and April peaks. The Dow Jones Utility Average is the…

The Department of Education revealed on Thursday that 96% of income-driven repayment requests for more than two million student loan borrowers remain unprocessed, as loan servicers struggle to work through a massive backlog of applications. And the situation may be about to get much worse. The information was unveiled in a court-ordered filing this week in an ongoing legal challenge brought by a national teacher’s union over stalled IDR applications. The union and the department had reached an agreement whereby the litigation would be paused while the department releases publicly available updates on IDR processing every 30 days. This week’s…