Consumer Confidential: Cheap mortgages, more jobless, funky iPhones

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Here’s your throw-me-a-bone Thursday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

-- Take away that tax credit, and people are suddenly a whole lot more reluctant to go out and buy a house. Pending homes sales tumbled 30% in May from a month before as would-be buyers reappraised the market. Well, maybe this will help: Mortgage rates are now at the lowest level in half a century, with the average rate for 30-year fixed loans hitting 4.58%. You’d have to climb into your way-back machine and visit the 1950s to find lower rates. Can you say refi?

-- Unfortunately, the housing market won’t recover until the jobs market finds a pulse, and that’s apparently not happening any time soon. Initial claims for unemployment benefits rose last week to a seasonally adjusted 472,000, according to the Labor Department. And now, thanks to the kind-hearted folk in the Republican Party, more than a million people will no longer be able to receive jobless benefits. Republicans say they’re worried sick about the deficit. Funny how they weren’t much troubled by such things under the last president.

-- You could see this coming: IPhone users have filed a lawsuit against Apple because if they hold the phone a certain way, it apparently messes up reception. I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure Apple already has a legion of engineers working on a fix. Meantime, here’s a thought: Don’t hold it that way.

-- David Lazarus