Here is the prepared statement of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Wednesday, as released by the Treasury.
Good afternoon. Last Friday Congress finalized and President Bush signed into law the bipartisan Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. The EESA provides the Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC with important new authorities to complement existing ones. We [...]

BOCA RATON, Fla. – Oct. 8, 2008 – Bank failures, plunging stock prices, mortgage foreclosures, rising unemployment – no wonder the specter of the Great Depression has been invoked repeatedly in the current financial crisis.
But is this economic meltdown anything like the Great Depression?
“No, this is nothing,” said Boca Raton resident Mary Walsh, who at [...]

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Oct. 7, 2008 – Facing a lawsuit over deceptive mortgage practices, Bank of America Corp. (who now owns Countrywide Financial Corp.) has agreed to modify tens of thousands of loans to keep people in 11 states from losing their homes, the Illinois attorney general’s office said Sunday.
Borrowers stuck with mortgages they can’t [...]

The Federal Housing Administration has grown so large that by the end of the year it will guarantee mortgages for three in 10 U.S. borrowers, many of whom have bad credit or loans that required no verification of income.
Congress wants FHA to do more. The Hope for Homeowners program, unveiled Oct. 1, authorizes the agency, [...]

Mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, seized by the federal government last month, are rolling back fees imposed as they struggled to shore up their finances over the past year.
Freddie Mac said Friday it would not impose a fee increase scheduled to go into effect next month. The announcement followed a similar reversal [...]

Rates on 30-year mortgages have risen for a second straight week, climbing to the highest level in a month.
Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.10 percent this week, up slightly from 6.09 percent last week. It was the highest level since 30-year mortgages averaged 6.35 percent for the week [...]

WASHINGTON – Oct. 2, 2008 – A new program rolled out by HUD yesterday could help more homeowners avoid foreclosure. Under the program, the lender of an existing subprime mortgage forgives part of the debt as if it’s a short sale, and the balance of the mortgage is rolled into a fixed-rate FHA mortgage. Unlike [...]

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) — Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. bank by assets, will pay about $2.16 billion for banking operations of Wachovia Corp. after shares of the North Carolina lender collapsed under the weight of overdue mortgages.
While regulators said the Charlotte-based bank hadn’t failed, Wachovia will lose its biggest unit and investors will get only [...]

WASHINGTON – Sept. 26, 2008 – Rates on 30-year mortgages, which had been falling for five weeks, jumped sharply this week, reflecting the turbulence in global credit markets.
Freddie Mac reported Thursday that its nationwide survey found that the average for 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages rose to 6.09 percent this week, up from 5.78 percent last week. [...]

WASHINGTON – Sept. 24, 2008 – The FBI is investigating four major U.S. financial institutions whose collapse helped trigger a $700 billion bailout plan by the Bush administration, The Associated Press has learned.
Two law enforcement officials said Tuesday the FBI is looking at potential fraud by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and [...]