There is bipartisan agreement today that stemming home foreclosures and restructuring troubled mortgages would slow the downward spiral harming financial institutions and the real American economy. The federal government possesses a range of tools to take action, but what’s missing is a way to persuade the mortgage servicers who control most of these loans on [...]
The number of homeowners ensnared in the foreclosure crisis grew by more than 70 percent in the third quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2007, according to data released Thursday.
Nationwide, nearly 766,000 homes received at least one foreclosure-related notice from July through September, up 71 percent from a year earlier, said [...]
The Federal Government is collaborating with State and local partners to use the best tools available to keep homeowners in their homes. Americans need to know that help is available. The actions of the Federal Government are helping to address a key problem in the housing market: the excess supply of homes on the market. [...]
The Bush administration’s pledge to rescue ailing housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac raises anew questions about just when the nation’s dismal housing market will hit bottom.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have suggested over the past year that an end is in sight. But with each prediction, things [...]
The government’s $700-billion plan to bail out the banking system may calm panicked financial markets, but its real value may be in buying time to address the root problem: the continuing slide in housing values.
The Treasury Department’s rescue plan is far from a done deal, with Democrats saying Sunday that they would push for more [...]
The economic crisis has spread into many areas of the U.S. economy–banks, investment firms, insurance companies, and even the oil markets. But experts seem to agree that the trouble started with bad loans in the housing industry, and grew into a widespread crisis of confidence.
Gus Faucher, the Director of Macroeconomics at the economic website [...]
Tighten your seat belt. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues are doing just that as they prepare to ride out economic and financial storms by holding their most important interest rate steady this week and probably through the rest of this year.
Unemployment is rising, consumers are clamping down as paychecks shrink and the [...]
Interest rates on U.S. 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages dropped by 0.42 percentage point in the past week, the biggest seven-day drop in more than 28 years, Freddie Mac says. The fixed rate is now at its lowest in five months.
The fall was driven by the U.S. government’s bailout of the mortgage lender and its larger counterpart, [...]