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<p>At the CNN Florida Republican Presidential debate in Jacksonville on January 26th, Governor Romney attempted to link Speaker Newt Gingrich to the 2007 Housing Crisis by questioning the Speaker’s role as a consultant at the troubled mortgage giant Freddie Mac. He made the same connection in the NBC debate on January 23rd. Governor Romney claimed in the debates that Speaker Gingrich peddled his influence in Washington D.C. to promote Freddie Mac when he should have been blowing the whistle on the government-sponsored entities' practices.</p>

California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris is suing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to force the mortgage giants to answer questions about their role in California's housing meltdown. In two suits filed Tuesday in San Francisco County Superior Court, Harris seeks to compel the companies to respond to subpoenas from her office that have been ignored so far. Harris is seeking information about the practices by Fannie and Freddie in California as part of her ongoing investigation into the mortgage industry. The suits ask a judge to order the two companies to answer a set of 51 questions served in...

"Barney Frank: I've destroyed the economy, my work here is done." — Washington Times headline, Nov. 29 It was quite a confluence of news last week when in the span of hours came Rep. Frank's retirement announcement, a report on declining housing prices and home-ownership rates, and a poll belaboring the obvious about Americans' fears about the housing and stock markets. With his fellow Democrat, former Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Rep. Frank, D-Mass., shoulders much of the blame for today's economic catastrophe and the fiscal crises plaguing governments at all levels. They spent years pushing policies that ultimately required...

We Americans think of ourselves as problem-solvers, but the housing collapse has so far eluded all solutions. Perhaps 10 million homes have gone into foreclosure since 2006; millions more will follow. From their peaks during the real-estate bubble, home prices are down 30 percent, new housing construction has dropped 75 percent and existing home sales are off almost 30 percent. Housing's collapse is one reason the economic recovery is so weak. Construction remains depressed, as are the appliance and furniture sales spurred by home buying. It may be that patience is the only cure. Home prices have to find bottom;...

Concerns are rising that the Federal Housing Administration could run out money if the economy doesn't recover soon, raising the risk the agency would seek a taxpayer bailout for the first time in its 77-year history. Since the mortgage crisis erupted five years ago, the FHA has played a critical role in housing finance as private lenders retreated. It backs about a third of all new mortgages originated for home purchases, up from around 5% in 2006. But, as the FHA prepares to release its annual financial report next week, a forthcoming study by Joseph Gyourko, a real estate and...

When you're in trouble, nothing beats a helping hand — provided you can reach it. Certain homeowners with "underwater" mortgages are about to find that out. Say you're a homeowner with such a mortgage. The value of your home has dropped over the last few years until it is much less than you owe. It looks like you'll never get any relief. Then the government announces another plan to help people like you — the ones who have struggled to pay their mortgages on time. So you apply. Surprise: there are technical terms (which nobody mentioned ahead of time) that...

Cody Preston, 25, keeps looking for work that will pay what he made installing granite counters. PORTLAND, Ore.—Few groups were hit harder by the recession than young men, like Cody Preston and Justin Randol, 25-year-old high-school buddies who didn't go to college. The unemployment rate for males between 25 and 34 years old with high-school diplomas is 14.4%—up from 6.1% before the downturn four years ago and far above today's 9% national rate. The picture is even more bleak for slightly younger men: 22.4% for high-school graduates 20 to 24 years old. That's up from 10.4% four years ago. In...

Charles E. "Ed" Haldeman, Jr., has announced his plans to step down as chief executive officer of mortgage giant Freddie Mac sometime in the next year. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which regulates Freddie and its counterpart Fannie Mae, announced Wednesday that Haldeman is looking to leave the government-sponsored enterprise some time next year.

Here's The Fed Speech That Has Everyone Buzzing About 'QE3' Tonight Joe Weisenthal Oct. 20, 2011, 6:53 PM The big econ news of the night is this report from WSJ that the Fed is considering large-scale mortgage purchases to drive down rates even further. This talk appears to have been set off by a speech given by Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo given this evening at Columbia where he talks up precisely this: Mortgage purchases. Here's the relevant bit: Within the FOMC and in the broader policy community, there has been considerable discussion of possible additional accommodative measures, from communication strategies...

It is ironic that, as the President predictably endorses the violent, odiferous Occupy Astroturf movement, the demand was emitted for a trillion dollars to be spent repairing the environment. I knew they were disgusting, but in such few numbers their impact can’t be that bad.Some commentators have noted the irony of these dedicated and sincere foot soldiers of the Left decrying Wall Street while lauding Wall Street’s most notorious hired gun (which they, again ironically, share with Big Labor), Barack Hussein Obama.The real irony, of course, is in the pundits’ own failure to recognize the classic third year of a...

The sight of excavators tearing down vacant buildings has become common in this foreclosure-ravaged city, where the housing crisis hit early and hard. But the story behind the recent wave of demolitions is novel — and cities around the country are taking notice. A handful of the nation’s largest banks have begun giving away scores of properties that are abandoned or otherwise at risk of languishing indefinitely and further dragging down already depressed neighborhoods. The banks have even been footing the bill for the demolitions — as much as $7,500 a pop. Four years into the housing crisis, the ongoing...

The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage this week fell below 4 percent for the first time ever, to 3.94 percent. For those who can qualify, it's an extraordinary opportunity to buy or refinance. And mortgage rates could fall even further now that the Federal Reserve plans to reshuffle its portfolio of securities to try and lower long-term rates. On Thursday, Freddie Mac said the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage dropped from 4.01 percent last week, the previous low. The average rate on a 15-year fixed loan, a popular refinancing option, dipped to 3.26 percent, also a...

From Fox News Channel Wednesday, September 24, 2008 Special Report With Brit Hume

Over the past three years the Obama administration has been secretly planning the largest redistribution of wealth in history. When President Obama took office, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac held a staggering $6.1 trillion in subprime mortgages. If you’ll remember just prior to the 2008 election, President Bush signed the $300 billion Toxic Asset Relief Program better known as TARP. Two of the largest beneficiaries of this were the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two companies received a combined $169 billion in taxpayer funds. Upon taking office, the Obama administration gave instructions to the two...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- An index of pending home sales fell 1.3% in July, the National Association of Realtors reported Monday.

Pending sales of existing U.S. homes fell in July from June in the latest sign of weakness in the housing industry, data from a real estate trade group showed on Monday. The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in July, was down 1.3 percent to 89.7 from 90.9 in June. Economists polled by Reuters ahead of the report were expecting pending home sales to fall 1.3 percent. In a sign of how much the sector has recovered from a year ago, the index was up 14.4 percent from July of 2010.

The critical issue the candidates avoid: the voters are deep in debt. Going into next year’s election, President Obama is in a heap of trouble over the economy. Some evidence: in June, only 29 percent of the people who participated in a Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll thought the country was “headed in the right direction.” A full 62 percent, by contrast, thought America was “on the wrong track.” A clear majority, too — 41 to 54 percent — disapproved of the president’s economic performance. The numbers aren’t moving in Obama’s favor, either. Another problem for the White...

If “public-private partnerships” sound wonderful to you, please consider that the housing meltdown and the Great Recession we’re still struggling to escape were largely produced by a public-private partnership. ...the story’s essentials: oceans of tax dollars flowing to private groups – for-profit and nonprofit – that are praised by politicians who want credit for the subsidized housing boom, with the whole party lubricated by the dissolving of traditional lending practices, which in turn is justified by claims that unfettered lending will remedy racial disparities in housing. Those disparities, of course, are Exhibit A for advocates of “structural racism” theory, who...

Well, what about housing? It’s been dead for so many years that its blood long ago stopped flowing. Surely this famous piece of advice from Nathan Rothschild doesn’t apply to that sector? Don’t be too quick to dismiss the possibility. Consider the iShares Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Index fund, an ETF that is designed to represent the real-estate sector. Just one week ago, it traded at a 52-week high. The same goes for the iShares Cohen & Steers Realty Majors. What does the market know that the rest of us don’t? For answers, I turned to an investment service...

PANAMA CITY BEACH — Lindsay Hall took out a $200,000 loan in 2005 on her paid-off beach house with the understanding that her $600 monthly Social Security check would cover the mortgage payments. When her interest rate jumped more than a year ago, it raised her mortgage payments to $1,500. At that point, Hall started the fight to save her home. “I want to say I did my best to fight for the American dream,” said Hall, 70. Hall has negotiated with her loan servicer, IndyMac Mortgage Services, to modify her loan payments multiple times. Each time she negotiates payments...

Yesterday we reported that Sarah Palin has just purchased a new property in North Scottsdale, AZ for $1.75 million. We further speculated that there may have been some fishyness with regard to the terms of the purchase of the JPM short sale which was an over 100% flip in about a year. So far so good. Where this story takes yet another detour into the macabre, is a cursory analysis of the release deed of the prior mortgage holder of the property, one Steven Soraya, who had a loan amounting to $980,500.00 with Wells Fargo, which was released on July...

I believe that the sine qua non of the financial crisis was U.S. government housing policy, which led to the creation of 27 million subprime and other risky loans -- half of all mortgages in the United States -- which were ready to default as soon as the massive 1997-2007 housing bubble began to deflate. If the U.S. government had not chosen this policy path -- fostering the growth of a bubble of unprecedented size and an equally unprecedented number of weak and high-risk residential mortgages -- the great financial crisis of 2008 would never have occurred...

In my analyses of the homebuyer tax credits issued, renewed, and expanded by Democrats in response to the housing market collapse, I called it a waste of taxpayer money that only incentivized those already inclined and qualified to buy, skewed demand, and put off a much-needed correction in pricing. I left out something that the Wall Street Journal’s Smart Money noticed in Monday’s Zillow report, which is that it turned out to be a pretty bad deal for those who used the credit as well as taxpayers. Thanks to the artificially higher home prices that the tax credits provided, buyers...

Short-term terrible housing news is no surprise right now, but the long-term thesis that residential real estate is a good investment is starting to crumble too. Recent research from Wenli Li and Fang Yang (via Harvard Business Review) shows that the real rate of return on housing from 1975-2009 was actually negative.From Li and Yang:Assuming an annual depreciation rate of 2.5 percent, a property tax rate of 1.5 percent, a mortgage interest rate of 7 percent, and a marginal income tax rate of 25 percent for a typical taxpayer, the adjusted real rate of return on housing actually falls below...

If you thought the housing crisis was bad, think again. It’s worse. New data just out from Zillow, the real-estate information company, show house prices are falling at their fastest rate since the Lehman collapse. Average home prices are down 8% from a year ago, 3% over the quarter, and are falling at about 1% every month, according to Zillow. And the percentage of homeowners in negative-equity positions — with a home worth less than its mortgage — has rocketed to 28%, a new crisis high.

Groves requested relief under the Declaratory Judgment Act, as well as “other and further relief to which [she] may be justly entitled.” The trial court’s judgment does not indicate that it granted her request to “quiet title” exclusively under the Declaratory Judgment Act. Accordingly, no error appears on the face of this record. See Tex. R. App. P. 26.1(c), 30; Alexander, 134 S.W.3d at 848. We overrule MERS’s first issue. ..... Groves alleged in her petition that MERS’s deed of trust “purported to create a lien for security purposes on Plaintiff’s property as described.” This alleged lien constitutes an adverse...

Cover-Up: Acorn clones using the Community Reinvestment Act to shake down banks aren't happy with our campaign to expose the truth about the CRA's central role in the financial crisis. The Greenlining Institute is typical. The Berkeley, Calif.-based community organizer fired off a letter to us complaining about our March 21 editorial "WaMu: Guilty Only Of CRA Compliance." In it, we argued that Washington Mutual, a CRA poster boy in the run-up to the crisis, is now a convenient whipping boy for the same regulators who pressured the bank into making the "reckless" multicultural loans they're suing it over today....

How might home buying change if the federal government shuts down the housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage loan, the steady favorite of American borrowers since the 1950s, could become a luxury product, housing experts on both sides of the political aisle say. Interest rates would rise for most borrowers, but urban and rural residents could see sharper increases than the coveted customers in the suburbs. Lenders could charge fees for popular features now taken for granted, like the ability to "lock in" an interest rate weeks or months before taking out a loan....

TRULY startling revelations were few in the voluminous report, published last Thursday by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on the origins of the financial panic. This is hardly a shock, given the flood-the-zone coverage and analysis of the crisis since it erupted four years ago. Yet the report still makes... --snip-- For those of you who’ve wondered why there have been so few prosecutions of mortgage fraud during this epidemic, your answer is on Page 164. “The terrible thing that happened,” said William K. Black, a former fraud investigator in the savings-and-loan crisis who is a professor at the University...

The housing crisis wasn't caused by much-maligned exotic loans so much as lending huge sums of money to unworthy borrowers, a report released Monday suggested. The misdiagnosis of the housing bubble, whose implosion in 2007 knocked out the broader economy, drove Congress to overreact and ban useful tools, according to a report from the Corky McMillin Center for Real Estate at San Diego State University. The study examined lending practices in 12 countries and found that many make extensive use of loans in which the borrower avoids paying down principal for a fixed period. With the exception of the United...

New RealtyTrac numbers show that in April there were well over 300,000 foreclosures and the figure in on track to be higher in 2010 than in 2009. Several research firms say that underwater mortgages have moved above 11 million. The National Association of Realtors found that “in the first quarter, 91 out of 152 metropolitan statistical areas showed higher median existing single-family home prices in comparison with the first quarter of 2009.” But some cities posted double-digit drops for the period. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the NAR data for the first quarter along with Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment levels...

MOKENA -- The foreclosure crisis has hit home for the Triezenbergs of Manhattan Township. Mark and Tia Triezenberg and their five young children, including one with severe disabilities due to autism, must leave their home by Aug. 29. The foreclosure, one of many nationwide and locally (see sidebar), caps a troubled couple of years for a family that saw its income soar with the home-building boom and plummet with the recession. "This is like Pearl Harbor," Mark said during an interview at a Mokena restaurant. "Only a few people saw this coming." The Triezenbergs still don't know where they will...

A survey of seven major housing markets found that less than half of all attempts to sell a home in 2009 had, as of last Wednesday, resulted in a sale. The analysis, conducted by Redfin Corp., a Seattle-based brokerage that operates in nine states, shows just how tough the housing market has become–and just how many sellers are unwilling to lower their prices. The survey looked at how the 500,000 homes that were listed for sale last year in seven of the nation’s biggest counties had fared. Around 47% of those listings had sold by last week, while just 4%...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sales of previously owned U.S. homes took a record drop in July to their lowest pace in 15 years, suggesting further loss of momentum in the economic recovery. As the National Association of Realtors issued the report, Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans warned that the risk of a double-dip recession was higher than six months ago although he did not think output would contract, describing the recovery as ongoing but modest. Existing home sales dropped a record 27.2 percent from June to an annual rate of 3.83 million units, the lowest since May 1995. June's sales...

WASHINGTON | Thought the housing crisis was over? Not quite. Despite four years of falling prices and recent signs that they were finally bottoming out, homes are expected to lose still more value in many metro areas during the next year. Parts of the country already pummeled by the housing crisis, like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Miami, will be hit hardest. But even some places that have rebounded or held up relatively well - including New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. - will suffer, too. That's the conclusion of economists who have been reducing their estimates for home prices...

Big changes are in store for the banking system should Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac be revamped or eliminated—both of which are being discussed by housing experts and government officials to deal with the distressed real estate market. As the system works now with the two entities, Fannie and Freddie , banks write the mortgages, but they rarely hold them. The mortgages are sold off into pools, known as mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Fannie and Freddie guarantee the mortgage payments, so that the MBS buyer, be it the Chinese government or an American pension plan, has the security of the US...

The Federal Housing Administration, which insures home mortgages, not only failed to learn the lessons of the subprime meltdown, it's been doubling down on failure. As a result, this taxpayer-backed agency is headed for disaster. In 2006, the FHA insured just 3 percent of home mortgages; today, it insures one of every three. Together with Fannie and Freddie, the FHA is putting the risk for the entire, $11 trillion US home-mortgage market on the back of the American taxpayer. How did that happen? Simple. Private lenders responded to the bursting of the housing bubble and the subprime (and now prime)...

(CBS) Despite some indications that the economy is recovering, the housing market remains a disaster area. Currently, about seven million homeowners are behind on their mortgages and that number is only getting worse. Banks, with the help of the government, are offering some relief to homeowners who've lost jobs and just can't meet their payments. But there's a growing number who can pay but are simply walking away from houses that are now worth as little as half of what they paid for them. It's called "strategic default." People have done the math and decided making those monthly payments is...

Senators accused Goldman Sachs of reaping huge profits from betting against the housing market in an "unethical," if not illegal, investment scheme, as a high-profile hearing on the Wall Street meltdown got under way Tuesday.

Instead of attending the funeral of the Polish leaders killed in last week’s plane crash, President Golden Calf has been instead busy with other things, including playing golf—he’s now played more rounds of golf in his year-and-a-half in office than that evil uncaring W did in all his eight years—and stumping for his Dem cronies like Barbara “Call me Senator” Boxer. He’s also taken the time to remind the American people of one of the leftocracy’s biggest lies of the 21st century: That our current economic crisis in general, and the housing crash in particular, was the fault of unfettered,...

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan should have foreseen the collapse of the U.S. housing market and warned the public, one of the most prominent bettors against the subprime market wrote in a New York Times commentary today. “He should have seen what was coming and offered a sober, apolitical warning,” Michael Burry, who was head of Scion Capital LLC, wrote in the Times. “Everyone would have listened; when he talked about the economy, the world hung on every single word.” “Unfortunately, he did not give good advice,” Burry said. In 2005, “Mr. Greenspan trumpeted the expansion of the subprime...

With everybody focused on Obamacare, and its new entitlement spending and taxing, the administration has tried to sneak in yet another bailout for housing. Yet again, Team Obama is rewarding reckless behavior, punishing the 90 percent of responsible homeowners who are making good on their mortgages, and setting up a greater moral hazard that will surely lead to an expansion of bailout nation. I'm talking about an add-on to HAMP, the $75 billion Home Affordable Modification Program, which has been a dismal failure. In fact, the entire foreclosure-prevention effort -- including forgiveness of mortgage-loan principal -- has been a failure....

The Obama administration has announced a new plan to help homeowners facing foreclosure due to under-employment and unemployment. Instead of having the government create an economic climate which would actually create private-sector permanent jobs and thus lower unemployment, the government wants to require lenders to cut or eliminate monthly mortgage payments for these homeowners. The U.S. government's housing crisis remedy has been to 1) pour taxpayer money into the financial system, evidently with minimal conditions, hoping that banks will lend this money to homeowners and businesses; 2) give taxpayer money to homeowners who are "upside-down" on their mortgages; and 3)...

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is the "father of the subprime crisis" and his aggressive attacks on Wall Street could make him dangerous to the banking sector if he becomes the next governor of New York, well-known banking analyst Dick Bove told CNBC. "One of the key reasons why (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are] bankrupt today, and why the government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in supporting them, is because of the edicts pushed through by Mr. Cuomo," said Bove, of Rochdale Securities, in a live interview. "It's also thought by many that the hundreds of...

Rosenberg: Even With The Government Throwing Money At The Problem, Home Sales Collapse Vince Veneziani Jan. 28, 2010, 1:15 PM Analyst David Rosenberg notes that despite all the economic stimulus in the United States, people still aren't buying homes. So you can imagine what will happen when that stimulus is removed. Breakfast With Dave: We could really care less if it was a frostier than normal December; it’s not as if it snowed in July (especially in the south where sales dropped more than 7%). We have the most stimulative fiscal and monetary polices ever concocted to support a recovery...

Economists aren’t buying Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s argument that the Fed’s low interest rates early last decade didn’t contribute to the financial crisis. In a recent Wall Street Journal survey of top economists, 42 said low rates contributed to the housing bubble, while 12 said low rates didn't contribute. In recent congressional testimony, Bernanke said, "Regulatory and supervisory policies, rather than monetary policies, would have been more effective means of addressing the run-up in house prices.” But economists weren’t swayed. The basic problem was the mistake of raising short-term interest rates too slowly from 2004 through 2006, Miles Kimball...

Over the past week, President Barack Obama has spoken up about the money spent on large financial institutions during the $700 billion "bailout" which attracted such attention during the financial crisis. "We want our money back," he said. This has got to be a first -- President Obama has said something we can actually agree with! Except for one little thing. No, make that two. Or even three. The hell with it. When you look at what he meant, we can't agree with any of it. Let's dissect the situation and see what we can come up with. First, who...

The economy and the stock market may be recovering from their swoon, but more homeowners than ever are having trouble making their monthly mortgage payments, according to figures released Thursday. Nearly one in 10 homeowners with mortgages was at least one payment behind in the third quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in its survey. That translates into about five million households. The delinquency figure, and a corresponding rise in the number of those losing their homes to foreclosure, was expected to be bad. Nevertheless, the figures underlined the level of stress on a large segment of the country, a...

WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting. Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies. Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had...

Here are the news stories, editorials, and videos that conservatives dugg yesterday, Thursday, August 20, 2009. Please take a moment to digg these articles at Digg.com, then get back over here! What is Digg? And why should I care?