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The streets are empty. Trash rustles down the road past rusted barbecues, abandoned furniture, sagging homes and gardens turned to weed. This is Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland and a town ravaged by the subprime mortgage crisis roiling the United States. Faded "for sale" signs sit in front of deserted houses. The residents are gone, either in search of new jobs after the factories shut down, or in shame after being evicted for missing their mortgage payments. A red, white and blue American flag flies over windows and doors which have been boarded up to keep the drug dealers...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Sales of existing homes fell to a record low in October, according to the latest reading on the battered housing market by an industry trade group released Wednesday, as even the largest drop in home prices ever wasn't enough to revive moribund sales. The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of homes by homeowners fell to an annual pace of 4.97 million in October, down from the revised 5.03 reading in September, which was the previous record low since the trade group started tracking sales on that basis in 1999. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had...

Applications for U.S. home mortgages fell last week as rates on some adjustable loans soared to their highest levels in more than two months, according to data from an industry group Wednesday. RELATED LINKS Comments Lift Sentiment Stocks Open Higher Durable Goods Orders Fall for Third Straight Month Mortgage Applications Fall as Rates Soar The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity declined 4.3 percent to 652.5 in the week ended Nov. 23. Rates on one-year adjustable-rate mortgages that include many jumbo loans climbed 26 basis points to 6.24 percent, the highest since the height...

NEW YORK - U.S. home prices fell 4.5 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the sharpest drop since Standard & Poor began its nationwide housing index in 1987, the research group said Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT S&P also reported that prices fell 1.7 percent from the previous quarter, the largest consecutive quarterly decline in the index's history. The S&P/Case-Schiller quarterly index tracks prices of existing single-family homes across the nation compared with a year earlier. A separate index that covers 20 U.S. metropolitan areas dropped 4.9 percent in September from a year earlier. A 10-area index decreased 5.5 percent...

<p>NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The mortgage meltdown will take a heavy toll on home prices in 2008 with declines expected to average 7 percent across the nation and lost property value of $1.2 trillion, according to the United States Conference of Mayors.</p>

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Goldman Sachs economists on Tuesday said they now expect the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee to cut interest rates to 3% by mid-2008, down from its earlier forecast of 4%. "The main reason is that the worsening housing downturn has pushed the risk of a U.S. recession in 2008 to 40%-45%, from around 30% previously," Goldman said.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Housing price drops, driven by soaring foreclosure rates, accelerated during the three months ended September 30, according to the latest data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The median single-family house price in the United States fell to $220,800, which was down 2 percent from a year ago. Condo prices showed some resiliency: At $226,900, they rose 2 percent compared with 12 months ago. "The biggest decline in sales appears to be concentrated in areas that had significant levels of speculative investment, including Nevada, Florida and Arizona," Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist, said in a...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the number of potential U.S. home-loan defaults "will be significantly bigger" in 2008 than in 2007, the Wall Street Journal's online edition reported. AP Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The nature of the problem will be significantly bigger next year because 2006 (mortgages) had lower underwriting standards, no amortization, and no down payments," Paulson said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, according to an excerpt on the newspaper's Web site. "We'll watch carefully mortgages that will be reset," Paulson was quoted as saying. The newspaper said Paulson was pressing the...

Fortune) -- Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae can only make it through a prolonged credit crisis if they raise billions of dollars of new capital. That, in a nutshell, is what the plunging stock prices of both mortgage buyers are saying Tuesday. Freddie accounted for a sharply higher batch of bad loans in its third quarter earnings, a little more than a week after Fannie did the same thing. But Freddie said that it would move quickly to raise more capital through a large issue of preferred shares. It added that it was seriously considering cutting its dividend - another...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Home builders' confidence stayed at record low levels in a November reading released Monday, as a slight uptick in buyer traffic was balanced out by a slightly more pessimistic view six months down the road. The overall National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo index was 19, which was the same as the upwardly revised October reading. The index measuring how builders view buyer traffic edged up to a reading of 17 from 15 in October. But the subindex measuring builders' view of the market six months from now slipped to a record low 25 from 26...

In March 1929, the Harding-Coolidge era came to an end. The eight years had witnessed the greatest peacetime prosperity of any nation in history: America in the Roaring Twenties. Early that March, Calvin Coolidge handed the presidency over to Herbert Hoover, who had just pulled off a third straight Republican landslide. "I do not choose to run," said Coolidge, who could easily have won a second full term. Silent Cal went home. Hoover, whom he privately derided as "Wonder Boy," presided over the Crash of '29 and the first three years of the Great Depression. History holds Harding, Coolidge and...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Federal Reserve said that the decision to cut a key interest rate last month was a "close call," according to minutes from that meeting released Tuesday. But in a new economic outlook, the central bank also lowered its growth target for the economy in 2008, raising hopes that the Fed will cut rates again when it meets in December. The Fed indicated in an addendum to its minutes that it now expects the economy to grow at about a 1.8 percent to 2.5 percent rate next year, down from a forecast in June of 2.5...

Home prices fell last month in all six major Southern California counties for the first time in 12 years, prompting some economists to wonder whether the housing decline will push areas of the state into a recession. But San Diego County, one of the first markets to see a housing downturn, [might] be among the first to recover, one prominent economist said. DataQuick Information Systems reported yesterday that sales from Ventura to San Diego were at their lowest for any October since the La Jolla-based firm began keeping records in 1988. In the greatest drop-off, year-to-year sales were down 54.8...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The guessing game ended this week - consumer spending is slowing down as J.C. Penney became the latest retailer to confirm the trend. "We're in a very difficult selling environment," J.C. Penney CEO Myron Ullman told analysts Thursday in a conference call to discuss the company's third-quarter results. The call was monitored via Webcast in New York. "We came out of September expecting a strong start for early fall. That didn't happen. This is the first time that we're seeing a real change in consumer sentiment," Ullman said. Penney isn't the only one to be disappointed....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sales of existing homes in the U.S. are forecast to decline to a five-year low in 2007, a trade group for real estate agents said Tuesday - and the outlook for 2008 is worsening. The ninth-straight downwardly revised monthly forecast from the National Association of Realtors calls for U.S. existing home sales to fall 12.7 percent this year to 5.66 million, down from 6.48 million last year. Last month, the association predicted a 10.8 percent drop from a year ago. This year's sales would be the lowest since 2002, when sales hit 5.63 million. The realtors group...

Bank of America said on Friday that market dislocations, including those related to collateralized debt obligations, will adversly impact results duing the fourth quarter, according to a filing. The bank expects it to take more time for markets to return to a more normal environment with tighter credit spreads and greater liquidity, according to the filing. Also Friday, JPMorgan Chase said shaky credit markets could trigger more write-downs in the fourth quarter as the bank is exposed to about $50 billion worth of leveraged loans, risky subprime mortgages and collateralized debt obligations. JPMorgan did not give any specific potential write-down...

WASHINGTON - Fannie Mae's third-quarter loss more than doubled to $1.4 billion, reducing year-to-date profits by more than half, as credit losses and mounting mortgage delinquencies sour its outlook into 2008, the company said Friday. ADVERTISEMENT Shares of Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. buyer and backer of home loans, sank more than 9 percent in morning trading. Fannie Mae posted a loss equivalent to $1.56 a share, in the tumultuous July-September quarter, compared with a loss of $629 million, or 79 cents per share, a year earlier. Fannie Mae said it expects the housing downturn to continue into 2008, shrinking...

Wachovia said Friday it suffered a $1.1 billion loss on subprime mortgage-related debt in October, while Capital One Financial said more customers are having trouble paying their bills as the U.S. credit crisis deepened. Wachovia, the fourth-largest U.S. bank said the value of so-called asset-backed collateralized debt obligations it holds fell to $676 million as of Oct. 31 from $1.8 billion on Sept. 30. The $1.1 billion pretax loss is in addition to $347 million in the third quarter, Wachovia said. Wachovia also said it expects to boost loan losses by $500 million to $600 million this quarter, largely in...

Falling real estate prices, massive bank write-downs and a quickening drumbeat of slashed credit ratings adds up to one thing: The credit crunch has only just begun. While no surprise, given that economies are coming out of a worldwide debt binge, the fact that loans are harder to get for even the best borrowers raises the risks of a recession. It also puts the U.S. Federal Reserve in a tough spot, caught between the imperative of keeping the blood flowing in credit markets, and genuine concerns about inflation from more expensive food and energy.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumers, battered by a steep downturn in housing and a severe credit crunch, slowed spending growth in September to the weakest performance in three months. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that consumer spending rose by 0.3 percent in September, slightly lower than the 0.4 percent increase that analysts had been expecting. Incomes grew by 0.4 percent, matching the August gain, and in line with analysts' forecasts. Video More video The latest in business news with the CNN.com business bulletin. Play video Economists are worried that consumers, the main support for the economy, may cut back on their...

General Electric's (GE - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) crippled subprime mortgage business, WMC Mortgage, laid off most of its workers on Monday afternoon, TheStreet.com has learned. All loan processors, underwriters and loan officers have left the business. A customer service operator at the lender said it's still operating with a "skeleton crew." "They're working the pipeline that is here," said the operator. "They are taking originations, but we're down to minimal staff levels as of yesterday afternoon." GE announced that it was exiting the business over the summer, when the U.S. subprime mortgage fiasco caused a meltdown in...

<p>NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The battered markets for real estate and home building still have farther to fall, according to a range of economists who spoke Wednesday at a forecast conference sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders.</p> <p>The economists agreed that the problems with home finance markets will continue to hit housing into next year, and that even when there is a recovery, it will be a slow process that will see weakness continue into 2009.</p>

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Existing home sales sank 8 percent last month, to the lowest pace on record, according to the latest reading on the state of the battered real estate market released Wednesday. Sales of existing homes slowed to an annual pace of 5.04 million in September, compared with a revised 5.48 million sales pace in August, according to the National Association of Realtors. Last month's decline marks the largest since the current measure of existing home sales - which includes multiple-family dwellings - began in 1999. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast that sales would slow to a...

By Reuters | 21 Oct 2007 | 05:23 PM ET Font size: An unusually high degree of risk taking across asset classes made recent financial market turmoil all but inevitable, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Sunday. "The financial crisis that erupted on August 9 was an accident waiting to happen," Greenspan said in a speech on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings. "Credit spreads across all global asset classes had become suppressed to clearly unsustainable levels." "Something had to give," he said. "If the crisis had not been triggered by a mispricing of...

<p>BOSTON (CNNMoney.com) -- For those in the real estate industry and for those looking to buy or sell a home, it could take until 2009 to catch a break.</p> <p>That's the forecast from Doug Duncan, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), who will present his outlook to an auditorium full of real estate professionals on Wednesday morning.</p>

<p>NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Builders continued to slam the brakes on new homes in September, as the government's latest reading on the battered market out Wednesday showed housing starts and permits were weaker than expected at levels not seen for more than a decade.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The decline in 2007 sales of existing homes will be steeper than previously anticipated, a trade group for real estate agents said Tuesday. The eighth straight downwardly revised forecast from the National Association of Realtors calls for U.S. existing home sales to be 10.8 percent lower than last year as housing market struggles persist. In its October report, the association predicts 5.78 million existing homes to be sold in 2007, down from 6.48 million last year. Last month, the association predicted an 8.6 percent drop from a year ago. This year's sales would be the lowest since...

The U.S. subprime housing crisis will not peak until 2009 and total defaults could reach $150 billion, rating agency Standard and Poor's said on Tuesday, but robust emerging markets would help keep global growth strong. AP -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- S&P expected the world economy to grow 3.6% in 2007 and 3.5% in 2008. The U.S. economy would lag at 2% in both years, down from 2.9% in 2006. "World growth remains strong despite the weaknesses seen in the U.S. economy -- especially in emerging markets because of healthy domestic demand conditions and export strength to non-U.S. market," S&P said in a report...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The heat on U.S. mortgage lenders and servicers was turned up a few degrees this week when the country's chief bank regulator publicly proposed that they permanently freeze interest rates on subprime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) for many homeowners. "Keep it at the starter rate. Convert it into a fixed rate. Make it permanent. And get on with it," Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said in prepared remarks at an investor's conference. Mortgage Meltdown 2007 Subprime: Big talk, little help Mortgage lenders are having a hard time helping at-risk borrowers. (more) Double-digit home price drops...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As the list of proposed remedies to the subprime crisis has grown longer, the chorus against helping troubled borrowers has gotten louder. On Wednesday the Democrats called on the White House to increase funding and implement proposals for foreclosure prevention. Mortgage Meltdown 2007 Subprime: Big talk, little help Mortgage lenders are having a hard time helping at-risk borrowers. (more) Activists not happy with loan-fix plan Community groups say Bush administration and Congress are giving too little help to troubled borrowers. (more) Double-digit home price drops coming The latest forecasts for top markets. (more) But judging from...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Bear Stearns said Wednesday it is laying off 310 workers and fusing its two mortgage businesses, after turmoil in the home loan industry contributed to a dramatic slide in the investment bank's profit. The Wall Street brokerage said it is integrating its Bear Stearns (Charts, Fortune 500) Residential Mortgage and Encore Credit divisions into a single subsidiary. It follows similar downsizing moves by Lehman Brothers (Charts, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (Charts, Fortune 500). Video More video Equity Strategist Justin Fuller on investor fears over volatile economy. Play video Stung by decaying credit quality, investors soured...

<p>NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The meltdown in the mortgage market in August dried up the supply of buyers for homeowners looking to sell their homes, as an industry group report showed the lowest level of homes under contract on record.</p>

Fifty-three condominiums -- most of them in the 3900 block of Ohio Street in North Park-- will be on the block. The units are not foreclosures; they are brand-new units. They are being offered by REDC. The units were built by developer D.R. Horton. According to the company's Web site, the condos are anywhere from one-bedroom, one-bath, 694-square-foot units to two-bedroom, two-bath, 1,148-square-foot units. The homes have previously been valued at $309,990 will have starting bids of $149,000. Bidding for units previously valued at $546,900 will start at $249,000.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- U.S. stock futures fell Tuesday as signs that consumers may be cutting back fanned recession worries. Two major retailers warned late Monday about a slowdown in sales. Target cut its forecast for September same-store sales growth, saying that weak traffic will hurt sales, particularly in Florida and the Northeast, two areas that have been hit by the slowdown in housing. Video More video Money Magazine's Walter Updegrave gives advice on the steps you should take right now, to ensure a secure retirement down the road. Play video -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeremy Batstone of Charles Stanley on why the...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The bullhorn message from the government to mortgage lenders has been: Bend. Do what you can to help struggling homeowners. The message to troubled homeowners has been: Call your lender. You may be able to work something out. Despite the persistent blare, there is not a whole lotta "loan modifying" going on yet. A survey by Moody's found that most loan servicers this year had modified only about 1 percent of their adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) that had reset to higher rates by the end of July. At the Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) of San Francisco,...

Late payments on U.S. home equity lines of credit rose to a 5-1/2 year high in the second quarter of 2007 but delinquencies on many other types of consumer loans fell, the American Bankers Association said Wednesday. In its quarterly report on consumer borrowing, the bankers group said delinquencies in repaying home equity lines of credit rose to 0.77 percent in the April-June period. That compared to a rate of 0.60 percent in the first quarter and represented the highest rate since the fourth quarter of 2001 when the rate was 0.81 percent. However, the rate of closed-end home equity...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Demand for big-ticket manufactured goods plunged in August by the largest amount in seven months, with widespread weakness signaling a slowdown in the nation's industrial sector. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that orders for durable goods, everything from commercial jetliners to home appliances, fell by 4.9 percent in August, the biggest decline since a 6.1 percent fall in January. It was far larger than the 3.5 percent drop that economists had been expecting and resulted from across-the-board decreases in a number of categories. The concern is that the steep downturn in housing and turbulence in financial markets...

<p>SAN JOSE, California: The Torralba family's taste of the American dream began to sour in May 2006, two months after the Torralbas had bought a modest home at the southern end of Silicon Valley, when they received notice from a man who claimed that they owed him money.</p>

NEW YORK (AP) -- Worries about jobs and the economy flared in September, driving a key barometer of consumer sentiment to its lowest level in nearly two years, a private research group said Tuesday. The New York-based Conference Board said its Consumer Confidence Index fell to 99.8, an almost 6-point drop from the revised 105.6 in August. The reading was below the 104.5 that analysts had expected and marked its lowest level since November 2005 when the index was 98.3.

<p>The housing downturn, credit crunch, gloomy employment data and a parade of maudlin financial forecasts have been enough to send some investors scrambling for bubble gum and beer.</p> <p>While economists jawbone about whether the U.S. will sink into recession, investors already are thinking of ways to prepare their stock portfolios for a downturn.</p>

I knew it. This headline draws attention these days. As the world wakes up to the fact that all currencies are created out of thin air by a simple entry into the electronic ledgers of the world's central banks investors begin to look for investments whose safety does not depend on an agency rating. This chart from the World Gold Council may help your investment decisions. GRAPH: This chart is a very graphic description what happens once nations abolish the gold standard in favor of unbacked fiat currencies. Remember: No fiat currency has existed longer than a human's lifespan and...

One of the world's leading experts on credit derivatives (financial instruments that transfer credit risk from one party to another), Das is the author of a 4,200-page reference work on the subject, among a half-dozen tomes... Das is pretty droll for a math whiz, but his message is dead serious. He thinks we're on the verge of a bear market of epic proportions... The cause: Massive levels of debt underlying the world economic system are about to unwind in a profound and persistent way. He's not sure if it will play out like the 13-year decline of 90% in Japan...

House prices to drop much lower: Greenspan Fri Sep 21, 2007 VIENNA (Reuters) - A big overhang of property will bring U.S. house prices down further, but it is too early to say if the economy will plunge into recession, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan was quoted as saying on Friday. Greenspan said in an interview with Austrian magazine Format that low interest rates in the past 15 years were to blame for the house price bubble, but that central banks were powerless when they tried to bring it under control. "It's a difficult situation, there is an enormous...

Unlike all the Wall Street strategists who compare the current credit crisis to the credit crisis of 1998 (Long Term Capital Management), I believe that the ongoing credit problems will be far worse and of a longer-term nature. This will make it difficult for the market to reach new highs in the near future. Moreover, even if the 1998 comparison were to hold, we would still be looking at a much deeper stock market correction than the 22% sell-off we saw in 1998. The stock market peaked out in July 1998, after having been in an uptrend since the 1991...

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- HSBC Holdings (HBC:HSBC Hldgs Plc News, chart, profile, more Last: 92.55+0.90+0.98% 11:08am 09/21/2007 Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolio Analyst Create alertInsider Discuss Financials Sponsored by: HBC92.55, +0.90, +1.0%) (UK:HSBA:hsbc hldgs ord usd0.50(uk reg) News, chart, profile, more Last: 911.50+2.50+0.28% 4:13pm 09/21/2007 Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolio Analyst Create alertInsider Discuss Financials Sponsored by: UK:HSBA911.50, +2.50, +0.3%) said Friday it plans to close its non-prime wholesale mortgage lending arm, Decision One Mortgage, which will result in 750 job losses. HSBC said it will focus on originating and servicing loans through its consumer lending branch network under the HFC...

More Americans Say Value Of Their Home Has Fallen Topics:Housing | Real Estate | Consumers | Economy (U.S.)By Reuters | 21 Sep 2007 | 10:48 AM ET Font size: A record 26% of U.S. homeowners say the value of their homes has fallen during the past year, above the previous peak of 24% seen in 1992, a survey released Friday showed. Reflecting the extent of the prolonged housing slump, 21% of homeowners polled in September expect the value of their home to decline in the year ahead, up from 18% in August, according to the data from Reuters/University of Michigan...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government is casting a wide net in its scrutiny of Wall Street banks, investors, credit-rating agencies and others in the role they played in the subprime mortgage crisis. "We look at all the players" to determine whether there were missteps in accounting and possible insider trading, says Walter Ricciardi, deputy enforcement director at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Video More video CNN's Gerri Willis offers tips on refinancing, good news for those with a HELOC and more. Play video In a telephone interview Wednesday, Ricciardi said the SEC is asking mutual fund managers, lawyers, company executives...

<p>Fresh economic shocks on the scale of the current credit squeeze will occur if US house prices continue to fall, one of the country’s leading housing experts warned on Wednesday.</p> <p>Robert Shiller, a Yale university economist, told a US congressional panel that he feared “the collapse of home prices might turn out to be the most severe since the Great Depression”.</p>

The dollar sank to fresh record lows beyond $1.40 per euro on Thursday, weighed down by a hefty U.S. interest rate cut earlier this week and expectations of more moves to come. The breach of the psychologically key $1.40 level versus the euro Euro SpotEUR-TN 1.4034 0.0074 +0.53% Quote | Chart | News | Profile | Add to Watchlist [EUR-TN 1.4034 0.0074 (+0.53%) ]-- heralded as a pain barrier for euro zone exporters -- came in early European trade, with the move taking out key stop-loss and option trading barriers and fuelling a broad-based euro rally. The single European currency...

The credit bubble is just starting to unwind, a credit-derivative insider says. And while U.S. borrowers are being blamed for the mess, they were really just pawns in a global game. Jon Markman Satyajit Das is laughing. It appears I have said something very funny, but I have no idea what it was. My only clue is that the laugh sounds somewhat pitying. One of the world's leading experts on credit derivatives (financial instruments that transfer credit risk from one party to another), Das is the author of a 4,200-page reference work on the subject, among a half-dozen other tomes....