Housing meltdown

MarketWatch takes a hard look at Republican nominee John McCain’s surprise proposal in last night’s debate to have the government buy up bad mortgages and renegotiate them.
If that idea sounded a little familiar, MarketWatch pointed out, that’s because the $700-billion rescue package already includes authority for the Treasury Dept. to do just that, if it [...]

Charles Morris checks in with us to call the charge that poverty activists fueled the mortgage crisis “absurd.”
Our story Tuesday outlined that argument, in which conservatives blame the Community Reinvestment Act for the flood of subprime lending that led to the housing meltdown.
Morris, however, says it’s clear that competition drove bad lending. Consider a 2005 [...]