One of the ideas for financial regulatory reform that President Barack Obama will outline today is the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, modeled after a proposal from Troubled Asset Relief Program watchdog Elizabeth Warren for a Financial Products Safety Comission. As The Washington More…
When U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan announced last week that first-time homebuyers soon will be permitted to turn their $8,000 tax credit for purchasing a property into downpayment money, he called the development “exciting” and “a real win for everyone.”
But his enthusiasm isn’t More…
The Obama administration is considering stripping the Securities and Exchange Commission of some its oversight powers, and shifting that responsibility to the Federal Reserve, Bloomberg reports.
The proposal, still being drafted, is likely to give the Federal Reserve more authority to supervise financial firms deemed too big to fail.
Over at Hungry Hungry Hippos. they’ve taken me to task for my post Wednesday on efforts in Flint, Mich. to deal with abandoned and vacant properties by literally shrinking the size of their city — cordoning off the blight and leaving it behind. I had written that Flint More…
Wells Fargo announced today it expects to turn a $3 billion profit for the first quarter of this year, some surprisingly good news from the troubled banking sector, CNNMoney reports.
Those results exceed expectations from analysts, and they sparked a stock market rally early today.
A ban on foreclosure sales and evictions from houses owned by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which began as a high-profile effort just before the holidays to keep people in their homes as the government tried to come up with homeowner rescue plans, is over.
Spokesmen for More…
Remember how Congress and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan refused to regulate subprime loans, and joined the mortgage industry in defending them as a way to extend the benefits of homeownership to all? Turns out it was all for nothing, really. New Census figures out today show home ownership More…
One of the long-held beliefs about subprime mortgages is that they had a positive side, extending credit to non-traditional buyers and increasing minority homeownership rates. But in a new research paper (pdf), the Boston Federal Reserve takes a closer look at foreclosures in Massachusetts. In a remarkable finding, researchers More…
Did foreclosures play a direct role in the election results? At the Orange County Register, real-estate blogger Jon Lansner thinks so. He matched up states with high foreclosures to voting patterns, and came up with this:
States that President-elect Barack Obama won had housing markets in far worse shape
When Congress passed the mortgage rescue bill in July, politicians touted help for homeowners as a big part of the legislation. By Oct. 1, the Federal Housing Admin. was to set up a program that would back, with $300 billion in guarantees, the refinanced loans of homeowners in trouble. More…
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