For the first time in more than a year, the nation’s decimated housing market is showing a spark of life. But like everything else that’s been turned upside down by the credit crunch, it’s not clear whether foreclosed homes selling at fire-sale prices are an encouraging sign — or just More…
Mortgage Insider tallies up the carnage among subprime lenders since the foreclosure crisis began — and it’s grim:
The list of major subprime lenders for 2006 and 2007 resembles the casualty roster from the Battle of Verdun in World War I. Only difference: way fewer walking wounded this time.
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 More…
Part 1: U.S. Failing to Defend Dollar
The U.S. national debt is rapidly rising. If Congress signs off on the Bush administration’s $700-billion rescue plan for Wall Street’s troubled financial markets, the debt ceiling will have to be raised to $11.3 trillion. The debt was $9.4 trillion in March. More…
Remember when the subprime crisis first broke out last fall, and the Bush administration’s first response was to suggest that people read the fine print on their mortgages and take financial literacy courses?
It would not be such a bad idea for Wall Street to do the same now.
Politico’s Jonathan Martin nails the headline:
We’re All Socialists Now
Time to take a step back: A Republican president just sent out his Treasury secretary to announce the federal government will spend “hundreds of billions of dollars” to takeover a not-insignificant chunk of the economy.
From USA Today:
As Ari Melber and Matt DeLong have reported on our site, both presidential candidates are keeping up their war of words over Wall Street’s financial crisis and the state of the nation’s economy. You might think that things have changed a lot since last week, when I More…
With the bankruptcy of Lehman Bros. and the Bank of America takeover of Merrill Lynch roiling Wall Street, Sen. John McCain attempted to reassure voters about the economy at a rally this morning in Jacksonville, Fla.
Before an audience of about 3,000, McCain repeated More…
In Michigan today, Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, seized on Sen. John McCain’s odd claim that the fundamentals of the American economy remain strong.
After Fannie, Freddie, Lehman and a market dive to start the week, few would describe the economy as strong. Biden hit this point to More…
To keep the markets from melting down today in the wake of the Lehman Bros. bankruptcy filing and the sale of Merrill Lynch, ten of the world’s largest banks have created a $70 billion pool of money, the Financial Times says.
Banks can borrow from the fund, using the More…
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