“Subprime mortgage crisis” on The Daily Caller

U.S. mortgage rates reached new record lows in the latest week, according to a Freddie Mac survey released on Thursday, as data showing economic weakness fueled demand for safe-haven government debt. (more)

WASHINGTON — When US Representative Barney Frank spoke in a packed hearing room on Capitol Hill seven years ago, he did not imagine that his words would eventually haunt a reelection bid. (more)

An extended halt of foreclosure proceedings could put additional pressure on an already strained housing market as federal and state officials press banks for answers on possible problems with mortgage paperwork. (more)

U.S. mortgage rates reached new record lows in the latest week as economic data raised the appeal of safe-haven government debt, according to a survey released on Thursday by Freddie Mac, the second-largest U.S. mortgage finance company. (more)

American International Group Inc. and its government overseers are in talks to speed up an exit plan designed to repay U.S. taxpayers in full while enabling the giant insurer to regain independence, according to people familiar with the matter. (more)

It’s one of the most hackneyed of movie clichés: The hero is chasing an armed bad guy on foot and they are periodically trading shots. Both the pursuer and the pursued are remarkably bad shots, firing wildly without effect, apart from the occasional upper arm flesh wound. At some point during the pursuit, the villain runs out of bullets, and just in case subtlety is lost on the audience, the now desperate villain throws his gun in the general direction of his pursuer and runs for his life. Mayhem ensues, and the now-unarmed heavy is usually captured alive. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Major banks are agreeing to give local governments and nonprofit groups the ability to buy foreclosed homes before they are sold to private investors. (more)

Nearly one in four American homeowners are now underwater on their mortgage. Richard Florida crunches the numbers to find the 20 cities with the biggest debt and housing problems. (more)

Housing policy reform is beginning to take shape. At this point, it looks like both the financial sector and Washington agree that the government must maintain a big role in the mortgage market. The favored strategy to do so thus far appears to be government mortgage guarantees that require a fee from banks that wish to obtain them. It would be kind of like depository insurance, except for mortgages. What could go wrong? Fannie and Freddie (F&F) provide a sufficient explanation. (more)

On New York City’s Avenue of the Americas, tourists can find a mathematical landmark that has grown in infamy as it has grown in digits. It is the National Debt Clock, and it has served as a publicly-displayed meter of the federal government’s spending habits for more than a decade. But as economists and politicians debate the merits of recognizing the future outflows of Social Security and Medicare as part of the debt, two different entities have already made the clock obsolete — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (more)

According to data released earlier this week, home prices fell by as much as five percent across the country in the month of July, and existing home sales fell 27%. Open your local paper or flip on “Good Morning America,” and the experts will tell you that the data coming from the real estate sector is bleak news. Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news. (more)

WASHINGTON—The Aug. 10 meeting of top Federal Reserve officials was among the most contentious in Ben Bernanke’s four-and-a-half year tenure as central bank chairman. (more)

The housing collapse the U.S. has endured over the past few years has forced the industry to question some of its most basic assumptions. For decades, the market believed that housing couldn’t broadly decline in value, particularly not substantially. It was wrong. We now know that a bubble can actually result in overinflated housing prices and subsequent national home price declines. As banks and lenders adjust, they may have to revisit the mortgage products they used to believe were very safe. Will the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage survive? (more)

Can you teach an old dog new tricks? In politics, the answer is usually no. Most elected officials cling to their ideological biases, despite the real-world facts that disprove their theories time and again. Most have no common sense, and most never acknowledge that they are wrong. (more)

Financial experts and banking industry insiders gathered at the Treasury Department in Washington Tuesday to discuss the future of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The general consensus? There is agreement that Fannie and Freddie cannot continue to exist in their current state of government conservatorship — but the agreement ends there. (more)

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in excerpts of remarks to be delivered at a Treasury conference on restructuring the two government-controlled mortgage finance giants, called that task one of the most “consequential and complicated” problems facing the United States. (more)

Congressional districts held by Democrats are taking a harder hit from the housing crisis than those represented by Republicans. (more)

Since Congress is out for their traditional August break, I thought this column could explore some of the ramifications of the larger pieces of legislation Congress has passed over the last few months. The first one that comes to mind is the financial reform bill that was signed into law mid July, 2010. This bill was two years in the making and caused many GOP lawmakers to balk at the sheer size of the bill, the undefined responsibilities outlined in the bill and the lack of even an “honorable mention” in the bill of the famed Government Sponsored Enterprises we know as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The fact is that we the taxpayer own 80% of Fannie and Freddie, and they are expected to get a total of almost $1trillion dollars of our money. This never ending bailout is needed to keep these two mortgage companies afloat when it is all said and done according to Bloomberg money gurus.  Notwithstanding this glaring omission in the financial reform bill, the bill did talk much about the FDIC and their ability to operate new programs. One such new program that garnered approval from the FDIC on August 10, 2010 was the “Model Safe Accounts Pilot program.”  This FDIC Model Safe Accounts Pilot program is designed to introduce the banking world to the underprivileged which are described as “underserved”, “unbanked” and “underbanked”. These underbanked folks are basically low-income households and minorities. According to the FDIC website, this program will last 1 year and must be subject to quarterly reports. Some of the highlights are: (more)

Nearly two years ago, the federal government began pumping what now totals almost $150 billion of taxpayer money into mortgage giants Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) in order to keep them afloat. Seen at the time as too big to fail, the two massive mortgage entities, which collectively back more than $5 trillion worth of home mortgages in the U.S., were essentially taken over by the federal government in September 2008 when they were placed under conservatorship. (more)

Just how much should Uncle Sam do to help Americans buy their own homes? (more)