Politicians, regulators and financial specialists outside the United States are seeking a role in oversight of American markets, banks and rating agencies in the wake of recent problems related to subprime mortgages.
Home buyers are paying more for mortgages. Mortgage lenders are closing shop as large banks turn off the spigot of money to them. Large and small corporations are also paying more to borrow — if they can find anyone willing to lend them cash.
In the administration's most detailed reaction to the steepest housing slump in 16 years, Paulson said that government and the financial industry should provide immediate help for homeowners trying to refinance current mortgages before they reset at much higher rates.
Out on Phoenix's suburban fringes, where cement mixers are fast colonizing what's left of the hay and cotton fields, the day is winding to a close. The home hour has arrived.
The number of homes entering foreclosure, being auctioned and repossessed by banks jumped by 36 percent in August from the month before, with cities in California, Florida and Nevada showing the biggest increases, according to a report to be released Tuesday.
One second we’re told that the economy is steered towards destruction, the next we’re told that things aren’t looking so bad, and then of course the fed tightens credit and raises interest rates.
Trading in the shares of a large U.S. mortgage company was suspended Monday, and the largest insurer of home loans in the United States said its stake in a business that underwrites and invests in mortgage securities may be worthless.
With the equity markets off sharply for the week and the credit markets seizing, investors are being forced to relearn some of the basics forgotten during the private-equity, easy-credit, corporate-buyout boom of recent years.
Stock prices tumbled across much of the world today amid worries of slowing economic growth in the United States and more difficult borrowing conditions that could make everything from leveraged corporate buyouts to purchases of new homes more difficult.
Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, said yesterday that more borrowers with good credit were falling behind on their loans and that the housing market might not begin recovering until 2009 because of a decline in house prices that goes beyond anything experienced in decades.
