_Economy and Finance

Economy Drives More Americans to Extreme Poverty By Catherine Dodge - 2011.11.02 09:01 PM The number of Americans living in neighborhoods beset by extreme poverty surged in the last decade, erasing the progress of the 1990s, with the poorest areas growing more than twice as fast in suburbs as in cities.

U.S. throws lifeline to underwater homeowners By Margaret Chadbourn WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 24, 2011 8:53pm EDT (Reuters) - U.S. homeowners who owe more than their properties are worth got new help on Monday with the government's expansion of a refinancing program in a step that could help up to 1 million borrowers.

POLITICS JULY 26, 2011 Obama Warns of Default Risk President and Boehner Spar Over Competing Debt Plans as Deadline Approaches With Congress deadlocked a week before the government runs out of cash to pay its bills, President Barack Obama warned Monday in his starkest terms yet that the U.S. is on the brink of a default that could trigger an economic upheaval.

How We All Suffer July 11, 2011 Kim Luu is the editor of Money and Risk and a principal at an independent brokerage firm specializing in retirement and 401(k)s. The federal Home Affordable Modification Program was badly designed, overly complicated and poorly communicated. Borrowers suffered through horrendous paperwork for months and years. People ran through their retirement savings during the process, and then lost their homes anyway. Meanwhile, banks are saddled with billions of dollars in losses and inventory that still need to be auctioned.

The Unemployment Factor July 11, 2011 Morris A. Davis is the academic director of the James A. Graaskamp Center for Real Estate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

POLITICS JULY 11, 2011, 4:47 P.M. ET U.S. Tackles Housing Slump By NICK TIMIRAOS The Obama administration is ramping up talks on how to revive the housing market, which is weighing on the economic recovery—and possibly the President's re-election in 2012.

Related News: Law · Finance · Insurance · Real Estate · U.S. · Funds · Politics · Municipal Bonds Banks Await Foreclosure Deal’s Financial Terms as States Split By David McLaughlin - Apr 21, 2011 3:33 AM GMT+0900 Attorneys general negotiating the settlement of a nationwide foreclosure investigation have yet to approach banks with a proposed dollar amount that would fund principal reductions for borrowers, a state official said.

Purely financial capitalism has perverted the logic of capitalism, Financial capitalism is a system of irresponsibility and ... is amoral. It is a system where the logic of the market excuses everything. - Nicolas Sarkozy , French President, At the Symposium "New World, New Capitalism," Paris, Jan. 9, 2009