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With millions of adjustable-rate mortgages about to reset this fall, experts expect a wave of foreclosures by Americans in every income bracket. Here's why they could soar in late 2006 and beyond: Those easy-mortgage chickens are coming home to roost. This fall the adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) that millions of Americans took out during the recent housing boom will be reset, and many homeowners will see their monthly mortgage payments shoot up by as much as 20%. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, of all mortgages financed in 2005, 36% were ARMs -- the highest ever. This is a matter of...

<p>The Rudman Report on Fannie Mae recites facts eerily similar to what we now know about Enron. According to the report, the CFO of Fannie misled the board (and possibly the CEO) about the financial position of the company. The CEO, head of the corporate governance committee of the powerful Business Roundtable, regularly misled Wall Street and the board, but may not have understood the accounting. The auditors (this time not Arthur Andersen) failed to stand up to the management or didn't understand what was happening. The board, primarily made up of independent directors, and the audit committee, made up entirely of independent directors, were unable to penetrate the scam and remained clueless as earnings were manipulated. In Fannie's case there was also a regulator, but the regulator did not begin to look into any problems until it had been surprised by similar wrongdoing at Fannie's smaller sibling, Freddie Mac.</p>

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- For the past five years, the housing bulls have been trotting out one rational-sounding argument after another to explain why the boom made perfect economic sense. Forget about a crash, they assured homeowners. Expect a "soft landing" where your three-bedroom colonial in Larchmont or Larkspur not only holds onto its huge price gains, but keeps appreciating at a "normal," "sustainable" rate of 6 percent or so into the sunset. Real estate slowdown New homes slump worsens Pace of new home sales falls more than forecast as inventory builds, prices decline. (more) Freebies for home buyers Home...

HERNDON, Va. -- For years, real-estate brokers and home builders promised that the soaring property market eventually would glide to a soft landing. These optimists predicted that home prices, which had more than doubled in parts of the country between 2000 and 2005, would continue to rise, but at a more normal pace of 5% or 6% a year. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interactive Tool • Use an interactive tool to search the latest data on housing inventories and price trends in 26 real-estate markets, at RealEstateJournal.com. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It isn't working out that way. The rapid deterioration of the market over the past...

WASHINGTON - Consumer inflation accelerated in July, reflecting a big jump in gasoline and other energy prices. In evidence that the economy is slowing, industrial output in July slipped to just half the June pace. ADVERTISEMENT The Labor Department reported Wednesday that its closely watched Consumer Price Index rose by 0.4 percent last month, double the 0.2 percent increase in June. While energy costs had fallen in June, they rose by 2.9 percent last month, the biggest increase in three months. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve reported that output at the nation's factories, mines and utilities increased by 0.4 percent last...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- After several years of turbo-powered growth, home prices have gone into a stall, according to the latest prices released Tuesday. Nationally, the median home price rose just 3.7 percent to $227,500 from last year's second quarter to this year's, according to the National Association of Realtors. Where the growth still is Growth in the median home price in the second quarter. Click for more stats on each city. Baton Rouge, LA: 27.3% Ocala, Fla.: 25.3% Virginia Beach, VA: 23.6% Gainesville, Fla.: 19.7% Portland, Ore.: 19.1% Losing ground Danville, Ill.: - 11.2% Detroit, Mich.: - 8% Rockford,...

Mortgage trouble is creating some of the biggest bargains this side of eBay, allowing buyers to snap up homes for tens of thousands of dollars less than what they might have paid just a few months ago. "People are doing whatever they can to sell" in order to avoid foreclosure, said Brad Geisen, president and chief executive of Boca Raton-based Foreclosure.com. Notices of pending foreclosures are piling up, in what many believe to be the first wave of a trillion-dollar tsunami: The dollar volume of home loans with interest rates that will be ratcheted upward over the next several months....

NEW YORK -- Home prices in some parts of the country are falling. Builders are scaling back. Bubble or not, the biggest housing boom in recent U.S. history is coming to an end. Now here is the big question: How bad will the aftermath be? At this point, most economists expect a "soft landing," a gradual decline that won't derail the nation's economic expansion, now in its fifth year. But there is a good chance they are being too optimistic. The boom has depended heavily on the upbeat psychology of consumers, builders and lenders. As moods swing, the landing could...

BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- It is becoming increasingly obvious that financial advisers, real estate experts and parents will someday point to what is happening in the mortgage market today and use it as a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when a buyer stretches to get too much house during a market that seems invincible. Real estate has been booming in most markets over the last five years or longer, fueled by interest rates that reached four-decade lows and by consumers who used new mortgage products to extend their buying power. Many home buyers stopped worrying about buying a home...

The Comptroller General of the United States warns the nation will go broke within a generation - unless it takes radical steps now to rein in out-of-control federal spending. In an exclusive interview with NewsMax, Comptroller David M. Walker, explained his mission: Save America from the brink of financial disaster. Walker has revealed America's collision course in computer simulations that show balancing the budget in 2040 (under the status quo of spending like there's no tomorrow) could require cutting total federal spending by an incredible 60 percent - or raising federal taxes 200 percent over today's level. Serving a 15-year...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumer spending was weak for a fourth straight month in June as rising gasoline prices left Americans with little to spend on other items. Construction activity posted a stronger-than-expected advance, though, as a record level of government spending helped offset weakness in housing. ADVERTISEMENT The Commerce Department reported that consumer spending rose by 0.4 percent in June, down from a gain of 0.6 percent in May. After adjusting for inflation, the gain was an even weaker 0.2 percent, the fourth straight month of a spending increase of 0.2 percent or less. Meanwhile, construction spending rose by 0.3...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Core consumer prices rose a moderate 0.2 percent in June for a third straight month, but the year-on-year rate hit a nearly four-year high, keeping financial markets on edge over a possible Federal Reserve interest-rate hike. In the same report, the Commerce Department said Tuesday that personal income rose 0.6 percent in June, with nominal spending up 0.4 percent. The data, which was incorporated in a report released Friday on second-quarter economic growth, matched Wall Street expectations. Current Savings Rates Type Overall avgs MMA 3.34% $10K MMA 3.57% 6 month CD 4.63% 1 yr CD 5.09% 5...

Dulce Suarez-Resnick: Some colleagues in my office are leaving, some of my customers and even some family and friends.In 2006, friends, who were also my customers, went from $8,000 on their windstorm policy to $17,000. They have every mitigation credit available for an older home. They are selling their home and moving to Central Florida because they can afford to live there on their fixed income.State Sen. Steven Geller: They're moving to North Carolina, they're moving to Georgia. They're getting out of Dodge . . . . I think the single most important issue facing the state is windstorm [insurance]....

-snip- Dissenters say our prosperity is hollow. While the economy appears healthy, a disease is eating away inside, a disease that Dr. Greenspan has been treating with oxycontin. The chairman, they say, was a friend to presidents and kept them happy and himself in power by the greatest expansion of money and credit in history. And just as the easy-money Fed policies of the Hoover-Coolidge era led to the crash of ’29, a day of reckoning is ahead. -snip-

Our hollow prosperity-------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern PATRICK BUCHANAN © 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc. Now that the U.S. trade deficit for 2005 has come in at $726 billion, the fourth straight all-time record, a question arises. What constitutes failure for a free-trade policy? Or is there no such thing? Is free trade simply right no matter the results? Last year, the United States ran a $202 billion trade deficit with China, the largest ever between two nations. We ran all-time record trade deficits with OPEC, the European Union, Japan, Canada and Latin America. The $50 billion deficit...

Many feared George W. Bush would nominate a Supreme Court justice in the mold of David Souter, Anthony Kenney or Sandra Day O'Connor – Republicans in name only, with no real principles or convictions, the kind of people who would be swept up by the Beltway culture to become, at best, unpredictable votes in future rulings. It appears that fear has been unfounded. In fact, in nominating Harriet Miers, Bush, who pledged to seek out candidates in the mold of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, has found someone with more in common with the likes of activist Ruth Bader Ginsburg....

George W. Bush has just rung the death knell for his presidency. For the Supreme Court of the United States, a president under fire for cronyism has chosen the ultimate crony. For the highest court in the land, a president criticized for a lack of gravitas has chosen a woman who the president's own former speechwriter describes as "a taut, nervous, anxious personality." For one of the nine highest legal positions in the entire country, this president has ignored dozens of candidates with impeccable credentials -- top law school honors, judicial clerkships, distinguished careers in academia, lengthy experience arguing cases...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. U.S. Trade Flows Number of full containers that arrived in Port of Los Angeles, July, 1999 (imports): 176,444 Number of full containers that arrived in Port of Los Angeles, July, 2005 (imports): 352,417 Number of full containers that left Port of Los Angeles, July, 1999 (exports): 66,948 Number of empty containers that left Port of Los Angeles, July, 1999 (exports): 78,280 Number of full containers that left Port of Los Angeles, July, 2005 (exports): 97,457 Number of empty containers that left Port of Los Angeles, July, 2005 (exports): 194,116 Percentage of...

Friday night, the Bush presidency was in grave trouble. TV reporters at the New Orleans convention center and Superdome were fairly weeping for food and water for the visibly suffering thousands, on the fifth day after Katrina hit. Saturday, the cavalry had arrived. All day, the truckloads of troops, helicopters and relief columns moved in. By nightfall, the convention center and Superdome had been evacuated, and reporters who had been howling only hours before were cheering. By Sunday, responsibility for the disaster was being shifted by Bush aides and media allies to the mayor of New Orleans and Louisiana Gov....

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. JESUP --- Why the Central America Free Trade Agreement? Why should anyone want to integrate the United States with Mexico and Canada, and destroy everything we know and love? Our country is so different in freedom from other countries in the world. The Council on Foreign Relations has a 59-page document establishing a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a "common outer security perimeter." This plan calls for massive U.S. foreign aid to the other countries. It demands we implement "the...