Free Republic

In states where property taxes and homeowners insurance costs are rising the fastest, there has been a spike in the number of people who are delinquent on their mortgages, according to real estate analytics firm Cotality. And an increase in escrow payments may be one of the biggest risks homeowners face in 2026, Cotality warns. The firm says that escalating escrow costs are reshaping the financial reality of homeownership across the U.S., undermining the predictability once promised by fixed mortgage payments. "Growing escrow payments can absolutely price would-be homeowners out of buying a home, especially in states where escrow payments...

Mr. Cable TV...

BP will set aside $20 billion to pay the victims of the massive oil spill in the Gulf, senior administration officials said Wednesday, a move made under pressure by the White House as the company copes with causing the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. The independent fund will be led by lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw payments to families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In his current role, Feinberg is known as Obama's "pay czar," setting salary limits for companies getting the most aid from a $700 billion government bailout fund.

WASHINGTON — President Obama prepared on Wednesday to meet at the White House with top executives of BP, the company responsible for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, to demand that they set aside billions of dollars agree to pay claims stemming from the disaster in independently administered escrow account. The chairman of BP’s board, Carl-Henric Svanberg, will be told at the meeting “that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness,” the president said in a televised...