Free Republic

They operate under names like Granny’s Junction. Inside, among cubbies for winter coats, boxes of Legos and kitchen tables surrounded by booster seats, they offer a lifeline to millions of working mothers and fathers. The nation’s home-based child care providers represent millions of single business owners –women, mostly – whose entrepreneurial spirit and operating ingenuity are surpassed only by their willingness to clean the noses and backsides of other people’s children. In Michigan, roughly 40,000 of the state's 70,000 day care owners were perhaps too busy changing diapers, reading stories and making lunches to notice a random piece of mail...

The government has handed its ATM card to beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Treasury Department said Thursday it removed the $400 billion financial cap on the money it will provide to keep the companies afloat. Already, taxpayers have shelled out $111 billion to the pair, and a senior Treasury official said losses are not expected to exceed the government's estimate this summer of $170 billion over 10 years. Treasury Department officials said it will now use a flexible formula to ensure the two agencies can stand behind the billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities they sell...

A day after the White House unveiled a program to salvage the mortgage market, people are already talking about how borrowers might game the system. To qualify for the fast-track program, borrowers must have a FICO score of less than 660 and it can't have increased by more than 10% since they took out their original subprime mortgage. Because income isn't checked, some experts worry that borrowers who might otherwise be able to afford higher payments will try to lower their FICO score to qualify for a rate freeze. "The message here is to get your FICO score down," Mark...