Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is testifying before congress this morning about the AIG bailout in Fall 2008. At issue is whether AIG counterparties should have been paid in full for AIG’s obligations to them using government aid. As the testimony points out, Treasury and the Fed were mostly concerned about broad economic meltdown and had [...]

In a roundabout way, this is may be a sign of further good news about the economy or real estate markets: Flagstar added only four areas to their declining markets list: Honolulu, Kalamazoo, Manchester, and Niles-Benton Harbor. In turn, they removed over a dozen areas from their declining market list, including Akron, Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, [...]

Congratulations to David Stevens. On Friday the U.S. Senate confirmed Dave to head the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Stevens will take over the agency in the middle of their huge surge in business, and many feel that with the non-HVCC appraisals and the fact that the FHA insures mortgages with a small down payment for [...]

Spencer D writes, “One of the little known effects of the economic slowdown is a dramatic drop off in the portable john business as the home building industry was one of their biggest customers. You might say their business is in the toilet! I don’t know whether or not they have applied for a bailout [...]

There are some clever folks out there. One of them created this lamentation of the new appraisal rules (known as HVCC, the Home Valuation Code of Conduct), sung to Joe Cocker’s “All Night Laundry Mat Blues”:

RATE UPDATE Rates on conforming loans up to $417k are holding around record lows even in the wake of improving economic data which can push rates up. This is largely because of continued Fed mortgage bond buying which drives bond prices up and yields (or rates) down. Rates on high-limit conforming loans up to $729k [...]

Later today, results of the government conducted stress tests on the nation’s 19 largest are likely to reveal that some of these banks will need about $65 billion in additional capital, maybe more. Banks who need to raise money to cover potential losses in the coming two years are as follows: Bank of America Bank [...]

Here’s a detailed fact sheet from Treasury about how they’re adding second mortgages to the Making Home Affordable Loan Modification program, and below is the full announcement about this enhancement to the program.

Thomas Jefferson said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.” Maybe he would be proud of the demonstration that my daughter and I saw on the banks of the Savannah River yesterday in Georgia, which apparently was taking place in many cities around the [...]