Housing Crisis, Banks | featured news

Europe agreed Saturday to allow Spain to tap a rescue fund of up to (EURO)100 billion ($125 billion) to bail out its troubled banks, which are struggling under the weight of soured real estate loans after a Spanish housing bubble burst. Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said the country will reveal how much money it needs within coming weeks, after audits of its financial sector are completed.

Banks earned $13 billion in secret cut-rate loans from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis, Bloomberg reports... "Many Americans are struggling to understand why banks deserve such preferential treatment while millions of homeowners are being denied assistance and are at increasing risk of foreclosure," Cummings wrote in his letter.

The insurer AIG is suing Bank of America Corp to recover more than $10 billion of losses from a "massive fraud" on mortgage debt, deepening the morass of litigation faced by the largest U.S. bank.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, in written testimony prepared for a Senate hearing on Tuesday, said his firm "certainly did not bet against our clients."

A Senate investigation into the financial crisis has found that Goldman Sachs, the storied Wall Street investment bank, sought to profit from the historic decline in housing prices by betting against the US mortgage market.

As markets boom, Fed officials and central bank researchers are looking for ways to keep housing and credit bubbles from happening in the first place.

John P. McMurray made it clear to his Countrywide Financial Corp bosses that they were playing a dangerous game with risk.

A deal maker at Lehman pioneered ways to package debt which brought huge profits but set off the bank’s collapse.

Freddie Mac, facing mounting damage from the U.S. housing crisis, said Wednesday it will ask the government for nearly $31 billion in additional aid after posting a gargantuan loss of more than $50 billion last year.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. are halting home foreclosures while the Obama administration develops its plans to help the U.S. housing market.