U.S. mortgage demand withers as loan rates spike

Spiking U.S. mortgage rates drove down total home loan applications last week as demand for refinancing shriveled to the lowest level since November, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Wednesday.

More bad foreclosure news for Homeowners

Mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures rose to records in the first quarter and home-loan rates jumped to the highest since March this week as the government’s effort to fix the housing slump lost momentum.

Bank Accused of Pushing Mortgage Deals on Blacks

As she describes it, Beth Jacobson and her fellow loan officers at Wells Fargo Bank “rode the stagecoach from hell” for a decade, systematically singling out blacks in Baltimore and suburban Maryland for high-interest subprime mortgages.

Fed Projects a Deeper Recession

The yen rose to an eight-week high against the dollar after the U.S. Federal Reserve projected a deeper recession, boosting demand for the Japanese currency as a refuge from the global slump..

www.bloomberg.com

GM details plans to wipe out current shareholders

General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson

General Motors Corp on Tuesday detailed plans to all but wipe out the holdings of remaining shareholders by issuing up to 60 billion new shares in a bid to pay off debt to the U.S. government, bondholders and the United Auto Workers union..

www.msnbc.com

Obama orders tax crackdown on U.S. firms with overseas operations..

Mr Obama plans to stop companies putting off tax payments on profits made overseas as long as those earnings are invested back into the international subsidiaries...

Obama and Homeowners Defeated: A plan that would have spared hundreds of thousands of homeowners from foreclosure..

The Democratic-controlled Senate yesterday defeated a plan to spare hundreds of thousands of homeowners from foreclosure through bankruptcy, a proposal that President Barack Obama embraced but did little to see through..