News

2010

April

18

• These financial blogs are worth your time. After spending the bulk of my career writing solely for newspapers, I stepped into the blogosphere a year ago and discovered a whole new world of financial advice. The World Wide Web is host to

• Buying a credit score?. Everyone's got your number — a credit score, that is — and as a savvy consumer, you might want to find out exactly what they've got. This three-digit number tries to predict whether you're a credit risk

• Whose side are they on?. Last month Democrats on the Senate banking committee passed a reasonably tough financial regulatory reform bill. Now Republican leaders have suddenly begun lashing out against it. Did they belatedly discover some problem? No. They suddenly

17

• Urgent mortgage moves need not destroy credit scores. Financially stressed homeowners looking to cut their mortgage payments through a loan modification, short sale or principal reduction under one of the Obama administration's programs needn't wreck their credit scores in the process. In fact,

• Reverse mortgages still costly but less so. The adage that you can’t take out a loan to pay for retirement is not entirely true. Reverse mortgages, which allow older homeowners to pull cash out of their homes without making payments, have

15

• Federal aid forestalling only a fraction of foreclosures. The government's foreclosure prevention efforts are struggling to make an impact on millions of borrowers who are in trouble on their mortgages, according to a report issued Wednesday by a congressional watchdog panel. The program,

• Foreclosure rates surge, biggest jump in 5 years. A record number of U.S. homes were lost to foreclosure in the first three months of this year, a sign banks are starting to wade through the backlog of troubled home loans at a

13

• Senate panel finds major fraud at Washington Mutual. The mortgage lending operations of Washington Mutual, the biggest U.S. bank ever to fail, were threaded through with fraud and the bank's own inquiries were unable to stop the deceptive practices, according to a

• Financial overhaul remains a pr battle. For the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the proposed financial regulations headed to the Senate floor would create sleepless nights and a lack of credit for the nation's small-business owners. For the Obama administration and

11

• Test your knowledge of credit scores. Here's a quiz to test your knowledge of credit scores, that all-important number on which mortgage lenders and most other creditors base their decisions not only to grant you a loan but also how much

10

• Lenders must pay for mortgage brokers' discrimination. A new Obama administration policy that gets tough on home-mortgage discrimination is drawing kudos from consumer advocates, along with expressions of serious concern from lawyers who represent lenders and brokers. In a settlement last month

• Working financial literacy with the 3 Rs. Most Americans aren’t fluent in the language of money. Yet we’re expected to make big financial decisions as early as our teens — Should I take on thousands of dollars of student debt? Should

08

• SEC proposes tighter loan rules. Federal regulators unveiled stricter rules Wednesday for a key source of funding for home, auto and credit-card loans that has been blamed for worsening the financial crisis by allowing trillions of dollars in risky investments

07

• Free credit report no longer. The credit report you get from freecreditreport.com is no longer free, no matter what that Web address promises. In the face of a legislative and regulatory crackdown, Experian, the credit data company that owns

06

• Plastic pipe maker extends warranty amid claims of defects. M Eagle, fighting a whistle-blower's claim that it delivered defective PVC pipes to government utilities across the nation, said Monday that it would extend one-year warranties on its products to 50 years, retroactively. The Los Angeles

• Financial crisis panel turns to risky mortgages. A panel investigating the roots of the financial crisis will press current and former executives of Citigroup at hearings this week about the bank's role in spreading trillions of dollars in risky mortgage debt through

• Tax credits for energy-saving windows, cars. If your air conditioner sputtered and died last August, forcing you to buy a new one, you probably didn't clap your sweaty hands and shout, "Hooray! We'll qualify for an energy-efficient tax credit!" But if

• Faith in homeownership drops. Despite turbulence in the housing market during the past three years, most people still think homeownership is important and preferable to renting, but many remain skeptical that home prices will rebound soon, according to a

04

• Help paying mortgages elicits anger. The angry comments flooded in after the federal government announced it was expanding its program to assist unemployed homeowners, as well as borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are now worth.

03

• Short sale program will help some homeowners. As foreclosure prevention efforts struggle to make an impact, the Obama administration will launch a program Monday encouraging lenders to allow more distressed homeowners to sell their property for less than they owe on their