News

2009

February

19

• How foreclosure prevention plan would work. President Obama announced a massive foreclosure prevention program yesterday aimed at stabilizing the housing market and keeping millions of borrowers in their homes. Many of the details are still being worked out and will not

• Obama package to stave off foreclosures. President Obama unveiled a foreclosure-prevention package Wednesday that would pour more than $75 billion into arresting one of the root causes of the nation's economic spiral by helping as many as 9 million homeowners obtain more affordable

18

• Mortgage plan to focus on lowering payments. When President Obama announces his $50 billion foreclosure prevention program in Arizona today, it will represent one of the most ambitious efforts yet to turn around the worst housing crisis in decades. The plan will include

• The best personal finance podcasts. For the past few weeks, I’ve been on an active quest to find the best financial information that fits into my pocket and doesn’t put me to sleep. After poking around the newsroom

17

• Ahorra en la póliza de tu auto. La recesión económica ha hecho que muchas personas busquen alternativas para ahorrar dinero. Unos han cortado en la canasta familiar, otros a los viajes de vacaciones y otros han reducido la

15

• How safe is your financial data?. Seldom is so much private financial information packaged so neatly as when you apply for a mortgage. Yet a recent survey suggests that not all lenders may be handling that material as carefully as they

• Filling in details on the stimulus bill. Many of us have heard about some of the tax breaks in the stimulus package, but the details have been skimpy. Readers have been e-mailing me questions seeking clarification, particularly on the first-time homebuyer's credit.

14

• Fannie and Freddie will charge mortgage fees. It may not be what home buyers, sellers and refinancers want to hear, but they need to know: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are ratcheting up their mandatory fees and toughening credit score and down-payment

13

• How banks are worsening the foreclosure crisis. The bad mortgages that got the current financial crisis started have produced a terrifying wave of home foreclosures. Unless the foreclosure surge eases, even the most extravagant federal stimulus spending won't spur an economic recovery.

12

• Foreclosures down - for now. Foreclosures dropped in January, a possible sign that efforts to slow foreclosures through moratoriums and mortgage modifications are having some effect. Foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 274,399 properties

10

• Screwed by the fine print. Despite the new Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, corporations can still get away with employment discrimination and other harmful action through binding mandatory arbitration agreements in which Americans sign away their right to resolve disputes in

• New bank bailout plan. Acknowledging that Americans have “lost faith” in the government’s effort thus far to rescue the banking system, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, outlined a sweeping overhaul and expansion of the program on Tuesday.

• Housing group protests at bankers' homes. A non-profit housing advocacy group said Monday it will protest at the homes of those it calls "financial predators" — investors and banking executives it says are balking at helping struggling homeowners refinance their mortgages. Neighborhood

08

• Tips for navigating new tax rules. If you thought it was daunting to file a federal tax return last year, this year's filing season will give you the willies. Congress passed five major tax bills in 2008, making about 500 changes affecting parents,

• Faulting firms on fixing credit errors. Many consumers are unaware what their credit score is until it’s time to apply for a home mortgage, but by then it is often too late to fix any mistakes that they might uncover

07

• Saving homes with a new bankruptcy rule. Backers call it the crucial missing tool needed to get us out of the national foreclosure morass. Critics say it could be disastrous, pushing up interest rates on all future mortgages, even for people with

06

• Experian will no longer offer FICO scores. Borrowers have less than 10 days to see their FICO credit scores calculated by Experian Group Ltd., one of the three biggest personal credit-rating bureaus. Experian notified Fair Isaac Corp., the Minneapolis-based credit-rating company, in January

04

• Créditos a víctimas del estado. El contralor del estado, John Chiang, anunció un acuerdo con varias instituciones financieras para proporcionar líneas de crédito a los californianos impactados con la histórica crisis de efectivo en el estado, la

03

• Alerta: fraude hipotecario. Prometen, cobran y desaparecen. Así de rápido, usted puede perder miles de dólares si confía en compañías que ofrecen ayuda hipotecaria por una "pequeña" comisión, cuando en realidad el

• Battle over re-regulating the money business. Lost amid last week's bad economic news, an unexpectedly partisan vote on the stimulus and President Obama's saber-rattling over Wall Street bonuses were the opening shots of a battle over how far Washington should go