At a critical moment for the U.S. economy, the Bush Administration is sending mixed signals about its plans for the largest and most important investment market in the world – the U.S. housing market.  It looks like all the experts in the world don’t really understand the problems we face – or at the very least no one in government is getting them all to work together.  A strong guiding hand is needed at the tiller right now, or we could have another shipwreck.  So isn’t it time for President Bush to buttonhole a key government manager to coordinate all these recovery efforts?  (Maybe that person should be the Secretary of the Treasury? I realize that kind of sarcasm is completely uncalled for.)

The House of Representatives today passed a bill designed to help homeowners facing foreclosure after taking out subprime loans. The bill passed along partisan lines and could face a veto from President Bush. 

As the Washington Post’s Dina ElBoghady’s reports, such legislation could put an overwhelming ...

 Under now-departed Secretary Alphonso Jackson, Housing and Urban Development has been roundly panned for not addressing the mortgage crisis.  But don't blame that on Federal Housing Administration head Brian Montgomery. 

The Wall Street Journal's Damien Paletta reports that Montgomery has been with the Bush Administration from the start and has ...

The Federal Housing Administration has moved quickly to assist with the foreclosure crisis and is "picking up market share" from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Nick Timiraos writes in the Wall Street Journal.   The move to expand FHA's role, first announced in August 2007, has resulted in a nearly ...

Mortgage lenders have created a new coalition to help homeowners in danger of defaulting on their mortgages, Allan Lengel reports in the Washington Post.  The big brass -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson -- announced the coalition.  But the federal government's ...

Jason Dean and Peter Stein have written a profile of investment analyst Christopher Wood for the Wall Street Journal.  Wood saw the subprime mortgage crisis coming, and attributed it to securitization of banking transactions and other financial products "run amok," as a result of which "investors . . . ignore legitimate financial risk by pretending that it is too spread-out to matter." 

David Hilzenrath reports in the Washington Post that the Bush Administration is proposing an expanded role for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), allowing it to help homeowners move out of subprime loans, and raising the mortgage limit that the FHA can cover.  The move would make FHA more competitive with ...