By Marci Greenstein It’s hard to find any hopeful news about the housing crisis.  There was a sharp decline in home sales in December.  And the federal Home Affordable Modification Program, which was supposed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, is not working.  But Ruth Simon of the Wall Street Journal highlighted ...

ProPublica's Paul Kiel blogs that the Treasury Dept. quietly announced Friday afternoon that it was providing another $15 billion in its bailout of now wholly government-owned mortgage financier Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae has received a total of $60 billion in taxpayer bailout money, while its sister company, Freddie Mac, has received $50 billion. That's $110 billion in bailout money that doesn't come from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, but, as Kiel explains, a separate housing bailout. Barack Obama's home ownership assistance program has exacerbated Fannie Mae's troubles.

The New York Times' David Streitfield and John Collins Rodolf report that state attorneys general might start suing mega-banks: Frustrated by the banks’ inability or unwillingness to stop an avalanche of foreclosures, the states are considering lawsuits over the creation and marketing of millions of bad loans as well as the dismal pace of mortgage modifications. Such cases would have been impossible until recently, because federal regulators had exclusive oversight of national banks. But a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in June allowed the states to exercise their own supervision, giving them significant leverage. This Supreme Court case that gives state AGs some oversight over national banks is pretty amazing:

Nick Timiraos of the Wall Street Journal looks into problems at the Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, a program of the Treasury Department. The program, designed to help homeowners renegotiate risky mortgages with their existing lenders, has helped 60,000 homeowners, when "the Obama administration said that millions of ...

Congress's bill to tax 90 percent of bonus money received by employees at bailed out companies will severely hurt the good people at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, say reports from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Well, actually Zach Goldfarb ...

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 nation's largest mortgage lenders, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, are facing increasing questions about their ability to help consumers ride out the subprime mortgage debacle.  The government wants to meet the needs of troubled consumers, but the companies' shareholders are interested in higher profits.  Writing in the Wall  Street ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac come by their quasi-governmental reputation honestly.  Though these are private corporations owned by shareholders, they are subject to oversight by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), whose operation the government funds by assessing a fee on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The two corporations underwrite more mortgages than any other financial institution in the U.S.  Now the government has decided to help them out.