World-News

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US central bank, has said that the rising cases of late mortgage payments and home foreclosures pose considerable dangers to the US economy.

http://tinyurl.com/5o8335


From Information Clearing House

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Federal Reserve freakout

The Nation
by Nicholas von Hoffman

05/09/08

The other day Ben Bernanke came as close as a chairman of the Federal Reserve will come to a public freakout. Call it a subdued, bankerly freakout. In a speech at Columbia University’s Business School he used the word ‘crisis’ as in ‘the foreclosure crisis.’ Fed chairmen do not generally use words like ‘crisis’; they use words such as vanilla, cream sauce, custard and tapioca. What’s got Bernanke scared is that ‘about one quarter of subprime adjustable-rate mortgages are currently 90 days or more delinquent or in foreclosure. Delinquency rates also have increased in the prime and near-prime segments of the mortgage market. … Foreclosure proceedings were initiated on some 1.5 million U.S. homes during 2007, up 53 percent from 2006, and the rate of foreclosure starts looks likely to be yet higher in 2008...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080526/howl


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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