The Obama administration's top economist and housing czar have joined forces to persuade lawmakers to pass three key measures they said would further stabilize the housing market.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan released a joint statement Thursday urging Congress to extend the popular First Time Homebuyers Tax Credit, secure funding for the planned Housing Trust Fund, and retain higher loan limits for federally backed home mortgages.
Neil Barofsky, Congress' special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), makes no bones about his frustration with the Treasury's management of the $700 billion purse.
Earlier this month he accused the Treasury of misleading the public. In his most recent dissertation, he threatened to subpoena the White House and Treasury Department and dissected the administration's Making Home Affordable program, rebuking Treasury officials for not adopting recommendations his office has made for the program.
A federal judge ordered Capmark Financial Group this week to push back the deadline it had set to receive bids for its commercial mortgage servicing business. Capmark, one of the nation's largest commercial real estate companies, surrendered to the sector's continuing deterioration and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Sunday.
The despair and desperation that often accompanies a foreclosure seems to have gotten the best of one California couple - but it turned to outright violence when they kidnapped and beat the loan modification consultants they'd hired to help them.
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