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By DAVID STREITFELD
New York Times

LOS ALTOS, Calif. — No need for tears, but the well-off are losing their master suites and saying goodbye to their wine cellars.

The housing bust that began among the working class in remote subdivisions and quickly progressed to the suburban middle class is striking the upper class in privileged enclaves like this one in Silicon Valley.

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

By PAUL REYES
New York Times

Two years ago, when I began writing about the housing crisis, I got to know a bungalow in Sulphur Springs, a Tampa, Fla., neighborhood that was famous in the 1920s for its sprawling oaks, giant water slide and shopping arcade, but which is now a ghetto. The oaks are still mostly there, but the water slide is long gone, the arcade a parking lot for a dog track. Suffer Springs is what a lot of folks call it these days.

By TIMOTHY EGAN
New York Times

LATHROP, Calif. — Drive along foreclosure alley, through new planned communities that look like tile-roofed versions of a 21st century ghost town, and you see what happens when people gamble with houses instead of casino chips.

Dirty flags advertise rock-bottom discounts on empty starter mansions. On the ground, foreclosure signs are tagged with gang graffiti. Empty lots are untended, cratered with mud puddles from the winter storms that have hammered California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Nobody is home in the cities of the future.

By Neil Irwin
Washington Post

With Congress tied in political knots over whether to take further action to boost the economy, Fed leaders are weighing modest steps that could offer more support for economic activity at a time when their target for short-term interest rates is already near zero. They are still resistant to calls to pull out their big guns -- massive infusions of cash, such as those undertaken during the depths of the financial crisis -- but would reconsider if conditions worsen.

By J.W. ELPHINSTONE
AP

NEW YORK — Mortgage rates fell for the second straight week to the lowest point in five decades, but they may not be enough to jump-start the housing market.

Mortgage company Freddie Mac said Thursday the average rate for 30-year fixed loans dropped to 4.57 percent. That's down from the previous record of 4.58 percent set last week and the lowest since Freddie Mac began tracking rates in 1971. The last time rates were lower was in the 1950s, when most long-term home loans lasted just 20 or 25 years.

By DAVID LEONHARDT
NY Times

Forget about the drop in the unemployment rate last month. The economic recovery has lost significant steam in the last few months.

Today’s employment report is clear on that score. Job growth in the private sector has slowed — to 83,000 last month and a three-month average of 119,000. From February to April, the private sector added 154,000 jobs a month. (With the Census winding down, the federal government cut jobs last month, which explains the drop in overall employment.)

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER
AP

WASHINGTON – The economic rebound is stalling.

A raft of weak new reports Thursday provided the strongest evidence yet that the recovery is slowing and added to concerns that the nation could be on its way back into recession.

Most notable was a rise in the number of people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time. The four-week average for jobless claims now stands at its highest point since March.

USA Today/AP

The number of buyers who signed contracts to purchase homes tumbled 30% in May, as low mortgage rates do little to motivate home buyers.

The National Association of Realtors said Thursday its seasonally adjusted index of sales agreements for previously occupied homes fell to 77.6 from 110.9. May's reading was the lowest dating back to 2001.

The index was down 15.9% from a year earlier.

The average rate on a 30-year, fixed mortgage was 4.89% in May, Freddie Mac said.

By Dina ElBoghdady
Washington Post

After showing signs of a fledgling recovery from the worst downturn in decades, the U.S. housing market appears to be heading back toward the doldrums, as the expiration of a lucrative tax credit for buyers and increased uncertainty about the economy cause home sales to plummet.

By Timothy R. Homan and Shobhana Chandra
Bloomberg

Reports on U.S. manufacturing, employment and home sales pointed to slower growth in the second half of the year, just as government spending to stimulate the economy begins to wane.

The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing gauge fell more than forecast to 56.2 last month from 59.7 in May. A reading greater than 50 points to expansion. Other data showed contracts to buy existing homes fell 30 percent in May, and claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly rose last week.

By CHRISTINE HAUSER
NY Times

A record drop in pending home sales and a slowdown in the construction market contributed to a sluggish outlook for the economy Thursday, highlighting the significance of government stimulus measures and job growth.

By RON LIEBER and TARA SIEGEL BERNARD
New York Times

At last, it’s settled.

After months of haggling, the terms of financial reform are set, so long as both houses of Congress vote to accept them in the coming days.

While elected officials spent much of their time working out the details of regulating complex derivatives and grappling with whether banks ought to make big bets with their own money, they also set a number of new rules that will directly affect consumers.

Administration Finally Takes Steps to Help Neediest Homeowners

By Annie Lowrey
Washington Independent

By Renae Merle
Washington Post

Minority homeowners have been disproportionately affected by the foreclosure crisis and stand to lose homes at a faster pace than white borrowers in the future, according to a report released Friday by a nonprofit research group.

The study by the Center for Responsible Lending found that whites made up the majority of the 2.5 million foreclosures completed between 2007 and 2009 -- about 56 percent -- but that minority communities had significantly higher foreclosure rates.

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
NY Times

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took over a foreclosed home roughly every 90 seconds during the first three months of the year. They owned 163,828 houses at the end of March, a virtual city with more houses than Seattle. The mortgage finance companies, created by Congress to help Americans buy homes, have become two of the nation’s largest landlords.

By David Cho and Jerry Markon
Washington Post

The U.S. government accused the former chairman of one of the nation's largest mortgage firms of a multibillion-dollar scam Wednesday, unveiling what is to date the biggest criminal case related to the crisis that nearly brought down the financial system.

The Justice Department accused Lee Bentley Farkas of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker of committing a $1.9 billion fraud against investors and the federal government that led to the demise of his firm and one of the nation's largest regional banks, Colonial Bank in Alabama.

By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The Senate on Wednesday approved a plan to give homebuyers an extra three months to finish qualifying for federal tax incentives that boosted home sales this spring.

The move by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would give buyers until Sept. 30 to complete their purchases and qualify for tax credits of up to $8,000. Under the current terms, buyers had until April 30 to get a signed sales contract and until June 30 to complete the sale.

"Free-Market Fundamentalism" Is an Invention of Progressives

By Dean Baker
Truthout

The right showed once again that they have no allegiance whatsoever to the free market when House Republicans pushed through a bill that would prohibit the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) from insuring the mortgage of anyone who had "strategically defaulted" on an earlier mortgage. The intention was to punish people who had taken advantage of this option and, therefore, make it less likely that others would go this route in the future.

TRUE, I’ve been advocating sensible affirmative action, like moving our millions to local credit unions etc, since before it became popular fodder on national talk shows. So naturally, I’m always eager to form alliances with people in anything that informs the American public of at least one TRUE fact: We Have The Power, if only we will focus it on the correct targets -- the “Investors,” Boards of Directors and CEOs who run our country, our daily family life, our Supreme Court and our Congress from behind smoked/tinted glass shrines to themselves, and their partners in crime, the Bankstas!