It starts with mortgage. Many Americans borrowed money to buy their own house. After the crash of the dotcom bubble in 2000s many countries including US were facing economic recession.

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it is extending its emergency borrowing program to Wall Street firms and is taking other steps to ease a severe credit crunch that has hobbled the national economy.

The number of U.S. homes heading toward foreclosure more than doubled in the first quarter from a year earlier, as weakening property values and tighter lending left many homeowners powerless to prevent homes from being auctioned to the highest bidder, a research firm said Monday.

What bernanke is saying is that lenders should reduce loan principals, instead of just interest rates, thus reducing the pressure on mortgage owners facing foreclosure. As motivation for lenders, he offers up the schtick that the foreclosure filing and process could take well over a year, and could end up costing more than a prinicpal write-down. This is extortion, plain and simple.

A new joint Wall Street-Academic report titled 'Leveraged Losses Lessons from the Mortgage Market Meltdown' lays out the complete devastation of the subprime mortgage crisis ($400 billion), and it's ripple affect on the financial sector ($2 trillion) and on the economy (GDP loss of 1 to 1.5 perecent).

During the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress dealt with huge impending foreclosures by creating the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation. What Alan Blinder is saying is that it's time for Washington to step in and clear the mess that Wall Street has gotten itself in to.

Citigroup is expected to announce a sizable dividend cut, cash infusion of at least $10 billion and write-down of as much as $20 billion in mortgage-related investments as part of its fourth-quarter earnings report.

Talks about trading SKF to express a negative view on SKF.

Article that provides information on some of the individuals behind the mortgage securitization and CDO repackaging machines on Wall Street. The article surveys why things went so wrong.

Sales of new homes plunged last month to their lowest level in more than 12 years, a grim testament to the problems plaguing the housing sector.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that new-home sales tumbled by 9 percent in November from October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 647,000. That was the worst showing since April 1995, when the pace of sales was 621,000.