RESOURCE: has list of sites offering free spreadsheets - Spreadsheets: Free to Learn - No-cost tutorials, instruction, and advice are only a few keystrokes away. - John Edwards - CFO.com 
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Realtors: Represent REOs with caution - Dirty little secrets lurk in lender listing agreements -  By Bernice Ross - Inman News

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Credit-Card Rage - Debt-strapped consumers vent their frustration with banks as they root for new rules to rein in card rates and fees -  Jessica Silver-Greenberg - BusinessWeek

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Ranieri quits as Franklin Bank CEO, stays chairman - Reuters

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Research Primer: Securitization -  The latest issue of the International Monetary Fund’s Finance & Development includes a useful primer on securitization, tracing its origins and growth.  The subprime mortgage crisis that began in 2007 has given the decades-old concept of securitization a bad name, IMF Economist Andreas Jobst writes. Securitization is the process in which certain types of assets are pooled so that they can be repackaged into interest-bearing securities. - Research Recap

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Popular selling US mortgage assets to Goldman - Puerto Rican bank Popular Inc. said Friday it will sell mortgages and servicing assets from its US mortgage subsidiary Popular … Popular will sell $1.17 billion in loans and servicing assets. The bank will receive more than $700 million from the Goldman affiliates, while taking a loss of about $450 million on the mortgages and servicing assets. … - AP CNNMoney.com 
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Why you can’t stop bubbles  - Now that we are in the recrimination phase of the cycle, we are seeing more and more of what happened and how do we stop it happening again questions and investigations. While the article focuses on Europe, a parallel process is occurring in the US.  Asymmetric payoff is the problem -  Humble Student of the Markets  

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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: A Damage Report - David Bogoslaw - Amid the buzz surrounding a potential bailout, BusinessWeek asks how much the mortgage giants’ fall from grace has cost market players—and what losses lie ahead - BusinessWeek

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Declines From Peaks in Housing Show Big Disparity - Below we highlight the percentage difference between current median home prices and the max median home prices seen in each of the twenty cities that S&P/Case-Shiller tracks.  As shown, there is quite a big difference between the worst areas and the ones that have held up the best. … more at Bespoke Investment Group

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Critics blast Fannie, Freddie decision on NY mortgages - Lower Hudson Journal news

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Freddie Mac Overhauls Underwriting System - The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., or Freddie Mac, is overhauling its core loan underwriting system with an eye toward automating much of the manual programming required to respond to fluctuating market conditions.  … The current version requires a time-consuming, manual programming effort two to three times a year to account for changes in the rules used to evaluate loans, he said. … -  Huntington Beach Mortgage Oracle 

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Opinion: It’s time to rethink role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - … In a New York Times op-ed piece recently, Poole argued that “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not essential to the mortgage market; if they were put out of business in an orderly fashion over five to 10 years, the market would pick up the business they abandon.”  Sounds like a reasonable thesis.  … - Atlanta Journal Constitution

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JP Morgan ends mortgages for overseas buyers - J. P. Morgan Chase & Co., which had been part of efforts to market the Chicago Spire overseas, earlier this month eliminated its program that made mortgages to foreign buyers.  - Crain’s Chicago Business
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Micro help … FHA(In)Secure - Maurna Desmond - … U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Steve Preston bragged that his agency had helped more than 325,000 American families refinance into affordable mortgages  … the number of delinquent borrowers Uncle Sam helped narrowly escape foreclosure is closer to 4,000. Since late September of last year, just 1.2%, or 3,911, of the loans refinanced by the FHA, which is part of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), were made to borrowers in default … Only those with adjustable-rate mortgages who were less than 90 days delinquent on their payments could apply, and lenders had to prove borrowers were in … - Forbes