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Ex-Fannie Mae chief wishes he said “no” more often: report -  Former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Daniel Mudd wished he said “no” to more of the things the company was asked to do, he told the Wall Street … “I should have gone to the government and gotten a clear answer to the question: What do you want — more capital or more lending?” Mudd said. … – Reuters
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PNC Financial Services likely to benefit from tax ruling, WSJ reports – PNC Financial Services Group Inc.,  a diversified financial services company that last week revealed the $5.58 billion deal to acquire National City Corp., stands to receive several billions of dollars in federal tax savings, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. – RTT News 
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The Coming Shakedown  – Janet Novack – Forget the promises. The government will grab lots more of your money. – … If we define the larger group as those in families with incomes between $25,000 and $250,000, we’re talking about three-fourths of the country. The government is destined to extract a pound of flesh from the middle class because this is where the money is; there simply aren’t enough millionaires around to pay for everything. The pain will take the form of both taxation and broken promises.  … – Forbes 

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Real Estate Markets Most Likely To Rebound – Dorothy Pomerantz – It’s tough all over, but these 10 cities have the best–and worst–chances for speedy recoveries – Forbes

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In this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we turn to two veteran observers of the Fed and the US political process to get some perspective on the financial crisis and the policy makers who have arguably caused much of the present economic difficulty. – by Chris Whalen 
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ICE to buy Clearing Corp. -  Ann Saphir – IntercontinentalExchange Inc., CME Group Inc.’s biggest rival in the U.S. futures business, will acquire Clearing Corp. as part of its race to be the first to tap the $55-trillion market for credit default swaps. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. – Crain’s Chicago Business

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Analysts: Weakest banks may be shut out of government rescue plan  – The $160 billion in direct government funding is going to the banks that need it the least, according to analysts. That means the banks with the biggest problems could be shut down or acquired by more stable rivals. “This has the unintended effect of making the strong stronger and the weak weaker,” said Gray Medlin, founder of Carson Medlin Co. – Bloomberg

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Treasury, FDIC Near Plan to Guarantee Distressed Mortgages -  DIANA GOLOBAY – The U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are nearing an agreement on a plan that may guarantee as many as three million distressed mortgages, according to a report Thursday by the Washington Post. The plan, which would cost from $40 billion to $50 billion and use funds from the Treasury’s TARP program, would result in a “significant departure for the federal rescue program,” according to the WaPo. – housingwire

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Wells Fargo is $25 Billion Richer, Thanks to TARP – Paul Jackson -  The rubber is hitting the road, now that the government has begun doling out taxpayer funds to key banking institutions. Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC: 31.84 -0.84%) got $25 billion from the U.S. Treasury yesterday, as the first of the $700 billion in U.S. Treasury funds was doled out to key banks, the bank said in a press statement. Wells Fargo issued 25,000 preferred shares at $1 million per share, under the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. – housingwire

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Fannie Mae portfolio, planned purchases up in Sept – Al Yoon -  … “With mortgage rates up, and up relative to Treasuries, it appears that plans to use the two GSEs to lower mortgage rates and boost demand have yet to materialize,” Shapiro wrote. … – Reuters

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Read This – about passion: From Homeless to Multimillionaire – BusinessWeek Yahoo

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Structured Credit Market Unlikely Ever to Fully Recover  -  The market for collateralized debt obligations is unlikely ever to fully recover from the credit crunch, no matter how much better the credit rating agencies get at assessing the risks of the complex structured finance derivatives, a new working paper* published by Harvard Business School argues. – Research Recap

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Impact of Lehman Failure on CDS Market Less Than Feared – Moody’s – Research Recap

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Securitization’s Last Throes?  – Changes to accounting rules could put loads of assets back on banks’ balance sheets. – Alan Rappeport – Tweaks to two accounting rules could bring down the market for asset-backed securitization, critics of the proposal contend…. – CFO.com 

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Freddie: Less homeowners are borrowing from equity – Forbes

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Freddie Mac cash-outs at 4-year low – Inman.com