Lower Rates Aren’t Helping Jumbo Loans - Kathleen M. Howley - The Record (Bergen County, NJ) -  KnowledgePlex

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from Journal of Indexes:
1.  Fixing A Broken Market  - Written by Daniel McCabe - They forgot to make money 

2.  A Minsky Meltdown? - John Bogle - Average citizens are paying for Wall Street’s problems 

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5/3 clears way for bailout - Shareholders approve preferred-stock plan for US - By Alexander Coolidge - Fifth Third Bancorp shareholders Monday cleared the way for the regional bank to issue the preferred stock necessary for it to accept almost $3.5 billion from the U.S. Treasury. -   Cincinnati Enquirer

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Report: Madoff’s Ponzi Profits Hidden Offshore - Accountants searching money trail - NBC New York

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1.  Capitalism Is Worst System Except for the Rest: Caroline Baum -  The year 2008 will be remembered as one that exposed the fatal flaws in free-market capitalism, sending it to an untimely death. -  Bloomberg

2.  Fed Study Finds 169 Mortgage Finance Companies Failed Last Year - Craig Torres - … The data signal the waning of lightly regulated mortgage lenders that thrived with funding from Wall Street firms and investors hungry for yield. Non-bank lenders’ share of the high- priced loan market, which includes subprime loans, fell to 20.5 percent in 2007 from 50.6 percent in 2004, the Fed study said.  … - Bloomberg

3.  ‘Piggyback’ Mortgages May Cut Modifications, Fed Says - By Jody Shenn - Attempts to loosen terms on hundreds of thousands of delinquent home loans may be hindered by so- called piggyback second mortgages that gained popularity during the U.S. housing boom, Federal Reserve researchers said. - Bloomberg

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Portfolio.com’s Felix Salmon, apparently in the thrall of Elizabeth Warren, seems not to get what the TARP is supposed to accomplish. Tom Brown straightens him out at bankstocks.com 
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Thoughts on treasury calendar to fund upcoming deficits - Funding the Deficit by John Jansen - The incoming Obama Administration and its acolytes in Congress have floated various trial balloons regarding the size of the next stimulus package. Most of the press reports on the topic place the size of the package at something in the neighborhood of $750 billion. …  I think that the Treasury will be hard pressed to raise that amount of money without some novel financing ideas. In my opinion, the amount to be financed is so massive that I think that they will raise the preponderance of the money in the coupon market rather than the bill market.  - more at Across the Curve
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In this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we discuss the Fed’s approval of the GMAC application.  We still think that GM and GMAC must inevitably be restructured under the supervision of the bankruptcy courts, but so far the advocates of public bailouts for insolvent companies continue to hold sway.  In 2009, we suspect, that is going to change. 
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Great story on a real estate auction - Watching a Price Correction, in Real-Time - By DIANA GOLOBAY -   housingwire

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1.  Fed Selects Four Firms to Manage MBS Purchase Plan - Craig Torres and Jody Shenn - The Federal Reserve chose BlackRock Inc., Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Pacific Investment Management Co. and Wellington Management Co. to manage a $500 billion purchase of mortgage-backed securities it plans to complete by June. -   Bloomberg 
2.  This guy thinks it is a bad idea - Evening Edition - All I can say is this is bad news, as far as I am concerned. Purchasing half a billion in mortgage backed securities from those that brought us here is not inspirational, even if you have some smart people managing the process. And if you believe the line about “minimal” risk, then you have to ask yourself, if there were truly minimal risk then why? - Financial Split Milk

3.  Federal Reserve Announces Details of Program to Purchase Mortgage-Backed Securities - The Federal Reserve on Tuesday announced that it expects to begin operations in early January under the previously announced program to purchase mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and that it has selected private investment managers to act as its agents in implementing the program. - FRB Atlanta Announcement

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   IRA ARTMAN SECTION - thanks Ira: 

3 articles From Reed Construction Data:
1.  Mortgage refinancing surge will help economy but not housing - Jim Haughey - RCD Chief Economist
2.  When will home prices stop falling? - Jim Haughey - RCD Chief Economist
3.  pix rcd1  Recession hits Northwestern and Southeastern states hard - Jim Haughey - RCD 
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1.  Was the ‘Credit Crunch’ a Myth Used to Sell a Trillion-Dollar Scam? - By Joshua Holland -  Even as the media continue to repeat the claim that credit has frozen up, evidence has emerged suggesting the entire story is wrong -  AlterNet 

2.  Facts and Myths about the Financial Crisis of 2008 - V.V. Chari, Lawrence Christiano, and Patrick J. Kehoe - Here we examine three claims about the way the financial crisis is affecting the economy as a whole and argue that all three claims are myths. - Working Paper 666 Minneapolis FED