Steve Pearlstein at the Washington Post has some interesting points on foreclosures and how to sort this mess, both banks and borrowers must do the right thing Listening to the fiery rhetoric about the mortgage mess emanating from politicians this week, you’d think that big bad banks were trying to foreclose on hundreds of thousands [...]

The quotes below are from a review of a new book by Raghuram Rajan, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, called “Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy.” A sample: The credit market—at least as regards to housing—was distorted by government policy, not by a sudden and mysterious escalation in [...]

Economist Karl Case was interviewed by BusinessWeek regarding housing starts, which he says is “dead flat in the mud.” Here’s an excerpt on why Case thinks housing starts are slow: Case attributed this disconnect to fewer immigrants and more emigrants, as well as the “doubling-up phenomenon” where more people choose to live together or reside [...]

What happened to that dog? You know, the canine named “Trouble,” the beloved Maltese poodle left behind by the late Leona Helmsley, who died in 2007. From the WSJ blog: Trouble initially inherited a $12 million trust fund, which was later reduced to $2 million by a Manhattan judge in 2008, at the request of [...]

Superb, hard-hitting collection of art from Dee’s Illustration.com. There are many more where these came from. Click pictures to enlarge.

The following commentary was wrriten by Lawrence Yun who is the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors: The extension and expansion of the home buyer tax credit can be counted on to help home sales throughout the first half of this year, but how will markets fare after the credit expires on April [...]

The government will soon scale back stimulus programs that have kept mortgage rates low, business reporter Walter Hamilton says. Buying a house is likely to get more expensive. Read the story here.

According to a new study 50% MA home buyers in 2009 were made by first-time buyers. February 10, 2010 – A new study on Massachusetts home buyers and sellers found that over 50 percent of all homes purchased in the Bay State in 2009 were made by first-time home buyers (compared to 47 percent nationally). [...]

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