From MarketWatch: The cost of insuring Spanish and Portuguese government debt against default via credit default swaps hit new records Monday, while the cost of insurance for Greek debt also rose, according to CMA DataVision. Whether or not this concern is justified, it shows investors are nervous.

May 27, 2009: MORTGAGE MARKET NOTE 09-2: Recent Evidence on Housing and Mortgage Market Conditions in California

Is Treasury Admitting Mortgage Modification Defeat?

How do you get borrowers to avoid walking away from homes that are deeply underwater without encouraging more to follow by writing down principal balances? One idea: Pay them to keep paying their mortgage. The novel approach is being touted by Loan Value Group LLC, a firm selling their idea—and ready-made application—to mortgage investors nervous about the risk of strategic default, where borrowers from their homes even though they can afford to pay their mortgages. The firm says it’s signed up an undisclosed mortgage investor to test a pilot program with a few hundred borrowers. Here’s how the program works: The mortgage investor (possibly joining with other risk holders, such as mortgage insurers or second-mortgage holders) offers a cash reward to borrowers if they agree to keep paying their mortgage. The incentive amount varies by borrower depending on income, negative equity, geography and other risk factors—those who are more likely to cause steep losses receive a bigger carrot. The “responsible homeowner reward” grows for up to five years as the borrower makes monthly mortgage payments. The borrower can’t collect that cash payment until the mortgage is paid off (though investors could allow the reward to be used towards paying off the mortgage in a sale or refinancing if the reward amount is enough to close the transaction). The main goal of the program is to avoid the moral hazard and upfront costs to the investor associated with writing down borrowers loans. “When you make it so a borrower doesn’t have to do anything negative to get the reward, you remove moral hazard,” says Frank Pallotta, a founder of Loan Value Group who previously led mortgage banking teams at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. The size of the reward isn’t going to make up for the borrower’s entire negative equity whole, but Mr. Pallotta says the incentive payments are designed to present enough of a “shock-and-awe number upfront” to change the borrower’s psychology. Instead of thinking about...

Here are 10 of the most informative charts I’ve seen regarding Friday’s NFP: > Click for bigger (and in some cases, ginormous) charts No Job Gains for a Decade ~~~ Percentage Job Loss form Recession Start ~~~ Cumulative Job Losses ~~~ Unemployment Rate — Recessionary Peaks ~~~ Job Losses 3 Month Moving Average ~~~ U3, U6 Unemployment Rates ~~~ Temporary Help Situation ~~~ Using Unemployment Levels to Date Recessions ~~~ Job Losses in Manufacturing ~~~ Months to Recover Job Losses , Post WW2 Recessions

The Fed's Bernanke will begin this week to lay out a credit-tightening blueprint to be used when the central bank decides the economy has recovered sufficiently.

CoStar Group buys downtown Washington building for $41.3 million, far below the $79 million the trade group said it paid in 2007

The Treasury’s decision to stop increasing the size of debt auctions may temper a rise in bond yields and bolster the economy just as the Federal Reserve withdraws emergency spending measures.

Regulators issue statement on lending to creditworthy small businesses