Santa Cruz Sentinel - "Foreclosure puts local homes on the auction block" (1-18-08)

"Six Santa Cruz County properties will go on the block Feb. 23 in San Mateo. Locations include Aptos, Ben Lomond, Boulder Creek, Santa Cruz and Watsonville. All of these are properties taken back by the lender after foreclosure. Starting bids range from $29,000 for a 320-square-foot cottage, 1513 Jackson Ave., Ben Lomond, to $269,000 for a 1,370-square-foot house at 229 Market St., Santa Cruz."

AZSTARNET.COM - "Tucson '07 new-home spending fell by 25%" (1-18-08)

"Spending on new homes in the Tucson area dropped by more than $567 million in 2007, according to a report by a local housing market consultant. The total amount spent on new homes last year was about $1.67 billion, according to the December Southern Arizona Housing Market Letter from consultant John Strobeck. That was down about 25 percent from the previous year, likely the steepest drop in more than a decade, Strobeck said."

Yahoo - "Paulson Predicts Quick Stimulus Plan" (1-18-08)

"Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson predicted Friday that the administration and Congress can come together quickly to enact a stimulus package that would bring help within weeks to an economy that is threatening to topple into a recession."

Yahoo - "Tax rebates: Where's your check" (1-18-08)

"Consumers fuel the economy and if they're strapped, the thinking goes, better get them some cash to spend. The biggest component of any government plan to jump-start the economy is expected to be issuing tax rebate checks - both Republicans and Democrats are pushing the idea of sending out checks for several hundred dollars if not more."

The Washington Post - "Dire Year on Wall Street Yields Gigantic Bonuses" (1-18-08)

"Wall Street's five biggest firms together paid a record $39 billion in bonuses, even though three of them suffered the worst quarterly losses in their history and shareholders lost more than $80 billion. Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers Holdings and Bear Stearns together paid $65.6 billion in compensation and benefits last year to their 186,000 employees. Year-end bonuses usually account for 60 percent of the total, meaning bonuses exceeded the $36 billion distributed in 2006 when the industry reported all-time high profits."

Market Watch - "Bush calls for 'direct and rapid' stimulus" (1-18-08)

"A key part of the White House's plan involves income-tax relief but leaves out breaks on payroll taxes paid by poorer Americans. Washington's 2001 rebate was an income-tax rebate, not a payroll-tax rebate. That plan included rebates of either $300 or $600. This time the biggest rebates could reportedly be more than double those. The package should be equal to about 1% of gross domestic product, Bush said, which would be about $140 billion for a full year. Bush said that there's a risk of an economic downturn but that the White House expects the economy to continue to grow, echoing a view expressed by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in Capitol Hill testimony Thursday."

Bloomberg - "Sallie Mae to Cut 350 Jobs, Aims to Reduce Costs" (1-18-08)

"SLM Corp., the largest U.S. college- loan provider, is eliminating 350 jobs and seeks to cut 20 percent of its operating expenses to combat rising borrowing costs and shrinking federal subsidies to lenders. The workforce reduction equals about 3 percent of the lender's 11,000 employees, with layoffs in 26 locations, including the Reston, Virginia, headquarters, spokesman Tom Joyce said today in a phone interview. Earlier today, the Washington Post reported the job cuts and the company's plans to reduce operating costs by 20 percent by 2010."

Bloomberg - "Commercial-Mortgage-Bond Protection Costs Surge to New Records" (1-18-08)

"The cost of protection against defaults on commercial-mortgage-backed securities ended this week at records after Fitch Ratings tightened standards and some borrowers were unable to make their payments. A Markit CMBX index of credit-default swaps tied to 25 bonds rated AAA when created in mid-2007 surged to 122.19 basis points, or 45 percent higher than Jan. 11, according to Markit Group Ltd. The CMBX-NA-BBB- 4 index, tied to bonds with the lowest investment-grade ratings and backed by the same loan pools, jumped 26 percent to 1,564 basis points."

Los Angeles Times - "How I beat the bubble: Confessions of a market-timer" (1-18-08)

"Excellent piece of pre-weekend reading: LA Times real estate reporter Peter Hong's story of how he bailed out of the housing bubble in 2005. It starts off like this: 'Our friends said we were crazy. Relatives asked whether we were in financial trouble. But in April 2005, my wife and I bailed out of the American dream. We sold our two-bedroom Pasadena condominium and became renters again.'"