MBA - "Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest MBA Survey" (6-27-07)

"The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending June 22, 2007. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 618.6, a decrease of 3.9 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 643.7 one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 4.5 percent compared with the previous week and was up 16.3 percent compared with the same week one year earlier. The Refinance Index decreased 2.5 percent to 1731.6 from 1776.8 the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 4.9 percent to 428.9 from 450.9 one week earlier. The seasonally adjusted Conventional Index decreased 3.6 percent to 909.2 from 943 the previous week, and the seasonally adjusted Government Index decreased 7.4 percent to 134 from 144.7 the previous week."

Ventura County Star - "Buyers continue to wait out housing market" (6-27-07)

"Many homebuyers and sellers are familiar with the concept, watching from the sidelines, afraid to gamble on the slow housing market. Prospective buyers worried about falling real estate prices are staying away, which is the real reason that there's been a big drop in sales activity, said Bill Watkins, director of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project."

Market Watch - "Pimco sees subprime impact on homes, consumers" (6-27-07)

"Pimco Chief Investment Officer and founder Bill Gross Tuesday predicted that the subprime mortgage crisis's impact will spread beyond the housing sector and prompt the Federal Reserve to cut rates to stir a flagging economy. Gross, in an outlook for July posted on the Pimco Web site, said the mortgage-sector crisis will impact consumption and new home building over the next year to year and a half. The crisis 'may be just what the Fed has been looking for: easy credit becoming less easy, excessive liquidity returning to more rational levels.'"

Bloomberg - "Bear Stearns Turns to Marano for $1.6 Billion Bailout" (6-27-07)

"Bear Stearns Cos. assigned its top mortgage trader to help manage the $1.6 billion bailout of a money-losing hedge fund as it tries to unwind bets on investments tied to home loans. Thomas Marano, the 45-year-old global head of mortgages and asset-backed securities, was appointed after Bear Stearns agreed to provide financing to its High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund, said a person with knowledge of the decision. New York-based Bear Stearns, the fifth-biggest U.S. securities firm, said in a statement yesterday that it won't rescue a second fund, which borrowed more and sustained bigger losses."

Bloomberg - "Opaque Derivatives, Transparent Fed, `Bubblenomics': Timshel" (6-27-07)

"The most stunning aspect of the demise of two hedge funds belonging to Bear Stearns Cos. is the almost total absence of transparency surrounding the bailout. The debacle may finally provoke regulators, who have long suspected that buying derivatives is akin to running through a fireworks factory with a lighted blowtorch in each hand. Their focus is likely to fall on how to assign prices to complex derivatives, created by cooking together different flavors of securities whose values are driven by other assets such as stocks, bonds or mortgages."

The Raw Story - "US home sales fall; property glut hits new high" (6-27-07)

"Sales of existing US homes declined unexpectedly in May, dashing expectations that the struggling real estate market would show an uptick in sales, an industry survey showed Monday. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said existing home sales dropped 0.3 percent to an annualized pace of 5.99 million last month. The drop in May sales defied Wall Street forecasts which had predicted a sales clip of 6.00 million units."