News and Finance

Progress Energy is looking to raise rates by 31 percent in Florida to deal with rising fuel prices, environmental improvements and planning for additional carbon-free nuclear power to meet future growth.
If Florida regulators approve the company's 2009 fuel-cost projections, clean-air expenses, nuclear pre-construction costs and other factors, the average residential monthly bill would increase by […]

Hope Now has helped more than 2 million at-risk borrowers stay in their homes during the past 13 months, according to numbers released by the coalition on Wednesday.
The alliance of mortgage servicers, counselors, and investors assembled to combat foreclosures fixed more than 192,000 problem loans during July, a one-month record that represents a […]

One year into the financial crisis, central bankers and scholars at the Federal Reserve's annual retreat this weekend couldn't agree on how to prevent a repeat.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, European counterpart Jean- Claude Trichet, former officials and economists meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, split over whether central banks should be made responsible […]

Gold, down 21 percent from a record $1,033.90 an ounce in March, may be headed down after open interest in New York futures contracts for the precious metal plunged to the lowest level in 11 months.
The CHART OF THE DAY shows open interest, or the total number of contracts yet to be closed, […]

Demand for rental homes in the U.K. climbed in the second quarter at the fastest pace in at least a decade as a slump in property prices deterred homebuyers, a report by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showed.
During the quarter, 37 percent more real-estate brokers reported an increase in new rental contracts […]

New Hampshire securities regulators on Thursday accused banking giant UBS of defrauding the state’s leading issuer of student loans.
In a civil complaint, the Bureau of Securities Regulation said UBS (UBS) Securities LLC knew the auction-rate securities market was on the verge of collapse in February, but was "actively encouraging" the lender to sell more […]

Prime mortgages are starting to default at disturbingly high rates - a development that threatens to slow any potential housing recovery.
The delinquency rate for prime mortgages worth less than $417,000 was 2.44% in May, compared with 1.38% a year earlier, according to LoanPerformance, a unit of First American (FAF, Fortune 500) CoreLogic that compiles […]

Almost one-third of U.S. homeowners who bought in the last five years now owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth, according to Zillow.com, an Internet provider of home valuations.
Second-quarter home prices fell 9.9 percent from a year earlier, giving 29 percent of owners negative equity, said Zillow, the Seattle-based service […]

A year after central banks started to pump trillions of dollars into the financial system to end a seizure in credit markets caused by subprime mortgages, cash is about as tight as it's ever been.
The U.S. market for commercial paper, or short-term IOUs, backed by assets such as mortgages has shrunk 40 percent […]

In Spain, unemployment is rising, the housing industry has collapsed and the finance minister says the near future may include “zero growth.''
It could have been worse.
In 1999, the Bank of Spain began requiring banks to boost reserves in anticipation of future write-offs for bad loans. The rules forced Spanish lenders to build […]