Federal regulators have charged the former treasurer of a private mortgage lending company for her role in a more than $1.9 billion fraud scheme and an attempt to scam the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Desiree Brown, the former treasurer of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker (TBW), pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit bank, wire and securities fraud, which contributed to the failures of Colonial Bank and TBW, according to US Attorney Neil H. MacBride for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Take near historical low mortgage rates, combine it with a huge drop in home values and a glut of homes for sale, and what do you get?

A new housing boom, right? You would think.

One of the most high profile players in the subprime lending crisis is going to trial in October.

A US District Judge in Los Angeles denied a motion to dismiss the civil charges against three former top executives at Countrywide Financial Corp.--Chief Executive Officer Angelo Mozilo, chief operating officer and president David Sambol and chief financial officer Eric Sieracki.

This trend has now reached California, so it's about to become a whole lot more meaningful.

Again, this may be a matter of paperwork, but at minimum, it seems like banks will have to spend time and money straightening out their claims to homes on loans they've securitized.

The report in the New York Times today http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/business/12debt.html?_r=1&ref=business about the huge amount of home equity loans that have been written off or barely paid back is very disturbing, and a stark reminder about a major reason the entire globe continues to feel the effects of the mortgage crisis.

It is also a reminder that this crisis was not just caused by sub-prime mortgages, but also by greed among the many people who took out the mortgages and loans to buy boats, luxury cars, extensions on their homes and expensive colleges.

If the Federal Reserve Bank of New York requires mortgage originators to repurchase mortgages acquired through the bailouts of companies like American International Group and Bear Stearns, as it said it might, banks could face weaker earnings and reduced lending capacity as a result.

Second-quarter earnings showed that recovery is on its way for banks, with, for example, Morgan Stanley beating analysts' forecasts. But there's still some pressure on the industry.

Congress is finally working on a bill on covered bonds, hoping to boost investor demand and give banks another route to fund some of their loans. But if passed in its current form, the bill will have some flaws, including insufficient overcollateralization and inconsistent regulatory regimes for different types of issuers.

The House of Representative Financial Services Committee sent the United States Covered Bond Act of 2010 to the floor of the House last week.

Canadian banks have so far avoided the damage done by the financial crisis, as opposed to their US counterparts, but that may not be the case for much longer.

A mortgage bubble with lax lending standards and borrowers overextending themselves is lurking in Canada, and could plague its banks with bad loans.

On a day we get word that the U.S. economy grew just 2.2 percent in the third quarter, down from an original estimate of 3.5 percent, it shouldn't come as a shock to see more evidence that the consumer is hurting. And badly at that.

Consumer delinquency rates for bankcards, first mortgages and home equity lines of credit again rose month-to-month in November, according to Equifax's monthly credit trend report.

Home mortgages at least 30 days late reached another record of 7.91 percent in November, up from 7.76 percent in October and 7.65 percent the previous month. A year ago the delinquency rate stood at 5.83 percent and at 3.93 percent in November 2007.

The volume of new asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities issuance reached $499 billion year-to-date, a 3 percent increase over 2008 levels, according to data from Thomson Reuters.  That follows a nearly 85 percent decline in 2008 from levels a year earlier.

Issuers in the United States account for 38 percent of overall activity this year, followed by UK-based issuers with 15 percent.

Thomson noted that "the market for securitizations of residential mortgages, credit card receivables and auto receivables has slowly returned aided by US government guarantee programs."