The Federal Reserve and the Obama administration have put the continued poor state of the housing market front and center on their agendas in the first month of 2012 and now into early February.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman today filed a lawsuit against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo charging that using Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems' (MERS) electronic mortgage registry has resulted in a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure filings in New York state and federal courts.

Mark Gollin has joined Carlton as managing director who will run the company's European capital markets business.

Assured Guaranty has filed a lawsuit against UBS' real estate securities unit over breach of contract claims.

Interactive Mortgage Advisors (IMA) Denver, is selling a $589 million portfolio of residential servicing rights backed by Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae mortgages.

CoBiz Financial will begin providing asset-based loans to middle market businesses through its newly formed CoBiz Structured Finance.

It appears that possible salary and bonus caps at the GSEs are not hurting the recruiting efforts of at least Fannie Mae.

American Express has filed an S-3 with the Securities Exchange Commission to issue under its American Express Credit Account Master Trust.

Risk appetite in the U.S. triparty repo market is slowly returning, according to Fitch Ratings in a report released today.

The sheer number of varying stress test requirements — which may differ by a bank's asset size, business or charter choice — is raising concerns about whether regulators will be able to consistently apply the rules to the largest banks.

Cash-out refinancings hit a 26-year low in the fourth quarter as 85% of borrowers maintained the same loan amount or reduced their principal balance after refinancing, according to a new report by Freddie Mac.