A federal judge ruled that former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo must face allegations of securities fraud and insider trading in court, saying that the quality of loans that the mortgage lender was making would be of material interest to investors.

Bank regulators are punishing the wrong institutions for the financial crisis and are exacerbating the credit crisis by being overzealous in their restrictions on banks, a top Democratic lawmaker said.

After downgrading some 20 percent of its recent vintage commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) issues, Fitch Ratings is undertaking a thorough review of pre-2006 issues for possible downgrade.

The Federal Reserve may be close to doing its first deal using an emergency credit facility to aid the sale of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), the Wall Street Journal reported.

Arizona bankers continued their seesaw battle to eliminate the state's ban on deficiency judgments with a new appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court to block the repeal of legislation that removed the ban.

Transaction prices of commercial property sold by institutional investors rose in the third quarter for the first time in more than a year, suggesting that the U.S. commercial property market may have finally found a bottom, according to the MIT Center for Real Estate in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Delinquencies on single-family homes continued to rise at the two big government-sponsored mortgage lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, indicating that problems have yet to level off.

Goldman Sachs' latest clever idea to make money poses a dilemma for the government as the Wall Street firm negotiates to acquire tax credits from Fannie Mae.

Borrowers with no-doc loans are more likely to default. Borrowers in recourse states who may lose other assets in a default are less likely to walk away from a mortgage.

California's attorney general asked 10 leading mortgage lenders to detail their plans for modifying option adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), warning that the state will be the epicenter for a new wave of foreclosures as these loans reset in the coming years.