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Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) is stepping up and speaking out in defense of JPMorgan Chase, calling the U.S. government's lawsuit against the financial institution a case of ""no good deed goes unpunished."" New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a suit against JPMorgan on October 1 for the alleged misconduct of Bear Stearns & Co. prior to JPMorgan's acquisition of the failing investment bank, and Frank says he has first-hand knowledge that federal officials urged JPMorgan to ""do a good deed"" by taking over an institution which JPMorgan would never have sought to acquire absent that urging.

The Federal Reserve's recently-announced commitment to keep interest rates low until 2015 isn't doing much to persuade consumers to borrow, according to Bankrate's Financial Security Index for October. Seventy-four percent of consumers said they are not interested in taking on debt, while 23 percent said they are more inclined to borrow. Three percent said they did not know. While the Fed's announcement was intended to stimulate economic activity, it may have had the opposite effect, one expert told Bankrate.

Foreclosure inventory continued to diminish in September, but the delinquency rate saw a sudden month-over-month surge, according to the ""first look"" mortgage report from Lender Processing Servicers (LPS), which has a loan-level database covering about 70 percent of the market. The delinquency rate, which stood at 7.40 percent in September, hiked up 7.72 percent from August, but is still down by 4.19 percent from a year ago.

The mortgage lending division of Carrington Mortgage Services, LLC (Carrington) was inducted into the Ellie Mae Hall of Fame for mortgage technology.

Special servicers are now a must-have in the repertoire of the servicing industry, according to executives at Wingspan Portfolio Advisors. The Dallas-based servicer said it believes its own growth is evidence of the rising need for special servicers.

At the 99th annual Mortgage Bankers Association conference, President David H. Stevens called on active involvement from the association's members as MBA ramps up its presence in Washington, hoping to affect change in the way the housing industry regulation is currently viewed and approached. Stevens voiced the need for the administration to put in place a housing policy coordinator, ""a traffic cop for all new rules."" He also expressed hopes to change the GSEs' rulemaking process to allow for comment from the industry prior to implication.

Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) announced enhancements to McDash, the company's loan level database, through the addition of two supplemental data modules.

The FDIC's deposit insurance fund got a little bit lighter Friday as three more banks fell. GulfSouth Private Bank of Destin, Florida; Excel Bank of Sedalia, Missouri; and First East Side Savings Bank of Tamarac, Florida, were all liquidated bringing the national failure tally to 46 so far in 2012 and costing the FDIC's insurance fund a combined total of approximately $86.1 million.

Home prices reached a sustainable bottom during the first quarter of this year, according to Barclays' U.S. residential credit strategy team. In many markets, longer-term affordability measures point to equilibrium, the firm's analysts contend. While the floor appears to have materialized, they stress that home prices are likely to recover slowly over the next 4 to 5 years, increasing on average 3 to 4 percent annually. At that rate, Barclays' analysts explained, home prices will remain below their 2006 pre-crisis peaks until June 2021.

Two former executives of American Mortgage Specialists Inc. pled guilty Friday in a federal court in North Dakota for their part in a $27 million bank fraud scheme that put BNC National Bank at risk, according to a release from the Justice Department.