Economy, Bank Bailout | featured news

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage-finance giants, this week reported some of their best quarterly results since the real estate collapse. On Wednesday, Fannie Mae posted second-quarter net income of $5.1 billion. That is up from $2.7 billion in the first quarter of this year and an improvement from a net loss of $2.9 billion in the second quarter of last year. Fannie requested no additional money from the Treasury and said it would pay a $2.9 billion dividend to taxpayers.

Banks are finally beginning to lend, the big ones that is. Commercial and industrial lending is up this quarter 0.2% from the third quarter, according to Moody's Analytics. That might not sound like much, but it's the first quarterly increase in two years. This is great, right? After all, if banks are lending more to businesses, they can expand and begin to hire. That's true, but this trend reveals something else: the financial crisis has created an environment where big banks are getting bigger, as the small ones struggle.

The government's giant bank bailout may well have averted a second Great Depression, economists say, but a lot of voters aren't buying it. Support for the program is turning into a kiss of death for many in Congress.

Ireland's government moved to reassure anxious investors by announcing it will split nationalized lender Anglo Irish Bank in a bid to contain the impact of the bank's bailout on the country's economy.

A Senate committee on Wednesday passed a proposal aimed at helping protect the economy from future meltdowns and taxpayers from more Wall Street bailouts.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the government rescued American International Group Inc. to prevent a "catastrophic" blow to the U.S. economy, not to save any of AIG's counterparties.

President Barack Obama singled out financial institutions for causing much of the economic tailspin and criticized their opposition to tighter federal oversight of their industry....

The ailing economy. Health care. Bank bailouts. Troop deployments. Is President Obama juggling too many balls?

House members want the eight big banks to increase their lending and explain what they are doing with the taxpayers’ money.