Bankruptcy Blogs

Housing policy needs to be refocused on strengthening household balance sheets, especially by making borrowersmore resilient to home price declines. A new 15-year fixed-rate mortgage that allows borrowers to use the down payment to buy down the interest rate on the loan is designed to do just that.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Making the Grade: If European regulators were being graded on their newly released banking stress tests, what kind of marks would they receive? The European Central Bank would probably have a few points shaved off for the errors and inconsistencies reported by the Wall Street Journal: it misstated the capital ratio of a "large Italian bank" and failed to report on a review of Polish banks' balance sheets because the data was...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's report on private student loans should prompt lenders, regulators and universities to take action to help troubled borrowers and prevent future defaults.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

The Results Are In: Most of the eurozone's big banks have enough capital to survive an economic upset, according to the results of regulators' long-awaited stress tests. Of the 130 banks under review, 13 were identified as needing to shore up $12 billion in additional capital. Italy had the largest share of financial flunkies, with Greece and Cyprus next in line. The Wall Street Journal applauds the European Central Bank for including...