CHICAGO, Illinois - July 21, 2010 - Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayer infusions into the nation's financial system by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog said Wednesday.

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said the increase was due largely to the government's pledges to supply capital to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to guarantee more mortgages to support the housing market.

NEW YORK - July 20, 2010 - Goldman Sachs had an 83% drop in second-quarter net income but still got a vote of confidence from investors.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Tuesday its earnings fell to $453 million as trading revenue dropped during a dismal spring for the financial markets. The bank also booked a $550 million charge for its settlement of civil fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission and took a $600 million charge because of a new tax on employee bonuses in Britain.

WASHINGTON - July 19, 2010 - Regulators on Friday shut down three banks in Florida, two in South Carolina and one in Michigan, bringing to 96 the number of U.S. banks to succumb this year to the Depression and mounting loan defaults.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday took over the banks: Woodlands Bank, based in Bluffton, South Carolina, with $376.2 million in assets; First National Bank of the South, based in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with $682 million in assets; and Mainstreet Savings Bank of Hastings, Michigan, with $97.4 million in assets.

WASHINGTON (PNN) - July 19, 2010 - Homebuilders' confidence in the housing market has sunk to the lowest level in more than a year, fresh evidence that there is no real economic recovery happening.

The National Association of Home Builders said Monday its seasonally adjusted housing market index fell to 14 in July. It was the lowest level since March 2009. June's index level was revised downward to 16.

LONDON, England - July 18, 2010 - Euroland's authorities are inflicting a triple shock of fiscal, monetary, and currency tightening on a broken economy. They are doing so in a region where industrial output is still 14% below its peak, where growth barely scraped above zero over the winter "recovery", and where youth unemployment is at 40% in Spain, 35% in Slovakia, 29% in Italy, and 26% in Ireland.

LOS ANGELES, Kalifornia - July 15, 2010 - More than 1 million Amerikan households are likely to lose their homes to foreclosure this year, as lenders work their way through a huge backlog of borrowers who have fallen behind on their loans.

WASHINGTON - July 15, 2010 - Corporate Amerika is hoarding a massive pile of cash. It just doesn't want to spend it hiring anyone.

Nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash, roughly one-quarter more than at the beginning of the Depression; and as several major firms report impressive earnings this week, the money continues to flow into firms' coffers.