At the same time, several steps can be taken to reduce foreclosures.

A weaker economy means more bankruptcies and home foreclosures and higher unemployment.

And banks had a voluntary moratorium on foreclosures, holding supply off the market.

Meanwhile, insolvencies and foreclosures triggered by excessive interest burdens are not reversed by later rate cuts.

a rapid reduction of insolvent households debt burden, preceded by a temporary freeze on all foreclosures

Indeed, the pace of foreclosures would be set to increase were it not for government intervention.

Significantly, foreclosures rose 7 month on month in June, and a whopping 32 compared to June 2008.

Given the large number of negative equity homeowners, there is a risk that defaults and foreclosures will continue.

Unfortunately, there is no program to deal with the defaults and foreclosures caused by high loan to value ratios.

Worse, there are images of foreclosures, of families being evicted from their homes, their furniture and belongings on the street.

To prevent housing prices from overshooting on the downside, the number of foreclosures has to be kept to a minimum.

J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank have paid substantial sums to settle charges ranging from bribery to illegal foreclosures to abetting tax evasion.

In addition, high loan to value ratios in the US interact with household financial problems to increase the number of defaults and foreclosures.

In the US, the protests of 2011 will have a lasting effect only if Occupiers remain organized and continue their work on fighting foreclosures.

Decreased rates of household formation young Americans, for example, are increasingly moving back in with their parents depress housing prices, leading to still more foreclosures.

House prices probably will fall further, so there will be more foreclosures, and no amount of talking up the market is going to change that.

If interest rates rise too far, then the collapse in housing values will lead to large scale foreclosures and a collapse in consumption spending as well.

In the old days, when borrowers found it impossible to make their payments, mortgages would be restructured foreclosures were bad for both the borrower and the lender.

And the lower prices lead to more negative equity and therefore to more defaults and foreclosures. It is not clear what will stop this self reinforcing process.

In America, for instance, bad debt and foreclosures are at levels not seen for three quarters of a century the decline in credit in 2009 was the largest since 1942.

We imagine residential streets with one for sale sign after another. Worse, there are images of foreclosures, of families being evicted from their homes, their furniture and belongings on the street.

Of course, the millions of personal bankruptcies and home foreclosures in the US are not popular, but they provide debt relief each time, thereby enabling households to make a fresh start.

The Bush administration is hoping, somehow, to forestall a wave of foreclosures thereby passing the economy s problems on to the next president, just as it is doing with the Iraq quagmire.

The 2.5 3.5 million foreclosures expected this year will exceed those of 2009, and the year began with what is expected to be the first of many large commercial real estate bankruptcies.

The fall in house prices also led to a sharp rise in mortgage defaults and foreclosures, which has increased the supply of homes on the market and caused house prices to fall further.

And because we started this work around the time of the financial collapse, around the time when foreclosures were hitting the news, we said, hhmm, maybe we should actually start in the financial domain.

And because we started this work around the time of the financial collapse, around the time when foreclosures were hitting the news, we said, hhmm, maybe we should actually start in the financial domain.

Even though 10 of US households with mortgages had already lost their homes, the pace of foreclosures appeared to be increasing or would have, were it not for legal snafus that raised doubts about America s vaunted rule of law.

Delinquencies, defaults, and foreclosures are now spreading from sub prime to near prime and prime mortgages. Thus, total losses on mortgage related instruments include exotic credit derivatives such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) will add up to more than 400 billion.

Despite scandal after scandal, from money laundering and market manipulation to racial discrimination in lending and illegal foreclosures, no senior official has been held accountable when financial penalties have been imposed, they have been far smaller than they should be, lest systemically important institutions be jeopardized.

Throwing money at banks hasn t helped homeowners foreclosures continue to increase. Letting AIG fail might have hurt some systemically important institutions, but dealing with that would have been better than to gamble upwards of 150 billion and hope that some of it might stick where it is important.

Short term emergency policies are needed to deal with high unemployment, home foreclosures, business bankruptcies, and often with hunger, disease, and a number of other ills. Emergency or humanitarian policies may improve basic consumption in the short run, but they may also discourage investment, increase inflation, and lower prospects for economic in the long run.