Dan Levy / Bloomberg | Thursday, July 10, 2008

U.S. foreclosure filings rose 53 percent in June from a year earlier and bank repossessions almost tripled as deteriorating property values and higher payments on adjustable mortgages forced more people to give up their homes.

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Grant Smith and Nesa Subrahmaniyan / Bloomberg | Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Crude oil rose, rebounding from its biggest decline in three months, after Iran test-fired a long- range missile capable of reaching Israel and the dollar fell.

Oil recovered as the Iranian exercise, reported on state television, heightened concerns of an attack by Israel on the Middle East’s second-biggest oil producer. The dollar dropped against the yen and euro after the missile test, making commodities priced in the U.S. currency cheaper.
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Natsuko Waki / Reuters | July 8, 2008

Fresh credit fears swept global financial markets on Tuesday, pushing world stocks to their lowest levels since October 2006 as concerns intensified that the financial sector would have to raise more capital.

Banks tumbled across the board after a Lehman Brothers report said a pending accounting change could force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to raise $46 billion and $29 billion respectively at a difficult time, knocking their shares to near 16-year lows on Monday.

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The Prairie Dog Press / Will Bagley | Monday, July 7, 2008

Watching Wall Street and the American real-estate market crumble over the past 10 months has not inspired great confidence in our wonderful free-market economy or the land pirates who run it. As someone who recently wrestled with the causes and consequences of the Great Depression, I find the current economic shipwreck not merely spooky but downright terrifying.

Working as a historian is a discouraging business. No one seems to learn anything from history - that’s pretty much a given - but we keep hoping. As a chronicler of the 19th century American West, I had my work cut out when a family friend asked me to write a biography of her father, Judge Wilson McCarthy.

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