Home Front - Following The Subprime Fallout

2011 was the worst year on record for the nation's builders, in sales and starts, but demand is slowly returning, and the concern is that when demand really surges in the coming years, there will be too little supply to meet it.

Tracking China's economic course during the Lunar New Year can leave analysts howling at the moon. January auto sales tumbled, yet oil imports were the third highest on record. A closer examination of the data show bearish signals lurking beneath confusing headlines.

China's third-tier city of Wuhu, in eastern Anhui province, has relaxed restrictions on purchases of homes, easing limits on multiple home buyers and raising cash subsidies, the official China Securities Journal reported on Friday.

When foreclosures were fast and furious, some cities experienced more than their share of the pain. But according to Realtor.com, some of these cities are now leading the way toward recovery. Click ahead to see which American cities made this year’s list of the top 10 turnaround towns.

President Barack Obama addressed the biggest federal/state settlement in U.S. history, in which U.S. banks will provide $26 billion in relief to distressed homeowners and states.

It took more than a year to strike a deal, but here it is, the biggest government-industry settlement in history, surpassing even big tobacco.

The Federal Reserve announced on Thursday that as part of the larger $25 billion foreclosure settlement agreed to by U.S. banks and states that it was imposing penalties totaling $766.5 million on five U.S. banks over their mortgage servicing practices.

Homeowners who kept up on their payments would lose while those who fell behind would win under an apparent deal between big banks and state governments, banking analyst Dick Bove said.

China's inflation accelerated in January to a three-month high of 4.5 percent. That surprise, added to the country's central bank failing to cut reserve requirements for banks in the past month, could threaten the recent rally in Chinese stocks, according to one strategist.

China's annual inflation rate accelerated to 4.5 percent in January, well ahead of market expectations and breaking a five-month trend of easing price pressures as consumers ramped up spending during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday season.