Refinancing

Refinancing today is not the same game it was a few years ago, when homeowners with even a modest amount of equity and just so-so credit could score a great loan. You now need good credit, lots of equity and very little outside debt. "These are very traditional lending standards, but they're going to come as a shock to anybody who has only been in the market for the past 10 years," said Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH Associates, a Pompton Plains, N.J., publisher of loan information.

So you want to refinance your house, but it's not worth enough for you to get a good loan in the current market? A new Obama administration program is designed to fix that problem for millions of homeowners. Here's how it works. In the past, the federal Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage programs would only handle loans of up to 80% of your home's value, unless you bought mortgage insurance. And if you owed more than your home was worth, you were flat out of luck.

Proposals to limit executive pay are flying fast and furious in the wake of public furor over retention bonuses paid to executives at American International Group Inc. But here in the capital of capitalism, business leaders and compensation consultants maintain that restricting executive pay could cause more harm than good. The best and brightest business leaders would flee, they contend. Financial results, and ultimately stock prices, would suffer.

Countrywide Financial Corp., stuck with tens of billions of dollars in "alternative" mortgages it can't sell, is pushing customers to refinance into traditional loans that can be easily unloaded by the struggling lender. The home-loan giant seeks to have $12 billion of these exotic loans refinanced into uncontroversial mortgages and has told its sales force to pull out all the stops to get borrowers to go along, internal documents show.

A new incentive for lenders to refinance more mortgages is being considered by regulators who oversee the U.S. thrift industry, which suffered a record $5.2-billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2007 as the housing market deteriorated, the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision said Wednesday. The OTS said it was looking at a program to create "negative equity certificates," which would help borrowers stay in their homes and help thrifts recoup losses if a home's value falls dramatically.

With Wall Street's credit crunch turning costly for many states, cities and other government entities, a California financing agency says it wants to help municipal borrowers cut their interest rates on certain pricey debt. Under the program, the California Statewide Communities Development Authority would buy floating-rate debt of municipal borrowers in the state from the investors who now hold the securities.

Transportation planners today approved an agreement with Lehman Bros. and others to evaluate whether the bond debt for the 91 Freeway toll lanes in Orange County needs to be refinanced. The action was prompted after the bond insurer for the 91 Express Lanes debt was downgraded by several credit agencies. As a result, the interest rates on the bonds have increased and are now costing the Orange County Transportation Authority, which operates the toll lanes, $30,000 a week, an OCTA official said.

The latest government-backed effort to stem the country's soaring rate of foreclosures could help several hundred thousand borrowers keep their homes but will do little for 80% of seriously delinquent borrowers, especially in once-hot real estate markets such as California, federal officials said.

IndyMac Federal Bank, which has had trouble getting distressed borrowers to contact it about reworking the terms of their mortgages, is hoping they'll be more willing to talk over their options in person with loan counselors from nonprofit agencies. The lender and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which is now running the thrift, on Wednesday announced walk-in counseling sessions for borrowers the next two Saturdays in the Los Angeles area and the Inland Empire.