The SEC, tired of being left out of the regulatory party, has launched a few initiatives this week to punish those who are responsible for the current credit crisis: short sellers and rumormongers.

In what regulators have described as the second-largest bank failure in the history of the United States, IndyMac Bank has been seized by Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) due to plummeting shares and the start of a run on the bank. This is the fifth FDIC-insured failure of the year.

The financial crisis symptom de jure: the struggles faced by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae the giant mortgage loan repackaging companies chartered by the U.S. government, and (assumed to be) guaranteed by Congress. In fact the loan guarantees with the Treasury Department that are available to the companies amount to only a few billion dollars, so the US government's official obligation to help is miniscule.

New York is creating a 90-day stalling period before foreclosure to give homeowners in trouble time to research their options. Fairfax, Virginia is using tax dollars to buy up foreclosed homes with the hope of stabilizing neighbors crashing property values. $180 million in tax dollars have already been allocated to the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling program, meant to talk homeowners through the process of fighting to keep their homes.

There is another side to this story that affects senior borrowers very deeply that must be considered and needs to be brought out. IndyMac Bank owns Financial Freedom and holds one of the largest portfolios of both government insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgages...

Foreclosure filings rose 53% in June from a year earlier and repossessions almost tripled, according to RealtyTrac. Nevada retained its title as the Foreclosure Capital of America with one in every 122 households in some stage of foreclosure, more than four times the national average.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown echoed the sentiments of his Illinois counter-part, citing lending practices that encouraged risky borrowing behavior as the key reason for filing a civil suit against Countrywide today in California court. The lawsuit also names Angelo Mozilo and President Dave Sambol in the suit.

Homes in foreclosure and homes entering the foreclosure process are up to levels not seen since 1979 reported the MBA today. Mortgage Bankers Association says more than One Million homes are up for foreclosure in USA as the housing market is in crisis.

Ambac, one of the top bond insurers in the country continued to hemorrhage cash on bad mortgage-related bets. Ambac reported a loss of $228 million in CDOs and its investment portfolio in April. Many of the CDOs include subprime mortgage debt.

UBS posted a $11 billion first quarter loss after taking a whopping $19 billion in mortgage-related losses. The company will cut 5,500 jobs in a restructuring effort to save the banking giant.

A group of mostly academic economists who formed what they call the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee Monday offered its own proposal to assist low-income real estate home buyers threatened with repossession. VOA's Barry Wood reports the group is opposed to the government idea of giving financial help to homeowners in distress.

Recently released figures have revealed that the number of foreclosures in the US state of California has more than quadrupled. The figures for the first quarter of 2008 show a significant increase on previous figures.