Monday, December 17, 2007
McLean, VA - Can a custom made video posted to YouTubeT keep troubled borrowers from losing their homes to fraud artists? Freddie Mac aims to find out.
One of the nation's largest investors in residential mortgages, Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) decided to produce an Internet video dramatizing a common foreclosure fraud scheme after a new survey found one-in-four delinquent borrowers go to the Internet before their bank or lender for information about avoiding foreclosure. Freddie Mac's anti-fraud video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/AvoidFraud.
Freddie Mac's two-minute YouTube video uses professional actors to demonstrate how con artists can:
Get copies of foreclosure notices at City Hall or a county courthouse;
Persuade distressed borrowers to give up the deeds in exchange for suspicious promises to solve their financial problems;
Use the deeds to secure new loans for themselves; and,
Let the new loans go into foreclosure, which means the homeowners looking ...
| Posted by maricela at 11:24 AM |
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Thursday, November 08, 2007
Productivity Surges by 4.9 Percent Rate
from The Associated Press
WASHINGTON November 7, 2007, 5:13 p.m. ET · Worker productivity surged in the summer at the fastest pace in four years while wage pressures eased.
The Labor Department reported that productivity - the amount of output per hour of work - jumped at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the July-September quarter. That was more than twice the 2.2 percent rise in the second quarter and was the fastest surge in worker efficiency since 2003.
At the same time, wage pressures eased. Unit labor costs dropped at an annual rate of 0.2 percent, the best showing in more than a year.
Both outcomes were far better than expected and should relieve some concerns that a surge in productivity that began in the mid-1990s was in danger of being reversed.
The slight drop in wage pressures was especially welcome after hefty increases over the past four quarters. Rising wages are good for workers. But if higher wages are not accom...
| Posted by maricela at 10:21 AM |
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