Fannie, Freddie delay foreclosures, evictions

Fannie, Freddie delay foreclosures, evictions Mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are suspending foreclosures and evictions for about two weeks in a temporary break for borrowers during the holiday season. The suspension, announced Thursday by the government-controlled companies, runs from Saturday through Jan. 3.

Facebook's privacy policies challenged A Washington-based privacy advocacy group and nine other organizations have filed a complaint against Facebook over the social network's latest privacy changes. The Electronic Privacy Information Center said Thursday it has asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into the changes Facebook has made to its users' privacy settings and to force Facebook to restore its old privacy safeguards. The changes, unveiled last week, include treating users' names, profile photo, friends list, gender and other data as publicly available information.

Airlines lift advance-purchase requirement U.S. carriers such as Delta Air Lines and American Airlines lifted advance-purchase rules for most of the holiday travel season, dropping the cost of some last-minute tickets as much as 79 percent, Bestfares.com said. Airlines are waiving the policy, which increases fares bought just before travel, because of a lack of business passengers in the next three weeks, Tom Parsons, the research firm's chief executive, said Thursday in an e-mail. He said others lifting the advance-purchase policy are United, US Airways, AirTran, Frontier and Midwest.

Foreclosures continue to weigh down prices About 1.7 million homeowners were on the verge of foreclosure in the fall, creating a looming "shadow inventory" of homes that will be put up for sale in coming years and weigh down prices, a report said Thursday. The number, up from 1.1 million a year earlier, is likely to keep rising through mid-2010 or later, said Mark Fleming, chief economist of First American CoreLogic, the real estate research firm that released the study.

Bernanke wins vote in Senate committee A Senate panel on Thursday approved the nomination of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to run the nation's central bank for another four years. The Senate Banking Committee voted 16-7 to endorse Bernanke's nomination and forward it to the full Senate for consideration. Approval came after a two-hour debate that heaped both praise and criticism on the Fed chief. In voting for Bernanke, the panel's chairman, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said Bernanke's "wise leadership" will mean "better days do lie ahead." Although Bernanke, 56, appears to have enough votes to win a second term, six Republicans and one Democrat on the panel voted against him.

FedEx issues cautious short-term forecast FedEx says the economy has "reached a turning point," but a full recovery could still be a long way off. The world's second-largest package delivery company issued a tepid outlook for the quarter that ends in February, saying it's not sure if strong holiday season shipping volume will hold up. But in the long run, it sees strong demand in Asia and Latin America leading the way to global economic recovery.

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