Reuters - Stocks extended gains on Wednesday as a reassuring outlook from Cisco Systems and a further drop in the price of oil overshadowed nagging concerns about the housing slump.

Reuters - Fannie Mae is raising some fees on mortgage loans its purchases, marking the fourth increase in nearly a year, to reflect higher credit risk and offset losses from continuing market deterioration.

Reuters - The Treasury said on Tuesday it hired Morgan Stanley to advise it on whether housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are adequately capitalized as the government tries to determine how it would use its new powers to support the two companies.

AFP - The collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the United States and the subsequent global financial crisis has provoked the sharpest fall on world stock markets since the end of the Internet bubble in 2001-2002.

Reuters - Morgan Stanley told thousands of clients this week that they will not be allowed to withdraw money on their home-equity credit lines, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the situation. Most of the clients had properties that have lost value, the agency reported, citing a person who declined to be identified.

AP - Wall Street fell Monday in an erratic session dominated by worries about inflation — which were somewhat soothed by a plunge in oil prices that took crude to its lowest level in three months.

Reuters - U.S. mortgage market giant Freddie Mac's chief executive dismissed internal warnings that could have protected the company from some of the financial problems now engulfing it, the New York Times said, citing more than two dozen current and former high-ranking executives and others.

Reuters - Europe's biggest bank HSBC reported a 28 percent fall in its first-half profit, in line with forecasts, as a $14 billion hit on bad debts on U.S. home loans and asset writedowns offset strong Asian growth.

AP - Stocks pulled off their lows Monday after a big drop in oil prices offset some of investors' concerns about a government report on inflation.

Reuters - Wachovia Corp shares fell as much as 10.3 percent on Monday after an analyst said investors should sell the shares of the fourth-largest U.S. bank and avoid the pain likely to result from repairing a balance sheet bloated with mortgage and real estate loans.