Reuters - White House hopeful John McCain pitched a $300 billion plan to help struggling homeowners on Wednesday as he tried to erode an advantage held by Democratic rival Barack Obama on economic issues.

Reuters - Pending sales of existing U.S. homes unexpectedly jumped in August to the highest in over a year, data from a real estate trade group showed on Wednesday.

AFP - Spain's new 30-billion-euro bank rescue fund is aimed at acquiring top-rated mortgages in exchange for injecting essential liquidity into the credit market, a government spokesman said Wednesday.

Reuters - American International Group Inc , a day after being criticized for a lavish event held just days after the insurer got an $85 billion government rescue loan, shot back on Wednesday saying the event was for independent life insurance agents, not its employees.

Reuters - U.S. consumer borrowing fell for the first time in more than a decade in August amid tighter credit markets, tougher lending standards and declining consumer spending, a Federal Reserve report showed on Tuesday.

Reuters - Republican U.S. presidential candidate John McCain on Tuesday said that if elected president he would order the Treasury Department to buy bad home mortgages and renegotiate them to help homeowners in trouble.

Reuters - U.S. life insurance company MetLife Inc on Tuesday said it expects to report income from continuing operations of $1.38 to $1.58 per share and premiums, fees and other revenues of $8.6 billion in the third quarter.

AP - The jammed credit markets barely budged Monday as governments around the world scrambled to prop up their failing banks and investors waited for details on how, exactly, the Treasury will go about buying $700 billion of U.S. banks' mortgage assets.

AFP - A global recession can be avoided with a coordinated plan to restore market confidence shattered by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis, the former International Monetary Fund chief said Tuesday.

AP - Facing a lawsuit over deceptive mortgage practices, Bank of America Corp. is agreeing to pay more than $8 billion to modify hundreds of thousands of loans to keep people from losing their homes.

AFP - Bank of America said Monday it was ready to spend up to 8.4 billion dollars to restructure the loan portfolio of mortgage giant Countrywide following settlement of a lawsuit targeting the firm's "predatory" lending practices.