It's been called a crisis of confidence. It started with bad real estate loans and highly leveraged bets on those loans. Now it has frozen credit markets. Banks aren't lending to each other. Businesses can't get the short-term loans they need to finance day-to-day operations.

Within the span of a week, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have gone from saviors to Satans.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is moving to replace existing rules-based accounting standards with principles-based, international ones in filing requirements.

President Bush has signed into law a housing package passed by Congress last week that authorizes the Treasury Department to spend federal funds to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if necessary.

A geographic mapping of subprime and Alt-A loans in the Phoenix metropolitan area has revealed some unexpected results: these risky mortgages are not scattered, but cluster in certain cities and neighborhoods.

A firm going public relies on the capital raised in its initial public offering to grow and thrive, but studies have found that IPOs in the United States are underpriced an average of 15 percent.

In Part 5 of our series on the subprime market, real estate finance Professor Anthony Sanders, Jeffrey Coles, chairman of the finance department at the W. P. Carey School of Business and Steven Davidson, vice president, capital market research, Securities Industry and Financial Markets

In Part 3 of our five-part series on the subprime market, real estate finance Professor Anthony Sanders, Jeffrey Coles, chairman of the finance department at the W. P. Carey School of Business and Steven Davidson, vice president, capital market research, for the Securities Industry and

It's understandable that some economic forecasters, spooked by gloomy indicators, say the U.S. is heading into or already in a recession — but they may be overlooking key factors that buffer negative forces, according to Richard Kovacevich, chairman of Wells Fargo & Co.

In Part 2 of our five-part series on the subprime market, real estate finance Professor Anthony Sanders maps the occurrence of subprime loans in the metro Phoenix market.