US & World News

European shares regain some ground Tuesday morning, after two sessions of fall in fear of a worsening debt crisis euro and its impact on the banking system.

At 9:13, the CAC 40 index takes 0.54%.

London rose by 0.4% and 0.3% of Milan, Frankfurt rebounds by 0.4% and the EuroStoxx 50 returned 0.46%.

Stoxx index of bank takes 0.53%.

Investor confidence in the euro area in September hit its lowest level in over two years, the institute said Monday Sentix.

The index fell to -15.4 in September, its lowest level since August 2009, after -13.5 in August.

The current conditions component fell to -3.25 after 3.50, but the expectations rose slightly to -26.75 -29.00 after.

The federal agency that oversees the mortgage market in the United States may soon file a complaint against several major banks for their role in the subprime crisis, which weighed on bank stocks on Wall Street Friday.

The Federal Agency for Real Estate Finance (Federal Housing Finance Agency), which oversees the giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, accuses several major banks have given a misleading picture of the quality of mortgages bundled and sold during the housing bubble, said on Friday a source close to the matter.

These loans, said subprime, are the cause of the bursting of the real estate bubble in late 2008.Institutions making home loans had significantly eased lending standards to attract new customers and sell homes they had no way to pay, betting on a continued increase in the property market.

The existence of this complaint in a pending first was reported Thursday by The New York Times before being confirmed Friday by a source contacted by Reuters.

The source declined to name the specific bank, but according to the New York Times, citing three people familiar with the matter, the government agency will continue to include Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

By 1515 GMT on Wall Street, as BofA unscrewed more than 6%, yielding 3.5% JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs lost 4.6% while the Dow Jones fell by 1.6%.

Costly litigation

The complaint will be filed Friday or next Tuesday, understands the New York Times. Those responsible for BofA, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs did not wish to make comment.

"We can not express a complaint which we are not aware and has not yet been filed," said a spokesman for Deutsche Bank in the NYT.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost more than $ 30 billion mainly due to purchases of securities backed by real estate debt.It took public money to correct their accounts.

The federal agency in housing finance has already filed a complaint against UBS in July, seeking to recover at least $ 900 million and, according to those quoted by the New York Times, the new proceedings will be of a similar financial scale.

The major U.S. banks are already facing the possibility of having to pay tens of billions of dollars in settlement of disputes relating to their activity in the mortgage.

This scenario would further reduce their levels of capital, potentially paving the way for a credit crunch even though the housing market is at half mast and that the U.S. economy as a whole shows signs of slowing down.

Sign of anxiety about this, the U.S. Federal Reserve has asked Bank of America to present the measures it would take if business conditions were deteriorating, reports the Wall Street Journal Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.