From The Herald Tribune article:
NEW YORK: In yet another casualty of the fallout in the mortgage industry, Capital One Financial said that it would stop making residential mortgages and close GreenPoint Mortgage, its wholesale mortgage banking unit.
This is the third(?) major mortgage company in a week to either scale back, close division(s) or declare bankruptcy. [...]

From the CNNMoney article:
Countrywide Financial Corp has started laying off workers
involved in originating loans as it moves to cut costs in an effort to
weather a credit crunch, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an
email on Friday from within the company.
Even after receiving an infusion of $11.5 Billion in additional loans, Countrywide is working to stabilize [...]

About an hour before the U.S. markets’ opening bell, the Federal Reserve dropped the Overnight Discount Rate by .5%. The markets initially reacted like the Fed was passing out free money, moving the DJIA up over 300 points briefly. (as of 9:30 CST, the market is still up abour 150 points).
First, what actually is the [...]

Wikipedia :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_meltdown

With thanks to Dr. Strangelove, I thought about what the housing ‘bubble’ bursting means to someone that doesn’t plan on moving anytime soon. I and the family are quite happy where we are for the moment. The mortgage is well within our means, and we aren’t going to be having any increases in family size [...]