Third-quarter figures show a 27.6% drop compared with a year earlier. Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Francisco are also hit hard.

By Peter Y. Hong (LA Times)

U.S. home prices continued to fall at a record-breaking pace in the third quarter, with the Los Angeles area posting among the sharpest declines, according to a prominent index released today.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of home prices was down 16.6% in the three months ending in September from the same period a year ago. Home prices in the Los Angeles area, which includes Orange County, were down 27.6% compared with the third quarter of 2007.

The third-quarter national decline was greater than the respective annual declines in the second and first quarters of the year, which were 15.1% and 14% respectively.

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Note: I found this to be an interesting read considering my pops is an educator (LAUSD) and works within a magnet program.

The programs have frequently achieved their goal of voluntary integration and high-quality academic programs, a report says. But funding is stagnating, partly due to nation’s budget woes.

By Howard Blume (LA Times)

Support for magnet schools has foundered nationwide even though they continue to shine compared to other types of public schools, including charters, researchers concluded in a report released today.Magnet programs, created to promote voluntary integration, have suffered court setbacks, stagnant federal funding and local budget cuts.

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Can you believe that the unemployment rate jumped from 6.1 to 6.5 percent in October alone?! When the economy busted it’s back right tire, veered off the side of the highway, and crashed into a tree, I wasn’t affected. I remember having conversations with my friends and asking them, “Am I an idiot to go on a shopping spree when people are getting laid off and jumping off of buildings?” At the time, I was rolling in the dough and brand new shoes were more important than anything. My job situation was on lock and I had not a care in the world. Little did I know that as of November 26th, I would be… dun dun dun dun DUNNNNNN…UNEMPLOYED. So much for that dirty, old, rusty lock…

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The financial crisis, which has caused a dramatic decline in the value of the average worker’s account, has undermined confidence in the system.

By Jim Puzzanghera (LA Times)

Reporting from Washington — For nearly three decades, working Americans have been part of a huge experiment with their future well-being: Old-fashioned pensions that guaranteed specific retirement benefits have given way to old-age benefits that depend on personal investing in the financial markets.

But now, with those markets in crisis and the value of workers’ investments plunging, a bundle of ideas for modifying the system or replacing it entirely — ideas shunted aside when the stock market was soaring — are about to get a careful new look.

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About $2.5 trillion of real estate assets in California are at risk, with a projected annual price tag of between $300 million and $3.9 billion, according to a report by UC Berkeley researchers.

By Margot Roosevelt  (LA Times)

Eroding beaches, disappearing snowpacks, subdivisions decimated by wildfires — climate change in California could be expensive.

For the first time, the costs of global warming’s projected effects in the nation’s largest state have been quantified: About $2.5 trillion of real estate assets in California are at risk from extreme weather events, sea level rise and wildfires, with a projected annual price tag of between $300 million and $3.9 billion, according to a new report, “California Climate Risk and Response,” written by UC Berkeley researchers Fredrich Kahrl and David Roland-Holst.

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Federal officials hope that the simpler, quicker procedure for modifying loans held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will keep struggling homeowners from losing their houses.

By Jim Puzzanghera (LA Times)

Reporting from Washington — In an attempt to keep struggling homeowners from losing their houses, federal officials today announced a simpler and quicker procedure for modifying loans held by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and expressed hope that it would be adopted by the entire industry.

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In this article from Fortune.com, the author argues that people making between $250,000 and $500,000 are not “rich.”  He calls these people HENRYS (High Earners Not Rich Yet).  What do you consider “rich?”  $100,000?  $500,000?  $1 million?

Obama and the congressional Democrats frequently refer to households earning over $250,000 as the “rich” and the “wealthiest Americans.” But whether the HENRYs are truly “rich,” or ever will be, is debatable. In Fortune’s interviews with two dozen HENRYs from Charlotte to Concord, Calif., what emerged was a portrait of families a world away from the private jets, luxury vacation homes, and heated garages with Bentleys and Porsches lined up headlight to headlight that typically represent America’s vision of “rich.”

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