PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. Heralds House Vote to Extend Tax Deductibility for Mortgage Insurance Premiums (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance)
The PMI Group, Inc. applauds Thursday's overwhelming vote in the House of Representatives to pass H.R. 3648, which, among other things, extends the tax provision enabling low- to moderate-income homebuyers to deduct the cost of mortgage insurance premiums from their federal income tax returns until 2014.

Bear Stearns Cuts 310 Mortgage Jobs, to Merge Units (Update4) (Bloomberg.com)
Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Bear Stearns Cos., the second-biggest underwriter of U.S. mortgage-backed securities, is cutting 310 jobs from units that originate mortgages after the firm reported the biggest profit decline in more than a decade.

Tax breaks keep Arizona Iced Tea on Long Island (Newsday)
Moving the headquarters of Arizona Iced Tea's corporate parent from one end of northern Nassau County to the other will not be cheap: The county and the state have promised substantial grants and tax breaks, and the company itself will spend millions of dollars outfitting its new Woodbury facility.

Business digest (Whittier Daily News)
PHOENIX - Federal designation of swaths of Arizona and Southern California as a critical electric transmission corridor could open the door for Southern California Edison to build a major cross-desert power line that Arizona has rejected, a state regulator said Tuesday.

Nearly Four in 10 Mortgages to Minorities Were Subprime in 2006 (PR Newswire via Yahoo! News)
Mortgage lending to minorities was down seven percent in 2006, according to a new analysis released today at the 3rd Annual Mortgage Lending Industry Emerging Markets and Diversity Conference outside Washington, D.C. The only exception was among African Americans, which showed an increase of 0.6 percent over the prior year.