Some housing bubble reports from Wall Street. Bloomberg, "Toll Brothers Inc. said fiscal fourth-quarter profit slid 44 percent as orders tumbled and the company wrote down expenses for land. Net income in the three months ended Oct. 31 dropped to $173.8 million from $310.3 million a year earlier. Fiscal 2007 earnings may drop as much as 62 percent, Toll said today in a statement."

"'This spring is going to be very important,' said analyst Todd Vencil. 'Last year it was bad. It was not a good selling season. People just never showed up.'"

"Toll took a pretax charge of $115 million on optioned and owned land in the fourth quarter. On Nov. 7, it forecast a charge in the quarter of as much as $100 million. Toll included a pretax charge of $60 million for land- related writedowns in fiscal 2007 in its earnings forecast."

"The company cut the number of lots it controls to 74,000 at the end of the fourth quarter from 91,200 six months earlier."

"Toll said on Nov. 7 that orders slid 58 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter as more than one-third of customer contracts were canceled. 'With these cancellations creating unintended specs, we could face increasing margin pressure as we seek to move these homes,' CEO Robert Toll said. Nearly 25 percent of the cancellations came in the Orlando, Florida and Northern California markets, Toll said."

"'Fifteen months into the current slowdown, we may be seeing a floor in some markets where deposits and traffic, although erratic from week to week, seem to be dancing on the bottom, or slightly above,' said Toll in a statement."

"Morningstar analyst Eric Landry cautioned against reading too much into a possible bottoming out of the housing market. 'It's not hard to be better than it was, because it was awfully bad,' he said. 'It's still pretty much a given that there's too much inventory on all the home builders' books right now.'"

From CNN Money. "Late payments on subprime loans have surged, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on Tuesday, and while economists don't expect major harm, a continued rise could hurt investors in mortgage-backed securities."

"Based on current performance, 2006 is on track to be one of the worst ever for subprime loans, the report said. It cited the bank saying that roughly 80,000 subprime borrowers who took out mortgages packaged into securities this year are behind on their payments."

"HSBC holdings Plc, the world's third- biggest bank by market value, said third-quarter revenue growth slowed as bad loans rose in the U.S. and the U.K."

"In the U.S., where the bank gets the biggest share of pretax profit, loan delinquencies and writedowns increased from the first part of the year due to more bankruptcies and a weaker housing market, London-based HSBC said in a statement today."

"'There is little in the statement that will calm fears of a slowdown,' said Colin Morton, who helps manage $1.8 billion, including HSBC stock, at Rensburg Sheppards Plc in Leeds, England. 'People were looking for signs of a stabilization in bad debts, and things seem to be worsening.'"

"The main risks for earnings are 'further weakness' in U.S. housing, employment and consumption, the lender said today. A slowdown in mortgage lending will raise delinquencies as a percentage of all loans, HSBC said."

"'It's not a case of pulling in our horns, but we are being cautious on loans,' said CEO Mike Geoghegan. 'We won't go out' with unprofitable loans, he added."

"HSBC miscalculated some borrowers' ability to repay mortgage loans in the U.S., Finance Director Douglas Flint said today. 'The situation has worsened since we looked at the third- quarter numbers,' Flint said. There was a 'weakening trend' in the fourth quarter, he said."

From MarketWatch. "If Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke hadn't let on that he and some of his colleagues had a target range for inflation, he wouldn't have to keep repeating over and over how worried he is about the pace of price hikes."

"Former Fed head Alan Greenspan resisted the notion of publicizing an inflation target because he feared the very thing that's happening now, above-range inflation combined with below-trend growth."

"Right now, the Bernanke Fed is between a rock and a hard place. If it accepts above-range inflation, it loses credibility as an inflation fighter. If it doesn't, it risks dumping the U.S. economy into another recession."