Reuters - Merrill Lynch & Co said on Friday that the majority of its best-performing financial advisors will join Bank of America Corp when that bank buys Merrill at the end of the year.

AP - The young prosecutor tapped to monitor the $700 billion financial rescue plan has brought down Colombian drug traffickers, gone after swindling corporate executives and now heads the mortgage fraud unit for the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan.

Reuters - President George W. Bush intends to nominate Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Barofsky to be the special inspector general for the Troubled Assets Relief Program at the Treasury Department, the White House said on Friday.

AP - The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says a new plan could help 1.5 million American households avoid foreclosure.

AFP - Freddie Mac, one of the mortgage finance giants taken over by the government earlier this year, reported Friday a quarterly loss of 25.3 billion dollars as it asked for a fresh capital infusion.

AP - Mortgage finance company Freddie Mac is asking the government for $13.8 billion in aid after posting a $25.3 billion third-quarter loss and expects to receive the funding by the end of the month.

BusinessWeek Online - It may seem like ancient history now, but not long ago the mortgage industry was turning ordinary people into millionaires. One of them was Sharmen Lane, a high school dropout who, like many other young women during the boom, found her way into an obscure banking job with the clunky title "mortgage wholesaler." Her experience -- and the experiences of other wholesalers like her -- offers a glimpse into the recklessness and indulgence that drove the industry to ruin.

BusinessWeek Online - Individual investors aren't the only ones scared to look at their portfolios. Insurance giants are also watching their holdings wither, a situation that could have serious implications for their customers and the markets. The biggest independent life insurer, MetLife, reported total paper losses of $12.2 billion on its $340 billion portfolio. "You have to plan for things to be depressed for the next few quarters at a minimum," says Steven A. Kandarian, chief investment officer at MetLife.

Reuters - U.S. mortgage finance companies should soon adopt a foreclosure prevention plan developed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to ease loan terms for troubled borrowers, the companies' overseer said on Thursday.

AP - The nation's financial picture grew darker Thursday, a day marked by breathtaking numbers: a quarter-trillion-dollar budget deficit for a single month and projections of up to $1 trillion for a year, a half-million new applications for unemployment benefits and a 900-point swing on Wall Street.