Housing Bailout Chatter Gets Louder

Add another surprising name to the housing-bailout chorus.

Punk Ziegel analyst Richard Bove became the latest high-profile market observer Wednesday to predict that the feds will take action to forestall the collapse of the U.S. housing market.

Bad mortgages "have become a major problem," Bove says in a research note Wednesday. He suggests that the government may end up proposing to ease the pressure on the sagging mortgage market by offering low-cost federally backed loans to homeowners whose adjustable-rate mortgages are about to reset to much-higher rates. ...