Home sales in Southern California fell to the lowest level for a July in four years as some key economic indicators turned downbeat and congressional budget wrangling took the country to the brink of financial default.

The median price was also down, falling 4% from a year earlier to $283,000, San Diego real estate information service DataQuick said. That’s the fifth straight month of year-over-year decline.

The drop in sales from June was more pronounced, especially for houses that cost more than $500,000, as the job market sputtered, economic uncertainty intensified and some potential home buyers got cold feet, DataQuick said.

“The latest sales figures look a bit worse than they really are, given this July was a fairly short month, but they still suggest some potential home buyers got spooked,” said DataQuick President John Walsh. “Reports on the economy became increasingly downbeat, and no doubt some people fretted over the possibility the country would default on its obligations.”

A total of 18,090 new and previously owned houses and condos sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties in July. That was down 11.9% from June and down 4.5% from July 2010, according to DataQuick.

Prices also continued to slide. The median, the point at which half the homes sold for more and half for less, has declined year over year for the last five months. It has been unchanged or lower than a year earlier each month since December, when it posted a 0.3% annual increase.

“If there’s a shred of good news in the data it’s that last month’s sales weren’t much worse than a year earlier,” Walsh said.

Sustained uncertainty about the economy is cooling the market, said Richard K. Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.

“The pace of this recovery is so anemic that it’s hard to see how housing would have been good in July,” Green said. “July is when all the budget nonsense was happening, and I can’t think of anyone who wasn’t a little freaked out by that.”

Disconcerting news is giving buyers wobbly knees, he said. “Everybody knows people who have been laid off. When you know people, it’s scary.”

Southern California is still better off than other parts of the country such as Seattle and Florida, Green said, in part because builders here didn’t go overboard putting up new homes in most of the region.

Los Angeles real estate agent Maryann Kuk of Housing Solutions Realty said individual buyers’ confidence trumps the vagaries of the financial system.

“I don’t think anybody who is seriously looking for a house is paying attention to the economy,” she said. “They are paying attention to their own finances. If people are ready to buy, they will make it happen.”

One challenge for buyers is a shortage of homes for sale in some markets, said Paul Kott, founder of Paul Kott Realtors Inc. in Anaheim. Potential sellers who are in a position to wait are holding their homes off the market.

“People are hopeful the market will come back,” Kott said. “They think it will be higher than today, and quite frankly so do I.”

For buyers, though, prices are down dramatically from the recent peak and interest rates remain low, Kott said. “It’s a winning scenario for anyone buying their first home.”

The nationwide effort looking into faulty foreclosures, which involves attorneys general from all 50 states as well as some federal agencies, was expected to have produced a settlement of more than $20 billion by now. But talks have stumbled over how much the banks should pay as well as to what degree they will be released from liability from future investigations.

“The immunity issue is a contentious one, and we are still trying to work through it,” said Geoff Greenwood, a spokesman for Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, who is leading the discussions on behalf of state prosecutors.

New York and Delaware have agreed to work together to pursue a wider-ranging probe into Wall Street’s role in the mortgage meltdown. California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris is also considering joining that effort, and has said publicly she is interested in pursuing investigations that involve the packaging, securitizing and selling of risky mortgages. Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley has also said she is interested in pursuing separate investigations into mortgage-securitization practices.

Those probes are unlikely to move forward if the 50-state talks result in broad legal immunity for mortgage servicers. The five largest institutions involved — Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co.,Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc. — are pushing the states’ attorneys for broad release.

“We continue to believe that the best way to get the housing market going again in every state is a global settlement that addresses these issues fairly, comprehensively and with finality,” BofA spokesman Lawrence Grayson said Monday. The other four financial institutions declined to comment.

As the talks have stalled, the Obama administration has waged a campaign to pressure New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman, leaning on his supporters to urge him to back a broad deal that would grant immunity to the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers, a person familiar with the discussions said. But Schneiderman has remained resolute that his own investigations must be allowed to go forward.
“The attorney general remains concerned by any settlement agreement that would fail to provide homeowners meaningful relief to stay in their homes, allow the housing market to begin to recover and get our economy moving again,” said Danny Kanner, a spokesman for Schneiderman. “While our federal and state counterparts may be working toward the same goals, ongoing investigations by attorneys general cannot be shut down by efforts to settle quickly and those responsible must be held accountable.”

New York and Delaware have more than a dozen attorneys working full time on their effort. They have subpoenaed or requested information from 13 financial firms, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase. Harris would be a key addition to the investigation because California was the location of a vast number of the mortgages and foreclosures that fed into the crisis. She met with Schneiderman in San Francisco last month to discuss participating in the probe.

Harris is weighing whether she would sign on to the 50-state settlement if it gave banks immunity. The main consideration is how much money would go to California homeowners, according to a person familiar with her thinking.

In May, Harris announced the creation of a 25-person task force to look at mortgage fraud. This month she subpoenaed Citigroup and its banking subsidiary, Citibank, ordering the two entities to answer questions regarding the selling and marketing of mortgage-backed securities in the Golden State.

Yet as I’ve written  before, the administration’s homeowner rescue efforts have been pathetic. As part of the $700-billion banking bailout of 2008, about $50 billion was supposed to be devoted to mortgage relief, including nearly $30 billion to the mortgage modification program known as HAMP. Of that sum, only about $2 billion had been spent as of June 30, according to the bailout program’s inspector general. The government made sure that bailout money got to the banks, even some that didn’t want it. But homeowners have gotten barely a taste.

That remaining HAMP money is part of an unspent balance of $53 billion in the bailout program that may still be available for disbursement, according to the inspector general, depending on how it’s used. Obama may not need a further congressional vote to use it. His first order of business should be to dramatically restructure HAMP, say by taking the initiative for mortgage modifications away from the banks, which have done almost nothing but gum up the process. And then put that money to use.

Another idea the White House should get behind is a “right to rent” law that has been kicking around Congress since 2008. Strapped and underwater homeowners facing foreclosure would have to be offered the option of turning over their mortgages to their banks and renting their homes for five-year terms at market rents. At the end of the term they would be offered the option to reacquire the property at its then-market price.

This plan would encourage banks to negotiate modified mortgages more seriously, as banks want to be landlords even less than they want to be real estate owners. It would cut way back on the problem of abandoned or trashed properties, as the foreclosed owners would have an incentive to keep them maintained. It would reduce the cost of housing for affected families to a more rational level, as rents in foreclosure-rich zones have generally fallen well below mortgage payments. And it could be done without any cost to the government.

The logic driving this belief was based on the notion that borrowers wouldn’t want to damage their credit profile or deal with the social stigma surrounding a public foreclosure. The assumption that most underwater borrowers will continue making their monthly payments (absent a life event) is factored into the analytics of risk managers, buyers and sellers of mortgage related assets, servicing managers, and regulators across the country.

What if this assumption is wrong? Is that inconceivable?

It wasn’t long ago when conventional wisdom convinced us that lenders would never make loans to borrowers that had virtually zero likelihood of being able to pay the loans back. In a 2010 study conducted by the Cato Institute, it was estimated that there were over 27 million Alt-A and subprime loans in the system by mid-2008. That’s approximately 50 percent of all loans in the market.  Remember when we thought home price would never fall on a national level? Never been done and won’t ever happen, right? That assumption was shattered when home values nationally dropped between 30-50% from their peak in 2006, wiping out roughly $7 trillion of home equity in the process.

Fannie Mae recently published it’s latest National Housing Survey and exposed disturbing patterns and sentiments with American homeowners. For example,  46% of borrowers are “stressed” about their underwater mortgage, up from 11% in June 2010. That’s an alarming four-fold increase in three quarters. That statistic becomes even more concerning when viewing the sheer number of borrowers faced with negative equity. At the end of 2010, which doesn’t include the home price declines seen in 2011, CoreLogic estimated that 11.1 million homes, or 23.1 percent of all homes with a mortgage, were underwater. Think about those two stats this way – every morning, 46% of the estimated 11.1 million underwater borrowers wake up and debate why they should keep paying their monthly mortgage payment. Further weighing on borrowers is that  47% of borrowers surveyed reported higher household expenses than the year before…

From that perspective, it doesn’t seem inconceivable that our assumptions might be off base again. Is principal forgiveness the answer?

Probably not, and here’s why. Remember how many folks HAMP was supposed to save by giving them new loan terms? The number touted by the administration was over 4 million. In reality, the number is likely to come in around 500-750,000 permanent modifications. Imagine the scenario when a government sponsored principal reduction program is announced. Out of the 11 million underwater borrowers – you’ll probably get three times as many borrowers applying for relief. Maybe one tenth of them will actually qualify and be granted a principal reduction. In the meantime, some 20+ million applicants would have stopped making payments to “qualify” or be considered for qualification. How many of them will be able to or even want to get current again after they are turned down?

Like it or not, we have got to find ways to stabilize home prices, reward responsible behavior among existing homeowners, and encourage home buying. I don’t see any ideas on the table that would accomplish any of these objectives…. and the effects are starting to show up in data.

The Administration anticipates the respondents will address the objectives by converting REO to rental housing, especially where markets have both a strong demand for rental units and a substantial volume of REO, but encourages alternative solutions.  The proposed strategies may also include establishing programs for previous homeowners to rent properties or for current renters to become owners though lease to own arrangements; a mechanism where private owners of REO could also participate in the solution, and options that support affordable housing

FHFA Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco said that, while the Enterprises will continue to market their REO for sale, the Administration is seeking input on combining REO properties in situations where such pooling under private management may reduce credit losses and help stabilize both neighborhoods and home values.  “Partnerships involving Enterprise properties may reduce taxpayer losses and meet the Enterprises’ responsibility to bring stability and liquidity to housing markets.  We seek input on these important questions.”

“As we continue moving forward on housing finance reform, it’s critical that we support the process of repair and recovery in the housing market,” said Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. “Exploring new options for selling these foreclosed properties will help expand access to affordable rental housing, promote private investment in local housing markets, and support neighborhood and home price stability.”

At issue are both the current and future inventory of foreclosed homes held by FHA and the GSEs.  The three owned 250,000 properties at the end of June.  According to The Wall Street Journal, another 830,000 homes with loans tied to the three government-controlled entities are in the foreclosure pipeline.   The properties are selling, according to The Journal Freddie and Fannie moved a record number of homes in the second quarter, a combined total of 100,000 homes.  But the inventory, which represents only about half of the REO currently available, continues to grow.   It has long been a consensus among experts in real estate and real estate finance that eliminating both the existing inventory and the “shadow inventory” are prerequisite to restoring the housing market which in turn has a massive impact on the overall economy.  The goal of any initiative emerging from the RFI is to put a floor under declining home prices by removing these properties from the market.

The RFI has the following objectives:

• Reduce the inventories of the Enterprises and FHA in a cost-effective manner;
• Reduce average loan losses arising from the sale of individual properties;
• Address property repair and rehabilitation issues;
• Respond to economic and real estate conditions in various geographic locations;
• Assist with neighborhood and home price stabilization;
• Suggest approaches to deciding on the most suitable disposition strategies for individual properties including sale, rental, or demolition;

We are now in the fifth year of a housing crisis in which more than 3 million Americans have lost their homes to foreclosure, with millions more still at risk.

Every initiative — government or private — to stem the tide of misery has fallen leagues short in the face of continued economic gloom and the intransigence of lenders.

So it’s an odd moment to be identifying glimmers of optimism that solutions to the crisis might finally be emerging. Yet that may be the case.

Over the next few weeks, several initiatives aimed at reforming the foreclosure process, holding mortgage lenders and services accountable for their past abuses, and creating more effective mortgage workouts are coming to a head.

They’re moving sometimes along parallel lines and sometimes at cross-purposes, but they’re moving.

First, some context. The complexity of the foreclosure crisis stems from the process of bundling hundreds of thousands of mortgage loans into securities and selling them to investors.

Typically, banks and other lenders retained almost no financial interest in the mortgages they originated, other than the duty to service them — collect payments and pursue delinquent borrowers, say — for which they received a fee.

Several drawbacks to that system emerged when the housing economy crashed. Because the loans weren’t going to stay on their books, the lenders hadn’t been too careful about whom they lent to and on what terms.

Ownership of the repackaged loans was dispersed among investors, so it’s hard to know even today who the owners are or whether their ownership is properly documented. This has led to further abuses, such as the infamous “robo-signing” outbreak, in which institutions trying to foreclose on mortgages have submitted forged documents attesting to their legal right to do so.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that although the servicers, which include huge banks such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo, are burdened with the responsibility to renegotiate mortgages to keep borrowers out of foreclosure, their authority to do so on behalf of investors is murky.
As a result, though the investor, the borrower and the economy in general benefit if a home is kept out of foreclosure, even if that means its owner makes lower payments than were required by the original mortgage, the servicing banks are leery of renegotiating too aggressively.

The most closely followed remedial effort involves the 50 state attorneys general under the leadership of Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller.

Last March, the group produced a 27-page proposal for foreclosure reforms that drew fire from some consumer advocates for being too lenient — its provisions include mandates that banks comply with state law in dealing with borrowers, as if that’s a novel concept — and from business interests for putting too much pressure on banks to reduce principal balances for homeowners having trouble keeping up payments on homes with values that have fallen below the mortgage balance.

But Miller’s group is under pressure to issue a final proposal around Labor Day. The longer the settlement talks drag on, some observers say, the harder it becomes to keep all the participants on board.

Indeed, a key attorney general who has been skeptical of Miller’s approach is pursuing his own line.

New York’s Eric T. Schneiderman recently took a promising step by filing to intervene in the proposed legal settlement between Bank of America, which acquired mortgage king Countrywide Financial, and Bank of New York, which managed 530 investment trusts that bought packages of Countrywide mortgages. Schneiderman wants to block the settlement unless it’s improved.

The settlement calls for BofA to pay investors in the trusts $8.5 billion and to commit to an improved mortgage servicing and modification process, including giving “individualized attention” to high-risk borrowers aimed at helping them stay in their homes.

Among the deal’s flaws, according to Schneiderman’s motion, is that the payment is too low and the settlement indemnifies Bank of New York against further claims for fraud in its handling of the trusts. Schneiderman says the bank, which he contends is guilty of numerous violations of state law, had a conflict of interest in cutting a deal that let itself off the hook. (The New York state judge overseeing the BofA settlement talks with Bank of New York hasn’t yet ruled on Schneiderman’s motion.) Several investors have also objected that the two banks made the settlement privately and secretly.

Despite its shortcomings, the proposal settlement does provide a possible framework for solving the foreclosure crisis by giving all parties something they want: Borrowers get efforts at loan modifications from their banks, in return for which the banks and investors would get the borrowers’ acknowledgment that they’re owed the money. Fewer foreclosures, more loan modifications and an end to robo-signing — in the housing world, that’s nirvana.

Schneiderman has some pretty heavy artillery to bring to the battlefield.

Most of the trusts subject to the proposed settlement fall under the jurisdiction of New York law (the rest come under the law of Delaware, whose attorney general, Beau Biden, is working with Schneiderman). As my colleagues Nathaniel Popper and Alejandro Lazo reported last month, the standard for fraud claims under New York law is less stringent than under federal law.

A third driver of solutions to the foreclosure crisis is investigations by individual states into foreclosure abuses. California, where nearly 800,000 homes have been lost to foreclosure since 2006, according to the property information service DataQuick, and tens of thousands more might fall in the next year, is ground zero of the foreclosure crisis.

Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris has been playing both sides of the fence; she has met with Schneiderman to discuss cooperating in his investigation of securitization fraud, but is also watching the 50-state effort to see if it produces “accountability and results” for California borrowers. Read that as: a cash settlement commensurate with the pain caused to Californians by foreclosure abuses, and real reform. The louder that states like California threaten investigations, the more inclined banks may be to agree to reform.

It’s still unclear how each of these initiatives will influence the others, or indeed if any of them will result in relief for strapped and defrauded homeowners. Bankers have been perfectly candid about their power to draw out the legal process indefinitely if they choose: Bank of New York has defended its proposed $8.5-billion settlement with Bank of America in court by warning that the alternative is “litigation …over the course of several years.”

It warns that there might be legal questions over whether Bank of America, which acquired Countrywide in 2008, could be forced to cover judgments against the latter. Without BofA’s deep pockets, it’s hinted, there won’t be money for anyone.

The one incontrovertible fact about the foreclosure crisis is that voluntary loan modification efforts, whether they’re conducted under the sponsorship of the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program or the mortgage industry, haven’t helped more than a handful of affected borrowers.

Bringing the banks, investors and borrowers to the same table to work out a solution that benefits them all is the most promising idea to emerge since the housing market first crashed. Why has it taken so long to get there?

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago recently completed a study that found that none of these conditions apply to the current recession and concluded that “there is little empirical evidence that house lock has been an important driver of the recent high unemployment rate.”

The study, conducted by Daniel Aaronson, the bank’s vice president and economic advisor and Jonathan Davis, an associate economist, used the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) as the basis for their study.  SIPP is a large representative sample of non-military households which is interviewed every four months (called a wave) for two to four years.  The surveys overlap (one group is interviewed in January, another in February, etc.) which allows for a month-by-month analysis of migration rates, however, when a cohort’s two to four year tenure is ended it is replaced by another group as the next wave begins.  This results in occasional four month gaps in the data.  The SIPP data only allowed for evaluation of state-to-state migration.

In a given year, fewer than 2 percent of all SIPP households cross a state border, but migration is three to four times more common for renter households than for homeowners.  This ratio has held throughout the sample period, therefore over the past 25 years a significant portion of geographic relocation has been among households unencumbered by owning a house.

Aaronson and Davis compared the average four-month state-to-state migration rates during the last three years of the economic expansion (2005-2007) to  the slightly shorter December 2008 to July 2010 period coinciding with the worst of the recession, and found that homeowner migration rates from 0.0025 during the2005-07 period to 0.0019 during the December 2008-July 2010 period, about 0.02 percent.  But renter migration rates dropped as well and did so roughly in tandem.  Furthermore, the results are very similar when the recent period is compared to rates through the entire 2002-2007 economic expansion and when compared to the differences between earlier periods of growth and subsequent recessions In fact, the authors say, “Given the extent of the downturn in 2009-09, the decline in homeowner and renter mobility was rather tame this time around.”

House lock was no more of a factor in those states suffering the most severe housing busts.  In fact, during 2009 and early 2010 homeowner state-to-state mobility rates decreased more for households in states that experienced smaller price declines.  Even in the five states with the largest drop in house prices there was no evidence that homeowners were migrating out at a historically unusual rate.

Finally, there was no evidence found that households where the head was out of work were more likely to move, a fact that held true again for both home owners and renters.

The authors put forth two caveats for their findings.  The study as mentioned earlier was constrained to looking at state to state migration but a limited analysis of in-state migration data, especially in larger states where there may be more than one distinct labor market,  indicates that homeowner in-state migration also fell during the 2009-2010 period  but there are indications that renter migration may have fallen less.  The second caveat is that the study was conducted during a period when unemployment was at 9.5 percent so the lack of jobs may have contributed to the lack of mobility rather than the reverse.  It could be that once the demand for labor picks up any geographic mismatch will become more apparent.

A coalition of all 50 states’ attorneys general has been negotiating settlements with five of the biggest U.S. banks that would include payment of up to $25 billion in penalties and commitments to follow new rules. In exchange, the banks would get immunity from civil lawsuits by the states, as well as similar guarantees by the Justice Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development, which have participated in the talks.

State and federal officials declined to say if any form of immunity from criminal prosecution also is under discussion. The banks involved in the talks are Bank of America, Wells Fargo, CitiGroup, JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial.

Reuters reported Monday that major banks and other loan servicers have continued to file questionable documents in foreclosure cases. These include false mortgage assignments, and promissory notes with suspect or missing “endorsements,” which prove ownership. The Reuters report also showed continued “robo-signing,” in which lenders’ employees or outside contractors churn out reams of documents without fully understanding their content. The report turned up several cases involving individuals who were publicly identified as robo-signers months ago.

Reuters found that such activity has continued even after 14 major mortgage lenders signed settlements with federal bank regulators promising to halt such practices and give remediation to some homeowners who were harmed.

In response to these disclosures, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development, and nine other senators sent a letter to federal bank regulators, asking them to disclose information gathered about banks’ foreclosure practices.

“This is especially important given this week’s allegations that mortgage servicers continue to engage in widespread ‘robo-signing’ despite your assurances that the illegal actions would not continue,” said the letter, which also cited a report by the Associated Press.

Several senators on the Senate Banking Committee, including Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican, have faulted bank regulators for not conducting a thorough investigation of the banks’ handling of foreclosures. Six months ago, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and other federal regulators conducted brief “examinations” of banks, during which they looked at a sample of only 2,800 loan files.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has publicly objected to any wide-ranging grant of immunity by the other states. Schneiderman has launched his own investigations of the banks, including probes of suspected misdeeds in “securitizing” mortgages. Securitization involves packaging large numbers of mortgages into pools and selling securities that give investors income from the mortgages.

“Attorney General Schneiderman remains concerned by any settlement agreement that would preclude state attorneys general from conducting comprehensive investigations of the mortgage crisis,” a spokesman said.

Three states’ attorneys general — in Iowa, Illinois and Connecticut — have been designated to handle the states’ negotiations with the banks over protection from civil suits and other issues. Spokesmen for all three declined to comment on the progress of negotiations, or on the evidence of continuing wrongdoing by the banks. But people close to the talks said there is still widespread disagreement over the extent of immunity and the dollar amount of penalties.

The banks involved have declined to comment on the talks.

Some troubled homeowners got the promise of a little relief Wednesday in the form of separate settlements with Countrywide Home Loans and Wells Fargo & Co.

Nearly $108 million in refund checks are being mailed to homeowners allegedly overcharged by Countrywide Home Loans as part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.
In an unrelated action against Wells Fargo, theFederal Reserve Board issued a cease-and-desist order and assessed an $85-million civil penalty over allegations that Wells Fargo Financial Inc. employees improperly pushed borrowers into more expensive subprime loans and exaggerated income information on mortgage applications from January 2004 to June 2008.

Last year, the Federal Trade Commission reached the settlement with Countrywide, which is now owned by Bank of America Corp., and said Wednesday that the agency was beginning to mail the checks to 450,177 defaulting homeowners from whom the company allegedly collected excessive fees.

“Countrywide’s unconscionable behavior harmed American consumers on a massive scale, and we are proud to be getting every single dollar back to hundreds of thousands of struggling consumers who can least afford to lose the money,” agency Chairman Jon Leibowitz said.

The refunds, ranging from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, are being distributed to defaulting homeowners whose loans were serviced by Countrywide from January 2005 to July 2008, and who were charged excessive fees for property inspections, lawn mowing and other services meant to protect the lender’s interest in the properties, the commission said.

When borrowers were trying to save their homes in Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings, Countrywide made false or unsupported claims about how much borrowers owed as well as the status of loans, the FTC said. In addition, Countrywide allegedly added fees and escrow charges to borrowers’ mortgage accounts without notice.

Rick Simon, a spokesman for BofA, said that the company settled the claims to avoid the cost of litigation. He also said that the claims began before the bank’s acquisition of Countrywide and cover transactions made by only Countrywide.

“Bank of America agreed to this settlement to avoid the expense and distraction associated with litigating the case,” Simon said. “There was no admission of any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.”
Wells Fargo also didn’t admit wrongdoing in reaching its settlement with the Federal Reserve, and the company said it had paid restitution to about 600 customers.

“The alleged actions committed by a relatively small group of team members are not what we stand for at Wells Fargo,” Chairman and Chief Executive John Stumpf said.

Wells Fargo was ordered to set up a process to determine who qualifies for refunds. The Fed estimated that 3,500 to more than 10,000 people might be owed money, ranging from less than $1,000 to more than $20,000.

BofA shares rose 28 cents to $9.85; Wells Fargo increased 29 cents to $28.70.

Concern about fuel prices fell in the latest poll.  One in five respondents cited the rising cost of gas as their top economic worry compared to 38% who did so in the May poll. The cost of a gallon of self-serve regular has fallen by $0.40 since reaching $3.95 per gallon in early May according to data from AAA.

“Regulation, taxes and government spending” were cited by a majority of respondents (65%) as more pressing problems than “not enough regulation and oversight of business” (35%).  More Democrats (45%) held this view in the latest survey, up from 37% in May.  However, a majority of Democrats (55%) were still more concerned that there is not enough regulation of businesses.  Republicans (91%) and Independents (59%) overwhelmingly took the opposite view.

The poll was conducted June 25-28, 2011 by YouGov of a representative sample of 1,000 adults nationwide.  The Job Creators Alliance is a non-partisan policy organization comprised of American entrepreneurs.

The next survey will be released in late July.