>> the department uncovered a pattern or practice of discrimination involving victims in more than 180 geographic markets across 41 states and the district of columbia. >> tom: bank of america agrees to pay millions of dollars to clean up a lending mess created by countrywide financial, one one of the nation's biggest mortgage lenders. >> susie: meanwhile, we're learning the housing bust was worse than thought as a key trade group says its sales count was off by about a million homes. it's "nightly business report" for wednesday, december 21. this is "nightly business report" with susie gharib and tom hudson. "nightly business report" is made possible by:

captioning sponsored by wpbt >> tom: good evening, and thanks for joining us. susie gharib is off this week. i'm joined by suzanne pratt. suzanne, four years after the housing market went bust there was a big settlement today over discriminatory mortgage lending practices. >> suzanne: tom, bank of america will pay $335 million to settle allegations its countrywide unit discriminated against minority borrowers during the housing boom. it involves black and hispanic customers who were sold higher cost loans than other homeowners. >> tom: in announcing the deal, the government calls it the largest residential fair-lending settlement in history. darren gersh picks up the story. >> reporter: the justice

department alleges countrywide discriminated against minorities across the country, charging them higher fees. in the worst cases, 10,000 african american and hispanic homeowners who should have gotten prime loans were steered into higher-cost subprime loans. >> these allegations represent alarming conduct by one of the largest mortgage lenders in the country during the height of the housing market boom. >> reporter: the settlement covers loans made between 2004 and 2008. over that period, the justice department says, countrywide discriminated against 200,000 qualified african-american and hispanic borrowers in 41 states. the settlement provides $335 million in compensation to those victims, including thousands who likely lost their homes. the national council of la raza says most of the families who suffered from countrywide's discrimination are latino and it plans a campaign to make sure victims get their compensation. >> it's going to be very hard to find them if they have lost

their homes and what kind of compensation can they get, i mean their lives have been changed. they've lost their homes, they've had to move in with other family members, their kids have changed schools. >> reporter: a spokesman for bank of america, which now owns countrywide, said: "we reached this settlement to resolve issues about countrywides alleged historic practices that occurred before bank of america acquired the company. bank of america's practices are not at issue. we are committed to fair and equal treatment of all our customers, and will continue to focus on doing what's right for our customers, clients and communities." >> reporter: advocates for minority borrowers say they want to see more lenders held responsible for deceptive lending practices. darren gersh, "nightly business report," washington. >> suzanne: fresh signs of life today in the still sickly housing market. the national association of realtors reported sales of existing homes rose 4% in november when compared to october. today's encouraging news echoes other recent positive data on the sector.

but that same realtor group also revealed today it had underestimated the severity of the housing crash and, it turns out, by quite a lot. between 2007 and 2010, a million fewer existing homes were sold than previously reported. that works out to 14% less. today, due to flaws in its analysis, the realtors' group revised the data to reflect the much bleaker picture of the residential market. in 2007, 11% less homes were sold. it was even worse in 2008 and 2009, when 16% fewer changed hands, and, last year, sales were actually 15% lower. everyone from wall street economists to builders used that housing data to make business decisions and forecasts. while the miscalculation shouldn't affect home prices, it may help explain why the housing recovery has been so slow. joining me now to

explain the miscalculation is lawrence yun, chief economist at the national association of realtors. laurnls, welcome to the program. >> thanks for having me on the show. >> suzanne: so explain to viewers, how do you lose a million homes? >> well, let's look at the facts of what does not change. it doesn't change the fact that a realtor out on the street who may have sold eight homes, the person sold eight homes. remax, cold well banker, they sold tens of thousands of homes, that figure does not change. the figure that is changing is due to the aggregation problem, you are adding up the figures and what we had included in our an alitics is that certain number of homes would be for sale by owner, and what happened during the housing market downturn was that for sale by owner market got crushed. as a result people were turning towards realtors, seeking their assistance, and as a result more homes were being sold through the realtor

data base than has been showing up. >> suzanne: so what is the implication of this miscalculation, if the hole is deeper for the housing market, does it mean it will take that much longer to climb out? >> in terms of the sales activity, the decline from top to bottom, we had earlier thought it was about 30% drop, now that the -- now it's a 40% drop, therefore a bigger hole that we have to come out of. so it's going to take longer for the sales activity to get back to normal. however, prices, there's no revision to the prices, the most important variable for consumers, homeowners, there's no impact. most consumer decision is made at the local level, local data bases, there's no changes to the local data bases. so it doesn't have any impact for the every day people, but from policy makers and also from the gdp growth computation, there would be some slight minor downward

revision due to the sales decline revisions. >> suzanne: so when can we expect to start to see a turn around in the housing market, particularly for prices? >> what we saw in the latest data, the november figure, was that sales increased 4%, from a month before, 10% from one year ago. so we are begining to see some underlying trend where the buyers are coming into the market, and correspondingly inventory levels are falling. inventory needs to fall before prices can stablize so, the first step is already occuring, this is a hopeful early sign that going into 2012 we may actually begin to see some price uptick in 2012. >> suzanne: so first we hope to see sales, which we're starting to see, and then we can expect price start to firm up. when did you think we can really start to see prices begin to move higher? >> next year, it may be a very low single digit nationally.

some local markets doing much better than the national average. but broadly about 1 to 2% price increase nationally next year, that we may not get to the normal 5% appreciation for maybe another couple of years. one thing to remember is that people who have been entering the market in the past two, three years, they have become highly successful homeowners with very low default rates and they are getting this immediate appreciation right away. for people who bought, unfortunately, at the top of the market back in 2005, 2006, it's going to be a long recovery. >> suzanne: thank you so much for joining us, lawrence. >> thank you. >> suzanne: our guest, lawyers yun, national association of realtors chief economist. >> tom: stocks were mixed, with technology shares under pressure as investors reacted to last night's earnings miss from oracle and the blue chips turned positive late in the session. on the day, the dow rose four points, the nasdaq was off 26 points, while the s&p 500 rose

about two point. trading volume continued light ahead of the holiday weekend-- just 819 million shares moving on the big board and almost 1.9 billion on the nasdaq. >> suzanne: financial markets shrugged off word today that hundreds of european banks were tapping the european central bank for big bucks. the e.c.b. is loaning more than $0.5 trillion in an effort to help resolve the eurozone's financial crisis. it is the biggest infusion of credit in the 13-year shared history of the euro currency. erika miller takes a look at the impact the loan program is likely to have closer to home. >> reporter: american banks won't get a penny from the european central bank, but make no mistake, all of them will benefit if the e.c.b. loan program reduces stress on the global banking system. >> when you see this level of funding go to a banking sector that has really been under seige in the credit markets, and you add confidence back, you'll start to see a decline, theoretically, in bank funding and volatility in the markets.

>> reporter: the e.c.b. will lend an unprecedented $643 billion to over 500 banks, none of which are being identified publicly. the loans are set at ultra-cheap 1% rate for 3 years. the e.c.b.'s goal is to make sure banks have enough money to keep lending to businesses and consumers. otherwise, the fear is the european credit crisis will spread, choking global growth. the generous terms of the loans will also make it easier for european banks to pay off high amounts of their debts coming due next year. the e.c.b. hopes banks will use some of the money to buy debt of struggling governments in the region. but some economists are skeptical that will happen on a large scale. >> financial institutions have also been burned over the past year for holding too much of that debt, so in that environment, a lot of institutions are likely to take a very cautious attitude. >> reporter: the e.c.b. loan program may be helpful, but economists say it doesn't address the root of the european debt crisis: too many government i.o.u.s and no backstops behind

them. erika miller, "nightly business report," new york. >> ...it's one great way to bring in people who are already supporters of a cause. when they support that cause, sure they'll probably find things on threadless that they're interested in. >> tom: still ahead, from water bottles to iphone cases, how this t-shirt company uses designs to attract new customers and charity. >> tom: stocks marked time after the sharp rally yesterday even as congress remains deadlocked on extending the payroll tax cut. the drag on the market came from the technology sector. the s&p 500 saw a little profit taking at the opening bell, pushed lower by business software giant oracle and its disappointing earnings last night. by late this afternoon, buyers were able to rally, with the index moving into positive territory less than an hour before the closing bell.

oracle's 12% drop made it the worst stock today inside the s&p 500. volume was huge-- about seven times average. this is the lowest close for oracle since august. the company's revenues and earnings were less than anticipated, hurting oracle, but also causing questions about business spending on technology. fellow business software maker s.a.p. saw its stock fall more than 6%. salesforce.com shed 5% and i.b.m. dropped 3%. these have been growing their business services and software businesses. one beat down tech stock saw a little relief today. research in motion saw volume more than double with its stock rallying 10%. the latest speculation involves several companies may be interested in making offers to buy the company behind the blackberry device. the stock has lost three quarters of its value this year as it has seen its market share slip and its playbook tablet fail to find customers.

after the close, the market focus fell on semiconductor maker micron. the company lost more money than it was expected to. sales fell from a year ago and were less than wall street estimates. shares lost more than 4.5% before the results and fell another 1% after the closing bell. other chip makers, such as intel and texas instruments, have warned the personal computer maker has been hurt by a storage of hard drives thanks to flooding in thailand. while technology was the biggest losing sector today, utilities, energy and consumer staples were the best-- mostly a defensive stance for investors. earlier in the program, we reported on the big revision to how bad the housing bust was. but, today, homebuilder k.b. home reported a better-than- expected quarter. earnings were down from last year, but easily beat wall street's expectations. k.b. home concentrates on first- time home buyers. future orders were a strong point, but that did not help out shares today. shares fell almost 7%.

volume doubled on the move down. used car dealership car-max had a disappointing fall selling season. earnings were less than expected and the stock got hit to the tune of 5.5% lower today. car-max had benefited from strong used car demand, but low consumer confidence hurt sales last quarter. perhaps this could be a positive sign for the job market. uniform supplier cintas had a strong quarter and raised its guidance. shares jumped 9%. others in the business, such as g&k services and unifirst, rallied as well. and that's tonight's "market focus."

>> tom: mutual fund investors won't have much of an appetite for stocks in 2012, but if they do, they want to get paid to wait. that's the thinking of tonight's "street critique" guest, dan wiener. he's c.e.o. of advisor investments. dan, nice to see you. so mutual fund investors lost a lot of appetite for stock funds this year, pulling 125 billion out of those funds, pulling 140 billion into taxable bond fund. how much more appetite could they possibly lose next year? >> i think they could still lose some appetite for stocks and they could still be throwing money into bonds. recentcy is a big deal with investors, they like to buy what's done well recently and they like to sell what hasn't. >> tom: is that a good strategy? >> no, it's actually not a good strategy. stocks have got terrific valuations right now, and as i'm sure your listeners know, bonds aren't paying you very

much to lock your money up for 10 years. >> tom: one debate the mutual fund investors have is do you buy mutual fund or exchange traded funds? mutual fund still remain the favorite vehicle, 12 trillion in assets, a 12th of that in exchange traded fund. but you wouldn't know it if you listen to some of the marketing out there. etf's get a lot of attention. >> they do, but mutual fund have been around for almost 100 years and etf's are a relatively new animal, they have one thing going for them, typically low operating expenses, and that drops to the bottom line i think you can find mutual fund that will do by better job. >> tom: vdigx on this one, different is in the name and that's been hot this year, you expect that to continue into next year? >> i do. as you said at the open, investors are willing to take

stocks if they're paid to wait. and if you're being paid right now by a big dividend payer, particularly the large and the megacaps, you're getting a yield that's equal to or greater than that on a 10-year bond and you have all that capital appreciation possibility built in. >> tom: that's not saying so much, though, the 10 year bond is only yielding about 2%, so it in the a big hurd tomorrow get over these days, is it? >> well, no, but you're not going to get a lot under price appreciation on a 10-year treasury, you have plenty of it in stocks. don killbride runs this fund very conservatively but very well, it up about 6% this year versus the market being essentially flat. >> tom: and of course some capital appreciation as well as the dividends. do you own on this -- do your own:00ing on this one? >> we do, our client do, i do, and all the folks who work at my company do. >> tom: we appreciate the idea for the new year in mutual funds. e-mail us your questions, your

comments, we're at street critique at nbr.com. our guest this evening, dan wiener of advisor investments. thanks, dan. >> sure thing, thank you. >> suzanne: a chicago company is turning charitable giving into an art form. "threadless" sells tee shirts designed by artists from around the world. what started as a novel idea a decade ago has grown into a booming business. as our series "conscious capital" continues, diane eastabrook tells us how threadless uses its e-commerce clout to help charities. >> reporter: you are witnessing the marriage of art and commerce. inside a massive warehouse with wall-to-wall t-shirts, workers are frantically filling holiday orders. threadless is a community-based design company on chicago's west side. artists submit designs to the company's website and its online community votes for the best ones. winning artists get paid for their work, then 31-year-old co- founder jake nickell mass merchandizes the designs.

>> we started with t-shirts, and we've expanded quite a bit. we do iphone cases, water bottles, backpacks, dresses-- tons and tons of stuff, and we're exploring more. >> reporter: threadless estimates it has a global audience of nearly two million people, so recently it decided to tap that community for a greater good. the company is now partnering with charities through a new unit called atrium. it's currently printing tee shirts benefiting a breast cancer awareness group called men for women now. the charity will get a quarter of the profits made from sales of the $20 shirts. >> right now we're printing about 850, and we always sell out our first batch. and depending on the velocity of those sales, we chase into it and print more. and we regularly do reprints of products that sell well. >> reporter: the idea to sell cause-based t-shirts came to nickell after hurricane katrina. the company designed a t-shirt to benefit hurricane victims and ended up raising over $100,000.

since launching atrium ten months ago, threadless has raised nearly a half-million dollars for 16 charities including the red cross. c.e.o. tom ryan says promoting causes was a natural for threadless because its community of artists and consumers tend to be young and socially conscious. but, he admits it also made good business sense. >> doing designs for causes specifically is one great way to bring in people who are already supporters of a cause. when they support that cause, sure, they will probably find other things on threadless that they are interested in, but it wasn't the primary motivating factor that made us do this. >> reporter: threadless wants to host at least one cause-related design challenge a month next year. it thinks harnessing the passions and pocket books of its own community can help make the world a better place. diane eastabrook, "nightly business report," chicago. >> suzanne: tomorrow, our series "conscious capital" continues with starbucks c.e.o. howard schultz. >> i want starbucks to be the kind of company that perhaps can

be a model for others to say "we can make a difference," and at the same time we can build shareholder value. >> suzanne: we'll see what schultz hopes to teach other entrepreneurs about giving back. >> tom: also on the calendar for tomorrow? we get the third estimate at how the economy behaved in the third quarter, the latest on consumer sentiment from reuters and the university of michigan, and we'll see if the number of out of work americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits continues trending lower. and, teaching your kids the importance of giving this holiday season on tomorrow's "kids and cash." >> suzanne: the former head of fannie mae needs time off from his current job so he can defend his work at the mortgage giant. daniel mudd is taking a leave of absence from the top spot at fortress investments. the securities and exchange commission sued mudd friday for allegedly misleading investors about the risk of the subprime loans in its mortgage portfolio. fortress says the firm's co- founder, randal nardone, will

take over. >> tom: companies continue buying back more and more of their own stock. for the ninth straight quarter, companies in the s&p 500 spent more money on stock buybacks-- almost $120 billion between july and september. spending the most on buybacks during the third quarter? exxon mobil, with $5.5 billion of its own shares. stock buybacks generally are seen as a good thing for shareholders. with less shares on the market, that means more earnings money to go around.

>> suzanne: with the year coming to an end, tonight's "money file" has some tips on getting your financial house in order. here's gabe albarian, author of "financial swagger." >> the most important lesson in financial education is to maintain a healthy credit history, which is a significant factor when financing student, auto and home loans and applying for credit cards. whether you have a great credit score or you are working on improving it, here are some tips to help navigate you towards a healthier credit score. first, make your payments on time, even if its the minimum amount due on your account, as doing so indicates your ability to pay back your debts on time. if you are late on any payments,

get current and stay current. second, do not frivolously apply for new credit cards or loans. during this holiday season, retailers will offer discounts on your first purchase if you open up a credit card. however, any inquiry for more credit will decrease your credit score and perhaps lead to more accumulated debt. finally, check your credit history report at least once a year at annualcreditreport.com, which is a free service that allows you to receive one free credit history report from each of the three credit bureaus every year. if there are any errors on your credit history report, contact the appropriate financial institution and credit bureau to correct that mistake and, in turn, increase your credit score. when it comes to your credit, be healthy with spending habits, wealthy in knowledge and wise when swiping that credit card. this will certainly lead to a lifeme of good credit and plenty of financial swagger. i'm gabe albarian.

>> suzanne: and finally tonight, it looks like the nation's retailers will have a green christmas after all. with just three shopping days to go until santa arrives, sales at traditional stores are already up 2.5%, and they're expected to top $465 billion this year. meanwhile, online sales are a big bright spot-- up 15% this season to almost $32 billion. from clicks to bricks, this is the make-or-break week, tom. it includes four of the top ten holiday shopping days and could account for as much as 20% of the season's overall sales. and you know if my kids are watching, mommy has done her part to help. >> tom: suzanne i've got the next two weeks, two birthdays and a christmas, and no i'm nowhere near done yet. >> suzanne: don't forget the after christmas sales still count. that's "nightly business report" for wednesday december 21. i'm suzanne pratt. good night everyone and good night to you too, tom. >> tom: i'm tom hudson, thank

you for joining us. we'll see you an line and back here tomorrow evening. "nightly business report" is made possible by: captioning sponsored by wpbt captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org