On June 23, the Obama Administration approved $1.5 billion in "Hardest Hit Fund" foreclosure-prevention funding for state Housing Financing Agencies. The funding is meant to support struggling homeowners in Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, and Nevada.

President Obama established the "Hardest Hit Fund" in February 2010 in order to provide aid to those most affected by the housing downturn. This recent approval will assist struggling homeowners with negative equity through principal reduction, assist some individuals with mortgage payments, facilitate the settlement of second liens, facilitate short sales and/or deeds-in-lieu of foreclosure, and assist in the payment of arrearages.

The full press release from the Department of the Treasury is available here.

Investors and analysts complain that it is difficult to compare the financial positions of two entities with similar leases because financial statements often do not clearly show the effects of operating leases.  They claim that tenants under operating leases get a source of unrecognized financing.

A 2005 Security and Exchange Commission report criticized the accounting treatment of operating leases that permits over a trillion dollars of liabilities to remain “off-balance sheet” and called for the Financial Accounting Standards Board (the “FASB”) to work with the International Accounting Standards Board to revise accounting standards to “transparently and consistently” reflect the underlying economics of leases.  As a result, the FASB has proposed sweeping new real estate accounting standards.  If these changes take place, they will affect current operating leases, not just future transactions, and affect each tenant’s bottom line.