Mortgage Foreclosure & Refinance Resource

The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco said Wednesday the mortgage crisis and financial services turmoil are likely to be a “major drag” on the national economy through 2009.Janet Yellen told a conference of local business leaders that because of those issues, she expects little or no growth in the national U.S. economy for the first half of 2008.’

Yellen’s comments followed a report showing that construction of new homes nationwide plunged in March to the lowest level in 17 years.

Housing construction dropped by 11.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 947,000 units, a much bigger decline than economists had been forecasting, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday