The news at a glance

Housing: Stalled mortgage aid goes wasted

A federal program created last year to help struggling homeowners make mortgage payments closed last week having spent “perhaps half” of its $1 billion budget, said Cara Buckley in The New York Times. The Emergency Homeowners’ Loan Program, which aimed to give unemployed homeowners up to $50,000 in zero-interest loans for underwater mortgages, has been plagued by poor administration and onerous qualifying rules, critics say. Signed into law in July 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform package, the program did not launch until June, and because of strict eligibility requirements, less than half of the intended 30,000 recipients have received the promised assistance.

Many applicants were “weeded out by the income requirements,” which disqualified those who had found new jobs after falling behind on mortgage payments while being unemployed, said Joseph De Avila in The Wall Street Journal. “I thought we’d be able to help so many,” said Linda Davis-Demas, housing director for Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Dallas. Her organization assisted more than 1,000 people with their applications for the federal money, only to see nearly 80 percent get rejected.

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Companies: Reebok to refund ‘toning shoe’ buyers

The Federal Trade Commission thinks Reebok is “a bit too cheeky” with its advertising, said Dina ElBoghdady in The Washington Post. The FTC filed a complaint last week over Reebok’s EasyTone and RunTone shoes, alleging that the shoes’ “better way to a better butt” slogan was unsubstantiated. In response, Reebok has agreed to refund $25 million to customers who bought the popular shoes. “Settling does not mean we agreed with the FTC’s allegations,” Reebok said in a statement. “We do not.”

Technology: Apple unveils iPhone 4S, not iPhone 5

Apple “left some fans wishing for more” this week when it announced the launch of the iPhone 4S, said Poornima Gupta in Reuters.com. The new phone is faster than its predecessor and “comes with voice recognition and a better camera as expected, but did little to lift the bar for smartphones,” especially as the tech blogosphere had been salivating over the prospect of an iPhone 5 model for months. Instead, “all you’ve got is an A5 processor in the existing iPhone 4,” which is more than a year old, said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis, expressing many fans’ disappointment.

Financial crisis: SEC targets Wall Street

Stung by criticism that it hasn’t held enough people responsible for the financial crisis, the Securities and Exchange Commission has a new strategy for prosecuting those suspected of financial crimes, said Jean Eaglesham in The Wall Street Journal. The agency intends to “file more civil cases in which defendants are accused of negligence only,” rather than intentional fraud. Negligence cases involve easier-to-prove standards and don’t require the SEC to establish that “misconduct was deliberate,” but the charges also carry lighter penalties.

Euro debt: Greece will miss deficit goals

New doubts about Greece’s finances are putting a second bailout at risk, said David Gow in the London Guardian. The Greek government has revealed that, because of the slow pace of reforms and a deeper-than-expected recession, its deficits for this year will hit 8.5 percent of GDP, higher than the 7.6 percent target it set with the EU and the IMF when emergency loans were negotiated in July. Greece has proposed cutting 30,000 public-sector jobs to persuade its lenders that it is still committed to austerity.