Time Moneyland - Brad Tuttle - After years in which tons of dealerships closed, auto brands disappeared, natural disasters caused vehicle production disruptions, and consumers just didn’t have the money or desire to drop big bucks on cars, 2012 looks to be a return to good times for the auto industry.

HousingWIRE - Jon Prior - A House subcommittee will hold a hearing Wednesday to fine tune three more bills introduced last year attempting to reform the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Wall Street Journal - Kristina Peterson and Corey Boles - Federal jobless benefits can help support families of the unemployed and stabilize the economy, but may also lead to slightly longer spells of unemployment, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told lawmakers Tuesday.

Investor - Wayne Crews - During the State of the Union address, President Barack Obama ridiculed regulations like one designating spilled milk an "oil," and exclaimed, "In fact, I've approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his."

Wall Street Journal - Jeff Bater and Jeffrey Sparshott - U.S. credit-card debt posted the second solid increase in a row during December, an indication Americans stuck with meager wage gains borrowed to pay for their holiday celebrations.

Bloomberg - Video - Robert Shiller, an economics professor at Yale University and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, talks about the housing market's role in the economy and his new book "Finance and the Good Society." Shiller speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance Midday" at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Calculated Risk - The Refinance Index increased 9.4 percent from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 0.1 percent from one week earlier.

Realty Times - Strider Elass, Robert Stein & Brian S. Wesbury - The US economy is far from perfect. Economic growth has been positive, but mediocre over the past year and a half. The unemployment rate, at 8.3%, is still elevated, higher than it ever was from 1984 through 2008.

Wall Street Journal - Josh Mitchell - U.S. consumers ramped up borrowing in December. Consumer debt outstanding rose at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 9.3% from November to $2.498 trillion. Behind that was a seasonally adjusted 11.8% rise in nonrevolving credit, which includes car and student loans.

Appraisal News Online - Harry E. Davis - In the last few years there has been a trend toward a complete discounting of the Cost Approach to value in residential appraisal. For owner occupied homes, the sole technique is now the Sales Comparison Analysis, which involves selecting and comparing individual property sales to a subject property.

Realty Times - Robert Aldana - Losing your home can be devastating to your credit, not to mention your psyche, but you can buy again within as few as three years after a foreclosure or short sale.

Wall Street Journal - Matthew Strozier - The housing bust continues, at least according to the latest batch of home-price reports.

The monthly scorecard on November’s data showed that, on a year-over-year basis, home prices continued to slip across the country.