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Stocks turn higher to extend month's big gains -

The stock market ended November with its best monthly performance since the summer — even as investors worried about the strength of the holiday shopping season.

Stocks zigzagged Monday but finished modestly higher as traders ultimately were not deterred by reports that retail sales were overall uninspiring during the Thanksgiving weekend. Retailers including Macy's Inc. and Saks Inc. fell sharply but online merchants like Amazon.com Inc. shot higher on reports of strong Internet sales.

Despite the tepid finish, the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 index rose more than 5 percent in November, their biggest monthly advance since July.

Obama Addministration "Shames" Mortgage Servicers -

HUD and the Treasury Department are taking another crack at moving its foreclosure prevention efforts from concept to reality. And now it is adding "shame" to its list of weapons.

The Treasury Department announced today that it intends to increase pressure on lenders and servicers to move borrowers from trial loan modifications into actual restructured loans. The action comes amid reports that the administration's $75 billion Making Homes Affordable Program (HAMP) is floundering.

While the government has been trumpeting the success of the trial modification program - some 650,000 troubled borrowers had entered the program by the end of October - only a very small percentage of those borrowers have transitioned into a permanent loan modification. It is estimated that November figures will show completed modifications to number in only the tens of thousands coming out of close to ¾ million trials.

The Treasury has announced plans to assign officials to monitor the largest mortgage servicing companies on a daily basis and will require companies to develop and report their specific plans to increase the number of modifications they complete. Loan servicers may face monetary penalties and sanctions if they fail to fulfill plans. Treasury is also expected to delay incentive payments to servicers until individual modifications are permanent