Your customized news for Fri, Feb 24, 2012

BERLIN — Countries that use the euro are headed for a mild recession this year, the European Commission said Thursday, the region's second economic contraction since 2008, despite years of attempts to solidify the euro zone's economic standing.

The national debt would balloon under tax policies championed by three of the four major Republican candidates for president, according to an independent analysis of tax and spending proposals so far offered by the campaigns.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — President Obama said Thursday that there are no "quick fixes" for rising gasoline prices that are threatening the economic recovery and providing fodder for attacks from his political rivals.

Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. lender by assets, will stop selling new home loans to Fannie Mae after a dispute over faulty mortgages.

Starting this month, the Charlotte-based bank will deliver only loan modifications and refinancings to U.S. government-controlled Fannie Mae, the bank said Thursday in its annual filing with securities regulators.

Tim Reese, who works in the sky, sees a Washington that few people do. From his perch above the skyline, he can take in a swath stretching from Silver Spring to Springfield just by turning his head. He sees rooftop gardens and sunlit monuments, presidential helicopters and racing motorcades. He has witnessed the grandeur of thunderstorms and, on one September morning, the horror of terrorism.

— Josh Barro likes Obama's corporate tax proposal.

— Where the term "dude" came from.

— Yes, you can patent recipes. No, it's not a good idea in practice.

— Pawnshops for the 1 percent accept wine as collateral.

Simon Johnson blames the Fed for listening too much to Wall Street titans and not enough to public-interest groups: He points out the central bank has held hundreds of meetings with industry lobbyists over Dodd-Frank and only a handful of meetings with reformers. But financial reformers themselves say that it's not just the Fed's fault that their access has been constrained: Public-interest groups simply lack the resources — in terms of time, money and personnel — to lobby regulators as intensively as many industry stakeholders.

The latest Gallup-USA Today poll holds grim news for the White House. While 44 percent of Americans says President Obama's time in office has been a success, 50 percent say it's been a failure.

The poll also finds that his favorability rating is 50 percent — presumably that's the 50 percent that doesn't think his presidency is a failure. That's lower than every presidential nominee in the last five contests save for Bob Dole. And Dole lost.

Toward the end of May, 1970, I stood waist high in water in a baptismal font of a temple in Hamilton, New Zealand, while the name of my deceased father was read aloud. Moments later, on his behalf, I was buried in the biblically mandated full-immersion baptism that is so powerfully symbolic of rebirth and entry into the kingdom of God.

Last week, the Christianity police, in the persons of Rick Santorum and Franklin Graham, came forward to discredit the president's religious beliefs. First, Santorum called Obama's theology "phony"; then, on "Morning Joe," Graham refused to accept Obama into his Christian band of brothers: "He has said he's a Christian, so I just have to assume that he is."