Morning Edition

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with social networking profits.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: You can get attention on the Internet. You can even draw a massive crowd in seconds. The question always is how to make money. Investors have been scrutinizing Facebook's plans to go public and trying to figure out the company's prospects.

The company will instead focus on home photo printers, high-speed commercial ink jet presses and software. Other companies may license the Kodak brand for cameras, and some disposables will still be out there.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.

Here's a sign of just how huge the housing and foreclosure crisis has been. Five big banks agreed to pay about $25 billion to people who've been harmed bank's abuses, plus an extra billion to settle a claim involving a mortgage company. And one of the first reactions is that all that money could not possibly be enough.

President Obama says the banks will spread the money around.

The multi-billion dollar bank mortgage settlement could have some unanticipated consequences for borrowers in trouble. There will likely be an initial surge of foreclosures. Banks, freed from uncertainty over the investigation, will probably pick up the pace of home seizures. But the foreclosure rate will probably fall over the longer term as banks ease the burden on borrowers through principal reductions.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Overall economic numbers for this year have been looking better, but almost every forecast for 2012 has included at least a mention that catastrophe could still come from Europe. The crisis over Greece's debt is not over, even after yesterday when lawmakers approved more budget cuts and economic reforms. Now Greek unions are protesting again.

Resolving this crisis has taken years, and there's a reason: a debt crisis has never really been solved this way before. Here's Zoe Chace of NPR's Planet Money team.