The nation's brokers & lenders are still suffering the stings of the mortgage crisis and credit crunch - and may yet feel the pain for some time to come, indicated the earnings reports released Tuesday by four large financial-services companies.

The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), commonly known as Fannie Mae, the giant government-backed mortgage purchaser, reported its “1st Quarter” net loss of $2.57 a share, or $2.19 billion, which was far more than the expected loss of 81 cents a share in a poll by Thomson Reuters. The company’s stock initially dropped after its report, but rebounded and was up around 9% in the afternoon after Moody's affirmed Fannie's debt rating.

The MVP in the nation's home-lending industry predicted that it projects the "severe weakness in the housing market to continue in 2008," which in turn would lead to higher delinquencies and foreclosures among mortgage borrowers.

UBS AG also did report yesterday that it has suffered more than $37 billion in write-downs in recent quarters, and the diversified global financial services company tied mostly to the troubled U.S. housing market. In the first quarter, UBS reported a first-quarter net loss of 11.54 billion Swiss francs ($10.99 billion) after a CHF3.03 billion net profit in the year-earlier period. In a statement, UBS disclosed that it is reversing a growth strategy and cutting its costs for high- priced investment-banking talent.

Lazard Ltd. (LAZ), a company that focuses on mergers and acquisitions, said Tuesday that it is struggling with a slowdown in the lucrative business of corporate deal-making. The firm's merger-advisory revenue fell 15% during the first quarter, and some of its corporate debt investments lost value, leading to a 71% loss in income for the quarter, and a net loss of $39.7 million.

Mutual-fund manager Legg Mason Inc. (LM), which said it took charges of $291 million to relieve the company's money-market funds from their exposure to structured-investment vehicles, posted first-quarter loss of $255.5 million. In a statement released on Tuesday, Legg Mason attributed the losses to the poor performance of several of its funds, and also a "deteriorating operating environment".

Wachovia Corp. (WB) pushed its first-quarter results further into the red on Tuesday, reporting a previously undisclosed loss of $315 billion related to contracts within its bank-owned life insurance portfolio. The news pushed Wachovia's first-quarter results to a net loss of $708 million, a worse result than the $393 in net losses that Wachovia announced on April 14.