From Today's Boston Globe: Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development (DND) announced that the foreclosure rate in Boston has quadrupled since 2005.

The numbers are still much lower than the 1,700 foreclosures in Boston in 1992, when the technology-based economy ran aground and some property values were cut in half. But Mayor Thomas M. Menino said he is concerned about the current figures, fueled by the rising delinquencies of risky subprime mortgages.

‘‘It’s not just a Boston problem. It’s a nationwide problem,’’ he said. ‘‘We need state help. We need federal help.’’

That help may have to come from Washington. In an April 17 decision (Waters v. Wachovia Bank, N.A., et al.) the US Supreme Court held that Wachovia’s mortgage business, whether it was conducted by the bank itself or through the bank’s operating subsidy, is subject to the oversight of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency pursuant to the National Bank Act (12 USC Section 1, et seq.). It is not subject to the “licensing, reporting and visitorial regimes of the….States.” A bank’s subsidary mortgage company is subject to state regulation only if the parent bank would be if it performed the same function.