WASHINGTON — Home foreclosures hit new highs and the amount of equity in homes reached new lows as the housing crisis escalated across the country in 2007, new figures showed Thursday. Nationwide, nearly 6% of all mortgages were delinquent at the end of the fourth quarter and just over 2% were in foreclosure, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. reported. The number of foreclosures was at the highest level since the association began keeping records in the 1970s. ‘The escalation of foreclosures and the delinquency problems are hurting housing prices and hurting consumer wealth,’ said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington. ‘This tells me there are more housing problems in the pipeline.’ The foreclosure rate was somewhat worse in California, with 2.23% of mortgages in foreclosure compared with 2.04% nationally. The delinquency rate was marginally better, with 5.39% of mortgages past due compared with 5.82% nationally. Doug Duncan, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Assn., said the number of foreclosures and delinquencies in four hard-hit states — California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona — was high enough to skew the national data, and that the crisis was likely to last […]