This post first appeared on July 11, 2007 Readers of this blog know that I have been concerned about the state of the credit markets for some time. We’ve had (until the last month or so), rampant liquidity feeding asset bubbles in virtually every asset class except the dollar and the yen, tight risk spreads […]
Read more...There are a lot of bad things you can say about Fannie and Freddie: that they were part of the oversubsidization of housing in America, that they’ve had an overlarge side business of funneling cash to friendly politicians, that some of their “innovative” practices, like requiring the use of the electronic mortgage registration system, MERS, […]
Read more...A good piece at Mother Jones, “Fannie and Freddie’s Foreclosure Barons” (hat tip Foghorn Leghorn) provides a window on a seamy big business: cut rate foreclosure processing machines that routinely ride roughshod over borrowers and the law. Unfortunately, space limitations prevent the story from going deeply into some critical issues. The piece does a good […]
Read more...I recall a presentation on China at the Asia Society on the eve of the financial crisis, in which an economist commented on China’s extremely low interest rate on deposits (less than 1%) versus its markedly higher inflation rate, and commented that that was a recipe for hyperinflation. Well, that hasn’t been and is unlikely […]
Read more...In case you’ve been paying attention to market action rather than economic news, some key data releases for July have been less than cheery. For instance, consumer confidence has taken a nosedive, the US trade deficit unexpectedly worsened (meaning one of the few key sources of good news, the export sector, has hit an air […]
Read more...It wasn’t all that long ago that the media and banking industry commentators would worry about the coming train wreck in commercial real estate. But peculiarly, that topic has more or less receded from view. It appears the public has only so much interest in banking stories, and the frenzied coverage of financial services non-reform […]
Read more...Complementing today’s piece on the Chinese property bubble, a cross-post from VoxEU, with some graphical depictions of how wild the bubble has become. The NYT article referenced in the piece is here – RS. By Yongheng Deng, Professor of Real Estate and Finance at the National University of Singapore, Joseph Gyourko, Professor of Real Estate, […]
Read more...This post first appeared on March 27, 2007 This is a great post by Tanta at Calculated Risk on the classic types of mortgage frauds and how they morphed into new forms due to a unique confluence of buyer naivete and broker/originator greed (oh, and sometimes buyer greed too). She clearly discusses recent versus traditional […]
Read more...Just a reminder of one little corner of the toxic debt fiasco that has plenty of bite still left in it. The Irish banks got in a big mess with duff RE loans. The government swapped discounted bad loans for government-issued bonds. A new agency, NAMA, monitors the duff loan portfolio. There are half a […]
Read more...This post first appeared on March 14, 2007 One of today’s lessons is to have greater courage in my convictions. In a number of earlier posts (such as “The Rising Tide of Liquidity,” part 2 and part 3 of the same, “Where Has the (Perception of) Risk Gone“) I pointed to how toppy the markets […]
Read more...This post first appeared on February 18, 2007 Mirable dictu, a Wall Street Journal editorial, “How Expansions Die,” that, for the most part, has a solid foundation in reality. Although the WSJ’s news pages have been reporting on the meltdown in the subprime mortgage market (admittedly somewhat less intently than the Financial Times), both the […]
Read more...Cross-posted from http://www.presimetrics.com/blog/ By Mike Kimel of Presimetrics This post is going to be a bit different, at least for me. Generally I like to write things that are more data oriented, and that involve some pictures and figures. But this is a little story that happened to my wife and me, only a few […]
Read more...RealtyTrac, as reported on Housing Wire, gave a gloomy update on the US housing market. RealtyTrac does granular collection of data on foreclosures, capturing every filing. One of the shortcomings of this approach is that processes vary by state (as in some state require more court filings over the course of a foreclosure than others). […]
Read more...A well placed Washington contact wrote: I was in a discussion with the staff at one of the Federal agencies involved in housing to ask them about the new policies on strategic defaults. It became clear almost immediately that regulators obviously have no idea how to identify strategic defaulters except by asking big banks. They […]
Read more...One has to be cautious in invoking cultural stereotypes. However, when the subject of defaults or mortgage mods comes up here and in other forums, almost inevitably some readers will start off on a bit of a rant: “I pay my mortgage/rent, why should these people get a break?” And these discussions often take a […]
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