Last year marked the start of the housing downturn in several markets. The clearest indicator was the ballooning levels of existing home inventory for sale, and the fact that these homes largely stayed on the market until Thanksgiving without moving in an appreciable way. In some markets, at the sales flow rate at the time, […]
It should come as no surprise that divining and quantifying what is happening to the housing market and the connected financial systems is a topic of significant interest for me. While there is an excellent and growing suite of web sites and Blogs around that document elements of what is happening, one piece of information […]
From MarketWatch Alt-A mortgage losses accelerate, study says SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) – Losses on so-called Alt-A home loans are accelerating and could hit the value of lower-rated portions of some mortgage-backed securities, according to a study released on Tuesday. Delinquencies have jumped on Alt-A mortgages originated last year with adjustable interest rates that let borrowers […]
[UPDATED 03/13/07 – 2005 MDT] Apparently, the stock ripples are worldwide: A steep sell-off swept through global stock markets on Tuesday as investor confidence was hit by the escalating woes of the US subprime mortgage market and weak US retail sales data. The S&P 500 ended the day down 2.04 per cent and the Dow Jones […]
Outstanding graphic from a report by Credit Suisse showing the break down of the size of the mortgage business by percentage and estimated absolute value. Of special note is that a majority of the money (51.4%) now comes from outside the Government Sponsored Entities (GSE), and through Wall Street and hedge funds. That means that […]
And the hits just keep on coming: BOSTON (Reuters) — General Electric Co.’s WMC Mortgage unit is laying off 460 staffers across the United States, representing about 20 percent of its work force, spokeswoman Brandie Young said Friday. The mortgage lender has also stopped writing new loans to people who do not make down payments, […]
[UPDATED 03/09/07 — 15:41 MST] GE is cutting staff and ending no-down-payment mortgages. [UPDATED 03/08/07 — 07:41 MST] New Century (#2 sub-prime lender) calls it quits; the question now is how long until WAMU, Wells Fargo and Countrywide start to show signs of the financial pressure they are under, too. The unwinding of the Yen […]
In my latest post, I threw around a few terms at the end that may not be well understood. One of them in particular, Yen Carry Trade, is key to the risk our economy is in. Mark Larson from Money and Markets has an excellent write up A real monster behind the market plunge! Executive […]
First off, sorry to all for not posting for such a good stretch of time. If you have been reading my posts here, you know that I have been anticipating some significant changes in the status quo of the US economy. Last summer I started to get the notion that things were out of control […]
I love it when I see someone actually crunch the numbers. In these two articles, Randolph Harrison at Capitalism 2.0 applies real-world financial analysis to the Second Life economy — and decides that it matches the characteristics of a high-yield investment program, if not an all-out Ponzi scheme. Here are the articles: Second Life: Revolutionary […]
