Housing Crisis
Senator Chris Dodd Still Thinks We’re Stupid
Everyone knows he made a mint on discounted mortgages while neglecting to regulate the mortgage industry. The least he could do is tell the truth about it.
December 23, 2008 | Read More
Subprime Thinking
So-called “aggressive lobbying” from the banking industry kept our government from cracking down on crazy mortgages.
December 1, 2008 | Read More
One Paragraph, $800 Billion
Remember the bailout bill before the bailout bill? You know, the housing bailout bill? That bill was about 700 pages. 694 pages to be exact. But one tiny little passage in it, section 3083, had an enormous effect.
November 11, 2008 | Read More
One Last Orgy Of Profits
The same bunch of bunko artists who brought us the current financial meltdown had a major hand in making a tank of gas cost as much as dinner out at La Folie.Playing Chicken Little about the Far East and increased demand was a convenient self-fulfilling prophecy for them. They and their puppets in the media kept shouting about prices going up and up and, lo and behold, prices did go up. A lot. Now they’re crashing. Coincidence?
October 8, 2008 | Read More
Home Inequity
As the Feds were staging their political sideshow last week, a handful of state attorney generals were hammering out the last details of a settlement agreement that makes at least one of culprits for our current housing bust pay the piper.
October 6, 2008 | Read More
Paulson Caused the Crisis
The net capital rule was there to make sure Wall Street could bail itself out in case of a crisis. But because the SEC gave geniuses like Henry Paulson what they wanted and eliminated the rule in 2004, we the taxpayers now have to pay the tab for their recklessness. This is the man that now wants a $700 billion blank check - to fix the crisis that he caused!?
October 3, 2008 | Read More
Subprime Bedfellows Craft the Bailout
With senators falling over themselves to vote for the $700 billion bailout package yesterday, let’s not forget that before the housing meltdown, two key senators were all too willing to benefit from a major player in the subprime scandal.
October 2, 2008 | Read More
Blaming Main Street
George Will finally says (and Andrew Sullivan agrees with) what a lot of people - especially politicians - have probably wanted to say since the housing bubble popped : the real villains aren’t mortgage brokers or bond sellers or investment bankers, but home buyers:
While I do not disagree that people living…
October 1, 2008 | Read More
Reason #64: Home Sour Loan
A tidal wave of debt is hiding in the ledger books, just waiting to flood out onto the market. How long can the bankers and bond traders hold back the rising sea?
The president of my bank told me about a cocktail party conversation he had during the housing boom heyday. A guy bragged to him over martinis, “I bought ten houses this year.” When my bank president questioned the wisdom of taking on all that debt, the guy just shrugged and said, “They either appreciate or I walk.”
By walk, the guy meant default on the loans. In other words, leave his…
August 27, 2008 | Read More
Reason #63: Turn Out the Lights, The Party’s Over (And the Taxpayers Have to Clean Up the Mess)
Wall Street suits and their political allies in Washington keep sipping their cocktails, ignoring the elephant of debt and delayed pain in the room. But that pachyderm is adding weight by the ton, and this may be the year that he crashes through the floor and takes all the partygoers-and the U.S. economy-with him.
Take the hedge fund company Peloton. In 2007, their “Asset-Backed Securities” fund reaped a staggering 87 percent off the housing bubble. But by March 2008, only months after posting those record gains, they went belly up. Peloton isn’t alone on the scrap heap. Numerous other hedge funds…
August 27, 2008 | Read More
