Wow, this keeps getting more and more interesting by the minute.  The latest in the mortgage market meltdown is the news that Citigroup and now UBS will buy back a combined $32 billion worth of auction rate securities that were sold fraudulently.  This is just another blow for cash-strapped mega-banks that have gone to great […]

The worst over?  Not so much.  AIG took a whopping $5.4 billion dollar loss last quarter related to, you guessed it, mortgage losses and write downs!  I’m one big broken record these days, but there’s not much else to say here.
AIG quickly took a nice chunk out of its recently-raised $20 billion as writedowns on […]

Thank goodness for that explicit guarantee!  Freddie Mac posted losses of $821 million and said that there is “no possible way” to predict the end of the housing bust.  The company also doubled it’s loan loss reserves to $2.8 billion - which sounds reassuring until you realize that $2.8 billion is only good for about […]

I’ve said numerous times that the main reason for bailing out the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was not for the US homeowner but for the Chinese who have bought a huge portion of our mortgage backed debt.  By letting the GSEs go under the US government would have defaulted on a huge […]

HSBC reported $10 billion worth of bad debt charges, including $3.9 billion in mortgage-related write downs today in its earnings call.  The company bet big on the US subprime market during the bubble including the purchase of Decision One and Homecomings and the extension of large lines of credit to subprime mortgage originators.  We should […]

Nouriel Roubini, former White House economic advisor and most recently foreseer of the housing and credit bust has a great article in Barron’s where they dig in to his all-to-prescient forecasts of the economy.
Here is just a brief excerpt, but it’s more than worth the entire read.
From Barron’s (via Roubini’s blog RGE Monitor):
LIKE THE […]

You just have to watch this. Classic. Amazing how the leading trade organization for real estate sales professionals can get away with blatant lying. Hat tip hp

Share This

Chase wholesale eliminated jumbo home loans today (thanks for the tip S!) - citing the lack of a secondary market, poor loan performance and decreased volume.  The lift on the federal loan limit, declining property values and the elimination of stated income, stated asset loan products are all reasons that the jumbo market has dried […]

What do you get when you own 49% of a subprime mortgage company and make gas-guzzling SUV’s in a period of record-high gas prices?  You get a big loss.  GM reported a $15.5 billion loss for the quarter.  While $9 billion was tied to one time expenses the operating loss for the quarter clocked in […]

GMAC, the financing division of GMC, posted a $2.48 billion dollar loss for the quarter driven by losses tied to its ResCap residential mortgage group and auto lease write downs.  ResCap which has been posting massive losses since the credit crunch began, lost $1.86 billion tied to more mortgage misery. Private equity firm Cerberus […]