IndyMac Fighting For Survival…Bank Deposits Withdrawn

(From EarthTimes.org)
WASHINGTON, June 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — As IndyMac Bancorp battles questions about its financial stability, a new report from the Center for Responsible Lending provides evidence that IndyMac put itself in a hole by engaging in unsound and abusive lending during the nation’s mortgage boom.
The report, “IndyMac: What Went Wrong?,” finds substantial evidence that IndyMac [...]

Bank Of International Settlements Warns of Big Contraction

The newly-released annual report of the Bank of International Settlements sounds as if it is unusually lively reading. Most official documents strive for an anodyne tone, while this one appears to be unusually blunt. However, while some reporters have their hands on it, the report is not yet up on the BIS website, so those [...]

BOOK REVIEW: Confessions Of A Subprime Lender

(From WallStreetJournalOnline)
Confessions of a Subprime Lender
By Richard Bitner
(Wiley, 186 pages, $19.95)
Three years ago, I had lunch with several mortgage-bond traders and analysts at Bear Stearns. The investment bank, already a huge trader and underwriter of securities backed by mortgages, had recently begun making home loans to consumers via brokers. I wondered why my hosts were [...]

Citi Falls To New Low…Bank of America Says “What Me Worry”?

Citi (C) fell 6% to a new low Thursday after analysts at Goldman Sachs downgraded the stock, citing the prospect of $8.9 billion in additional asset writedowns. The move comes just a week after Citi financial chief Gary Crittenden said the bank would take “substantial” writedowns in its second quarter ending this month. Analysts at UBS [...]

The Calm Before The Storm?…Credit Instability Is Increasing…

(From NakedCapitalism.com)
The Fed’s decision to stay on hold with interest rates is an indirect acknowledgment, despite some brave talk otherwise, that the banking system is plenty fragile (has everyone forgotten that the Fed facilities are a form of life support?) and the concomitant economic downturn may only be in its early innings.
There have been some [...]

Countrywide Lawsuits Continue to Embarrass Bank of America

At the same time, the Senate is pushing ahead with sweeping legislation on housing while facing questions about why some of its members received below-market-rate mortgages from Countrywide.
As first reported by Daniel Golden on Portfolio.com, the primary author of the Senate bill, Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, as well as Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of [...]

California Mortgage Industry Reform Struggling in Legislature

(From LATimes.com opinion article)
The state Assembly’s response to the sub-prime mortgage catastrophe experienced its own meltdown in the Senate Banking, Finance and Insurance Committee last week. In a twist on the cliche, only the weak bills survived. The most ambitious Assembly bill, AB 1830, was tamed in advance by sponsor Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) to answer [...]

Home Prices Dropping At Highest Rate Ever…Bottom Could Take A Year Or More

(From HuffingtonPost.com, by J.W. ELPHINSTONE | June 24, 2008 04:36 PM EST)
NEW YORK — No matter who’s measuring, the results are the same: Housing prices are tumbling at the sharpest rates ever with a bottom still at least a year away, economists say.
Both the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price indices and the Office of Federal [...]

Housing Crisis Horror Stories…Worthy of Edgar Allan Poe

LAGUNA HILLS, California (From CNN.com) — Charles Nelson has paid about $30,000 in rent since moving into a spacious four-bedroom home in August. He was stunned when a real estate agent knocked on his door recently and said the home was in foreclosure.
His landlord had not paid the mortgage since he moved in and the [...]

Fannie and Freddie Slow To Enter Jumbo Conforming Market…Buying Own Securities Back and Lending 50% Of What Congress Hoped For

June 24 (Bloomberg) — Three months after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won the freedom to step up home-loan purchases, the government-chartered mortgage-finance companies are doing what critics in the Federal Reserve and Congress had predicted.
Instead of using powers granted by Congress to buy jumbo loans for the first time, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae [...]