Sub-Prime Losses and Housing Bubble Could Cost $1 Trillion…

(From Forbes.com)
The bill for securitization of credit and the meltdown of subprime mortgages and other collateralized debt obligations ratchets up to $500 billion. The end is nowhere in sight. We may be looking at a final reckoning approaching  a trillion bucks. To paraphrase the late Illinois Sen. Everett M. Dirksen, “A billion here, a billion [...]

FHA, Ginnie Mae and the New Subprime…

(From HousingWire.com….)
The FHA’s more lenient underwriting standards appear to have allowed it to overcome its historic shortcomings — a cumbersome and bureaucratic documentation process, and stiff lender requirements (for example, brokers complain that the requirement to provide costly audited financials steers all but the large mortgage brokerage firms away from FHA programs). FHA modernization proposals, [...]

Feds Arrest Bear Managers, Mortgage Fraud Targets…

(From Forbes.com….)
One year since the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds signaled the beginning of the credit crisis, law enforcement officials came out swinging Thursday to hold people accountable.
The managers of those Bear Stearns funds were indicted on multiple charges of fraud, conspiracy and, in the case of one, insider trading.
At about the time [...]

Subprime Mortgage Lender Failures: Peoples Choice

How homeowners’ missed mortgage payments set off widespread problems and woke up the Fed.
By Zachary A. Goldfarb and Alec Klein
The Washington Post
Monday, June 16, 2008; A01

 
The mortgage executives who gathered in a blond-wood conference room in Southern California studied their internal reports with growing alarm.
More and more borrowers were falling behind on their monthly payments [...]

California Mortgage Reform Moving Along Slowly

SACRAMENTO — As the worst foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression drags down the California economy, the Legislature is making only limited progress this year on proposals for sweeping changes in the home mortgage industry.
Amid fanfare this winter, lawmakers held televised news conferences and introduced an unprecedented number of bills that would more heavily regulate [...]

Giant UBS Loses Big On Subprime…

(From Bloomberg Markets)
Shareholders say Ospel and his fellow managers took a profitable Swiss bank and wrecked it on the shoals of structured finance and subprime mortgages. “He built up enormous risks, which were damaging the whole organization,” says Herbert Brändli, president of Profond, a Swiss pension fund that has been selling down its holding of [...]

We Are ALL Subprime Now…

First the Bloomberg………
 
 

“The movement in the forward Libor-OIS spreads is telling you that the market is concerned that things can get even worse before they get better,” said Carl Lantz, an interest-rate strategist in New York at Credit Suisse, one of the 20 primary dealers of U.S. government securities that trade with the Federal Reserve. [...]

Accredited To Close Down Subprime Operations

 

HARD MONEY…..FHA..….PRIME (Subprime market collapses)               
Accredited Home Lenders (LEND) is hardly a household name or even an industry leader. But its delayed 2006 annual filing, just filed with regulators Thursday, reveals how the subprime debacle has turned into a nightmare for lenders.
The filing is a Reader’s Digest version of how subprime loans went from lucrative sources [...]