Sunday, April 19, 2009

Must Read: The Economist

The Economist comes through with this:
Shelter Or Burden?
The disaster began with defaults on American subprime mortgages, a financial instrument designed to spread home ownership among the poor. It gathered pace after the failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises that provide cheap home loans. As a result, the home-ownership rate in America has fallen for four years, the first time that has happened in a quarter of a century.

7 comments:

Jean ValJean said...

FIRST off.. what the heck are you doing posting so much on a weekend?

Rob Dawg said...

I've been remiss. A combination of blogger block and being unable to get excited about stuff and not getting much feedback from the stuff I do post. It's better now and I have dozens of posts I want to get out now.

Unknown said...

Baby Boomers wrecked the country.

TJandTheBear said...

Even Al himself stated the last 5% of homeownership was "at risk". Consider it gone, plus a little more just for good measure.

Rob Dawg said...

The funny/sad part is that the very same people who felt like they were on the outside looking in find themselves the ones trapped inside wishing they could get out. 5% is 4 million. Gee, how many times have i said 4 million?

Lost Cause said...

Yeah, pretty ironic that those poor people are now upside down -- the only escape is FC & BK. Nobody was doing them any favors to begin with. They were probably overcharged.

Bill in NC said...

Does the type of loan really matter when the homeowner is more than 25% underwater?

Prime or sub-prime, the logical choice is to walk away from that loan.