patrick.net

I assume true Buddhists walk everywhere...mindfully...

Tantric Buddhists can fly...

New thread: Ask a JBR.

This piece is on the front page of the Sunday New York Times today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/business/11mortgage.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

A login password is needed. An excerpt is below. As usual, the NYT is a day late and a dollar short, but it is on the front page...

"Crisis Looms in Market for Mortgages "

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Published: March 11, 2007

On March 1, a Wall Street analyst at Bear Stearns wrote an upbeat report on a company that specializes in making mortgages to cash-poor homebuyers. The company, New Century Financial, had already disclosed that a growing number of borrowers were defaulting, and its stock, at around $15, had lost half its value in three weeks.

A Booming Market What happened next seems all too familiar to investors who bought technology stocks in 2000 at the breathless urging of Wall Street analysts. Last week, New Century said it would stop making loans and needed emergency financing to survive. The stock collapsed to $3.21.

The analyst’s untimely call, coupled with a failure among other Wall Street institutions to identify problems in the home mortgage market, isn’t the only familiar ring to investors who watched the technology stock bubble burst precisely seven years ago.

Now, as then, Wall Street firms and entrepreneurs made fortunes issuing questionable securities, in this case pools of home loans taken out by risky borrowers. Now, as then, bullish stock and credit analysts for some of those same Wall Street firms, which profited in the underwriting and rating of those investments, lulled investors with upbeat pronouncements even as loan defaults ballooned. Now, as then, regulators stood by as the mania churned, fed by lax standards and anything-goes lending.

Investment manias are nothing new, of course. But the demise of this one has been broadly viewed as troubling, as it involves the nation’s $6.5 trillion mortgage securities market, which is larger even than the United States treasury market.

Hanging in the balance is the nation’s housing market, which has been a big driver of the economy. Fewer lenders means many potential homebuyers will find it more difficult to get credit, while hundreds of thousands of homes will go up for sale as borrowers default, further swamping a stalled market.

(continues)

Of course,

Brand,

The Yahoo article is written by fools, as you say. For Boston they mention Dorchester as an up and coming neighborhood. One of my friends rented an apartment in Dorchester for a while. He works for a federal agency that involves him carrying a gun, so let's just say he's not the type to shy away from a bad area. Well, after a year there he moved because it was too dangerous. When he would go for a jog (in plainclothes), the locals would tell him to "keep running, boy". And not in a friendly way either.

Bap33: Maybe BostonTransplant's friend is black.

Driving a premium car CAN be a fashion statement.

I think being driven in a true luxury car (e.g. RR, Bentley) can be a fashion statement.

Too many people are driving Lexus for it to be a "statement". :)

Unless the statement is "I am part of an original crowd."

Peter P,

Numbers never stopped the SUV drivers or the BMW 3 series crowd (though some of them might have bought them just for the car).

Nothing seems to disrupt the flow of lemmings.

Unless the statement is “I am part of an original crowd.”

That is an such a non-statement. :)

'Too many people are driving Lexus for it to be a “statement”. '

A Prius makes a more noticeable statement than a Lexus.
People driving around in overpriced American luxury SUVs like Hummers, and Yukons now look like utter morons. Especially when you know that they used a HELOC to buy it. Ha ha ha ha ha.