Share
I named my blog “Credit Writedowns” because I anticipated an historic wave of credit writedowns in the global banking system which would lead to a wave of deleveraging, systemic risk, and bank failures — in short, a massive financial and economic bust to rival the Great Depression.
Up until now I have masked this dire [...]

Update 06 Mar 2009: I am re-posting this because I am considering the view that Fannie and Freddie will be used to buy up mortgages, effectively nationalizing the U.S. Mortgage problem (see my last paragraphs). I had seen this as the likely result when the GSE were first put into conservatorship, but the Bush Administration was opposed to such an outcome. This is ever more likely now that Obama is in office.

Share
From the Guardian:

“Prime looks terrible.” Those were the words of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase when he had his earnings call for Q2. And, indeed, prime is terrible.

New data out from Hope Now shows that there are now more prime mortgage delinquencies in the United States than there are subprime delinquencies. This is almost certain to mean some major losses on mortgage-related securities like CDOs and RMBSs.

Share
Last month, Hank Paulson, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, was waxing prosaically about covered bonds and their benefits to mortgage markets. From his comments, one gets the impression he sees this a potential solution to preventing a future crisis in residential property in the US.
But covered bonds are not the silver bullet they have been [...]

Share
When it comes to residential property in the US, banks were overzealous on the way up and now they are overzealous on the way down. You have probably heard that banks are cutting HELOCs (home equity lines of credit) like mad. Borrowers, looking to tap an additional source of liquidity as the U.S. [...]

Share
The past few weeks I have been chronicling how Europe is fast catching up to the United States in terms of the magnitude of the housing bust and its effects on its economies. I’d like to turn back to the United States and Northern California, which has been hit hard by the bust.
Below are [...]

Share
I was listening to a money programme about the credit crunch in the UK this morning on my iPod Wake Up To Money (Podcast). They were discussing ways in which the credit crunch was made manifest to home buyers in the UK. In the broadcast, the presenters mntioned that mortgage rates are effectively were [...]

Share
Below are the latest writedown stories from the web that I have seen. For the full timeline of news, visit my credit crisis timeline. Bloomberg recently updated their tally of writedowns to arrive at $503.8 Billion to date. That is on the timeline as well.
Also see my list of Bankrupt Global Financial [...]

Share
According to Seattle-based Zilliow, nearly one-third of U.S. home buyers who bought in the last five years are now underwater. A full 45% of those who bought at the peak in 2006 have negative equity in their homes. Negative equity makes it hard to refinance a mortgage and has been a direct contributor [...]