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By Karl Denninger, The Market Ticker The Market Ticker began publication when I noticed a nasty little thing that Washington Mutual was doing – paying dividends from “capitalized interest” – that is, “funny money” promised to be paid in the future by homeowners who had negative-amortization loans. In California. With price-to-income ratios for homes that frequently were running 10x, or more than three times the maximum safe value. I screamed about this at the time, predicting that

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Random Feed wrote an interesting post today on
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This is from an acquaintance in Celebration, Florida, who worked for the real estate company which perpetrated these crimes. Mortgage brokers in Orlando arranged mortgages for people they knew were illegally in the country and were unemployed. Phoney green cards, employment and bank records were created to accompany loan applications. Property values were inflated two and three times and supported by faked tax assessments from the city of Orlando. Second mortgages were arranged to fund

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by Karen Weise , ProPublica A version of this story aired on American Public Media’s Marketplace . Seventy-year-old Barbara Harris can’t help crying when she walks around her neighborhood. She says she hates seeing possessions piled up on front lawns — the remnants of foreclosure. Three times, the Harrises received foreclosure notices and thought they’d be next. For two years, the Harrises have been trying to get Wells Fargo to modify their mortgage to something they can afford. B

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Random Feed wrote an interesting post today on
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GF special? Listed: $799K. Sold: $825K. Lot 25 x 122. Historians may rue that, in the early 21st Century, as the planet reeled under three times its sustainable population, the climate tipped towards the irreversible, a fossil fuel-driven economy ran out of reserves and a billion faced hunger as foodstocks were diverted to run cars, young couples would sacrifice all for a mortgage. That is, I guess, if there’ll be historians. Anyway, here’s an interesting juxtaposition for you between the

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Random Feed wrote an interesting post today on
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The economy of the UK is shrinking at its fastest rate since 1958. Gross domestic product fell 2.4 percent from the final three months of 2008, compared with the prior measurement of a 1.9 percent drop, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The median prediction in a Bloomberg survey of 28 economists was for a 2.1 percent decline. Construction activity plunged almost three times as much as originally estimated. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said last week that B

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