Subprime Loan Forclosures USA

[luckyphil247]

vbroker,

you get the "man of the day award" for "layin it down hard"!

keep it up!

LMAO

Its a bit too early in the day to give that award isn't it ???

You have already decided at 6.20am ???

I think both of you have conspired in winning this award .

I'm not paranoid okay , nor am I one of your so-called left wing radicals who thinks everything is a Conspiracy . But this is just bullshit .

You both should be in politics ,

Today is a sad day indeed , and Democracy has yet again suffered another blow .

[primetime]

today there is a plan developing to not step up interest rates from teaser rates in hopes of slowing the tide of foreclosures. Well, I was smart enough, now it looks like dumb enough, to pay a higher rate with a fixed rate loan. I want them to reduce my loan rate also even though I can afford my mortgage. What is the chance I can get that done? Zero. The losers who have no financial responsibility benefit again. Mortgage brokers told them they can get a loan up to $X yet the losers never who took out the loans never considered their other spending requirements or that taxes increase as property becomes more valuable or that cities and towns will increase their property rates. These people did not plan to leave any buffer in their financial planning. I want the biggest house with the biggest loan I can get, I don't worry if I can afford it. That is the American way.

All I want to know now is when is my loan rate going to be decreased.

[CiaranM]

See what a couple weeks in Thailand does? I managed to miss the latest idiot volley. With one bowling ball it's time to knock down several pins...for my entertainment.

Who debunked it you ? George Bush and his gang of crooks

:roll: You defend Limbaugh Politics are such a phoney Joke :roll:

That's some pretty good ganja they've got out by you, huh? They call it "medical marijuana" here in "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" land. It keeps the natives in line.

...and it's because of dicks like U....

Coming from you, Mr. Singha, I take this as the ultimate compliment. I think you need to concern yourself with things related to the Blarney Stone, leprechauns and maybe a Chiang or seven. Put a little variety in your life. Merry Christmas.

Hmm.. Krugman preaching to a bunch of alcoholic english teacher's about the U.S. housing market? In Bangkok of all places? He must have come for the great food.

With all due respect, the alcoholic English teachers wouldn't be sitting at Krugman's or any other meeting. Unless the meeting is in a bar. This would otherwise cut into their alcoholic consumption and bar girl ogling time....and we can't have that. Non-alcoholic English teachers, on the other hand, might have been there. As for Krugman, there aren't too many places where he's able to draw a crowd. The two coasts qualify and now apparently BKK.

No, not everyone warned about it.

No, not everyone warned about it. But SEVERAL knowledgeable people did. Before, during and after your boy. Enough to render Krugman's "prediction" as nothing special. If I had the interest, I'd list several. I don't.

Certainly not the rabid right wing neocon pundits who have the ear of the incompetent administration that oversaw this whole mess.

I'll make yet another vain attempt to educate the ineducable. English teachers and journalists working for declining readership publications take special note. The class is in. This ain't a left/right or political issue. According to your nonsensical illogic (again), the 2000 dot com bubble/fiasco was "overseen" by the Clinton Administration? After all the tech bull market ran gangbusters throughout the '90's. Answer: Clinton and the Democrats had as much to do with the tech nuclear meltdown as the Bush and the Republicans had to do with the real estate debacle. They had little or nothing to do with it. In a free and minimally regulated capitalistic economy, there are booms and busts. Expansion and recession. In other words, nothing goes up forever and nothing comes down forever. Corrections and purges are normal and healthy but of course, they also provide the left lunatic fringe the fodder they need to rally their fruit loop troops.

When anyone has a problem with foreigners in Thailand, they are always English teachers with questionable traits and character flaws.

Could that be because there are a disproportionate number of questionable traits and character flawed teachers compared to the "respectable" ones? John Mark Carr (Karr?) didn't help your cause. I'm not pointing fingers; but if the shoe fits........

Wouldn't treason also be revealing names of CIA for reasons of spite?

Yawn. All charges dropped except for poor Scooter Libby who was convicted for forgetfulness. Then pardoned. Next.

If you think this war had anything to do with noble causes then you really do have your head up your ass.

I think. You don't. Next.

If you think it is so noble then you should sign up and I'll even pay for the body bag they ship you back in. Or better yet, if you have them, send your kids over there to help in this noble cause...i'll pay for their body bags too..We have a president and VP that were too cowardly themselves to go when their country called.... yet they have no problems sending others to die. Personally I would like to see both tried in the Hague and sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. ..or is it unpatriotic for an American to say that??? :shock:

Nope. Just yet another example of extreme, abject ignorance. Welcome to the farang club. You fit right in. Next.

vbroker,

you get the "man of the day award" for "layin it down hard"!

keep it up!

LMAO

r u taking one for the team big boy ???? :shock: :shock: :shock:

[CiaranM]

...and it's because of dicks like U....

Coming from you, Mr. Singha, I take this as the ultimate compliment. I think you need to concern yourself with things related to the Blarney Stone, leprechauns and maybe a Chiang or seven. Put a little variety in your life. Merry Christmas.

sorry to bust ur bubble .... but i don't drink Singha or Chiang (whatever that is) !!

btw ... there's no such thing as leprechauns or Santa Claus .... hope that doesn't spoil ur christian hi-jacking of a pagan festival !!!

[i_love_som_tam]

btw ... there's no such thing as leprechauns

oh yeah? i beg to differ.... :roll:

[CiaranM]

btw ... there's no such thing as leprechauns

oh yeah? i beg to differ.... :roll:

i stand corrected ...... thanks a bunch Ron !!!! :roll: :roll:

[CiaranM]

Wouldn't treason also be revealing names of CIA for reasons of spite?

Yawn. All charges dropped except for poor Scooter Libby who was convicted for forgetfulness. Then pardoned. Next.

so it's ok to "out" agents working for the security of ur country .... would love to have seen ur reaction if it had been a democrat that had done it !!! and try and get ur facts right also !!

He was convicted of perjury and obstructing an investigation into the leak. President Bush did not pardon him, but commuted the sentence to a fine and probation.

[zeusbheld]

Wouldn't treason also be revealing names of CIA for reasons of spite?

Yawn. All charges dropped except for poor Scooter Libby who was convicted for forgetfulness. Then pardoned. Next.

so it's ok to "out" agents working for the security of ur country .... would love to have seen ur reaction if it had been a democrat that had done it !!! and try and get ur facts right also !!

He was convicted of perjury and obstructing an investigation into the leak. President Bush did not pardon him, but commuted the sentence to a fine and probation.

now now Ciaran. don't let facts interfere with a nice piece of agitprop.

[robbie36]

I wouldnt mind having a guess at how the whole subprime crisis will pan out - I reckon it will follow a similar patter to the Thai financial/bad debt crisis that we saw from 1997-2000.

We are most of the way through the first phase of the crisis. At first the banks refused to admit they had a problem, then they announced a 'small' problem and finally we find out that losses are likely to be of the order of US$300bn. It was a similar story with the Thai banks and there bad debt problems in 1997....

But this isnt the end of the story - acceptance of the problem does not mean the 'worst is over' in a banking crisis. So far little thought has been given as to the consequences of these losses on the banking sector and the economy.

A bank typically lends out 10x its capital, so that a US$ loss potentially leads to a US$10 reduction in lending and a US$300bn loss to a US$3trillion credit squeeze. Anyone around in Thailand in the aftermath of 1997 will remember that loans were almost impossible to come by.

Of course the real problem is that following these losses the banks need to be recapitalised either by their shareholders (or in the case of a bailout) by the government. That recapitalisation will enable them to write off their bad debts and maintain their loan portfolios - it will also result in substantial dilution for shareholders.

I guess the crisis wont really end until the industry is recapitalised....

[primetime]

I'm still wondering what the hell happened to the Federal Reserve Bank, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the State bank regulators. The had banks tighten up lending standards in the late 1980s. Did the idiots not learn just like the banks did not learn and let the standards loosen again? I know the banks were chasing the all mighty buck, but the regulators shouldn't have been. My bet is they were kissing the ass of the banks so they would continue to regulate them rather than switch to a new regulator...OCC to Fed. I bet some of it is that mortgage brokers' lending standards aren't regulated and then these loans are sold and packaged and investors and investment banks purchase a good chunk of these packages with banks purchasing some also.

[Bruce551]

Farangs criticize Thai people about corruption and ethics. But should people who ilive in glass houses throw stones?

The Long and Short of It at Goldman Sachs

By BEN STEIN

FOR decades now, as a writer, economist and scold, I have been receiving letters from thoughtful readers. Many of them have warned me about the dangers of a secret government running the world, organized by the Trilateral Commission, or the Ford Foundation, or the Big Oil companies or, of course, world Jewry.

I always scoff at these letters. The world is far too complex a place to be run by any one group. But the closest I have recently seen to such a world-running body would have to be a certain large investment bank, whose alums are routinely Treasury secretaries, high advisers to presidents, and occasionally a governor or United States senator.

This all started percolating in my fevered brain last week when a frequent correspondent, a gent in Florida who is sure economic disaster lies ahead (and he may be right, but he?s not), forwarded a newsletter from a highly placed economist at Goldman Sachs named Jan Hatzius.

That worthy scholar recently wrote a detailed paper about how he thought the subprime mess would get worse and worse. It would get so bad, he hypothesized, that it would affect aggregate lending extremely adversely and slow down growth.

Dr. Hatzius, who has a Ph.D. in economics from ?Oggsford,? as they put it in ?The Great Gatsby,? used a combination of theory, data, guesswork, extrapolation and what he recalls as history to reach the point that when highly leveraged institutions like banks lost money on subprime, they would cut back on lending to keep their capital ratios sound ? and this would slow the economy.

This would occur, he said, if the value of the assets that banks hold plunges so steeply that they have to consume their own capital to patch up losses. With those funds used to plug holes, banks? reserves drop further. To keep reserves in accordance with regulatory requirements, banks then have to rein in lending. What all of this means ? or so the argument goes ? is that losses in subprime and elsewhere that are taken at banks ultimately boomerang back, in a highly multiplied and negative way, onto our economy.

As the narrator in the rock legend ?Spill the Wine? says, ?This really blew my mind.?

So I started an e-mail correspondence with Dr. Hatzius, pointing out what I believed were a few flaws in his paper. Among them were his hypothesis that home prices would fall an average of 15 percent nationwide (an event that has never happened since the Depression, although we surely could be headed in that direction), and that this would lead to a drastic increase in defaults and losses by lenders.

This, as I see it, is a conclusion that is an estimation based upon a guess. I found especially puzzling the omission of the highly likely truth that the Fed would step in to replenish financial institutions? liquidity if necessary. In a crisis like that outlined by the good Dr. Hatzius, the Fed ? any postwar Fed except perhaps that of a fool ? would pump cash into the system to keep lending on track.

I mentioned this via e-mail to Dr. Hatzius. He generously agreed that there was some slight merit to my arguments and that he was merely pointing out tendencies and possibilities (if I understand him correctly).

BUT forecasting is tricky, and I have a hard time believing that financial events to come will be qualitatively different from those that have already happened.

I do want to emphasize Dr. Hatzius?s gentlemanliness and intelligence. But I also want to emphasize that, as I see it, his document was mostly about selling fear. A spokesman for Goldman Sachs categorically denies this point and says that the firm?s economic research is held to the highest levels of objectivity and that its economists? views are completely independent.

As I interpret it, Dr. Hatzius was saying that the financial system would possibly not be able to adjust to a level of financial losses that are large on an absolute scale but small compared with aggregate credit or the gross domestic product. He is also postulating that lenders would have to retrench so deeply that lending would stall and growth would falter ? an event that, again, has not happened on any scale in the postwar world, except when planned by the central bank.

In other words, with the greatest possible respect to Dr. Hatzius, his paper is not really what I would call a serious overview of the situation. It is more a call to be afraid and cautious based on general principles that he embraces and not on the lessons of history. (In this respect, he is much like many economic journalists and commentators who sell newsprint by selling fear. The common cause of journalists and Wall Streeters in this regard is a subject I will address in the future.)

Now, let me make a few small points here and then get to my own big point.

Goldman Sachs is a huge name in terms of moneymaking and prestige. I totally understand the respect it receives for its financial dexterity. The firm is a superstar in that regard, and I, a small stockholder, am grateful. But it has never been clear to me exactly why its people are considered rocket scientists in any other area than making money.

Dr. Hatzius?s paper is a prime example of my puzzlement. It shows extreme intelligence but basically misses the point: yes, there are possible macro dangers, but you have to go all the way around Robin Hood?s barn to get to them, and you have to use what I think are extremely far-fetched hypotheticals to get to a scary situation. (This is not to diminish the real risks in today?s economy, I?m just not as gloomy about them as Dr. Hatzius.)

Why, then, is his document circulating? Perhaps as a token of Dr. Hatzius?s genuine intelligence, which is fine. But to me, his paper seemed like a selling document in the real Wall Street sense of selling ? namely, selling short. (Dr. Hatzius notes that he has long been bearish on housing, since faraway 2006, but I respectfully note that that is a lot different from predicting a credit catastrophe. The spokesman for Goldman also noted the company?s bearishness on housing since 2006. He also noted that in the recent past, Goldman Sachs has moved to a considerably larger short posture and that the firm is net short.)

More thoughts came to me as I read a recent piece in Fortune by my colleague Allan Sloan, a veteran financial writer. Mr. Sloan traces the life and death throes of a Goldman Sachs-arranged collateralized mortgage obligation. He shows how truly toxic waste was sold to overly eager investors who now have major charge-offs, and he also points out that some parts of the C.M.O. were indeed safe and were either current or had been paid off.

But what leaps out at me from this story is that Goldman Sachs was injecting dangerous financial products into the world?s commercial bloodstream for years.

My pal, colleague and alter ego, the financial manager Phil DeMuth, culled data from a financial Web site, ABAlert.com (for ?asset-backed alert?), that Goldman Sachs was one of the top 10 sellers of C.M.O.?s for the last two and a half years. From the evidence I see, Goldman was doing this for years. It might have sold very roughly $100 billion of the stuff in that period, according to ABAlert. Goldman was doing it on a scale of billions even when Henry M. Paulson Jr., the current Treasury secretary, led the firm.

The Goldman spokesman would not comment on this except to note that other firms sold C.M.O.?s too.

The point to bear in mind, as Mr. Sloan brilliantly makes clear, is that as Goldman was peddling C.M.O.?s, it was also shorting the junk on a titanic scale through index sales ? showing, at least to me, how horrible a product it believed it was selling.

The Goldman Sachs spokesman said that the company routinely shorts the securities it underwrites and said that this is disclosed. He noted candidly that Goldman is much more short in this sector than usual.

Here is my humble hypothesis, even after talking to Goldman: Is it possible that Dr. Hatzius?s paper was a device to help along the goal of success at bearish trades in this sector and in the market generally? His firm says his paper, like all of its economists? work, was not written to support any larger short-trading strategy. But economists, like accountants, are artists. They have a tendency to paint what their patrons, who pay them, want to see.

From what I have observed over the years, Goldman has a fascinating culture. It is sort of like what I imagine the culture of the K.G.B. to be. You always put the firm first. The long-ago scandal of the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation, which raised hundreds of millions just before the crash of 1929 to create a mutual fund, then used the fund?s money to prop up stocks it owned and underwrote, was a particularly sad example. The fund, of course, went bust.

Now, obviously, Goldman Sachs does many fine deals and has many smart, capable people working for it. But it?s not the Vatican. It exists to make money for the partners and (much farther down the line) the stockholders. The people there are not statesmen. They are salesmen.

To my old eyes, the recent unhappiness about mortgages and Goldman?s connection with them are not examples of sterling conduct. It is bad enough to have been selling this stuff. It is far worse when the sellers were, in effect, simultaneously shorting the stuff they were selling, or making similar bets.

Doesn?t this bear some slight resemblance to Merrill selling tech stocks during the bubble while its analyst Henry Blodget was reportedly telling his friends what garbage they were? How different would it be from selling short the junky stock that your firm is underwriting? And if a top economist at Goldman Sachs was saying housing was in trouble, why did Goldman continue to underwrite junk mortgage issues into the market?

HERE is a query, as we used to say in law school: Should Henry M. Paulson Jr., who formerly ran a firm that engaged in this kind of conduct, be serving as Treasury secretary? Should there not be some inquiry into what the invisible government of Goldman (and the rest of Wall Street) did to create this disaster, which has caught up with some Wall Street firms but not the nimble Goldman?

When the Depression got under way, the government created the Temporary National Economic Committee to study just what had happened on the Street to get the tragedy going. Maybe it?s time for an investigation of just what Wall Street and Goldman did to make money as they pumped this mortgage mess into the economic system, and sometimes were seemingly on both sides of the deal.

Or is Goldman Sachs like ?Love Story?? Does working there mean never having to say you?re sorry? :roll:

[babyoiy]

It's a pain!

[Bruce551]

Anthology of Subprime Loan debacle.

[Bruce551]

Economy Fitful, Americans Start to Pay as They Go

By PETER S. GOODMAN

For more than half a century, Americans have proved staggeringly resourceful at finding new ways to spend money.

In the 1950s and ?60s, as credit cards grew in popularity, many began dining out when the mood struck or buying new television sets on the installment plan rather than waiting for payday. By the 1980s, millions of Americans were entrusting their savings to the booming stock market, using the winnings to spend in excess of their income. Millions more exuberantly borrowed against the value of their homes.

But now the freewheeling days of credit and risk may have run their course ? at least for a while and perhaps much longer ? as a period of involuntary thrift unfolds in many households. With the number of jobs shrinking, housing prices falling and debt levels swelling, the same nation that pioneered the no-money-down mortgage suddenly confronts an unfamiliar imperative: more Americans must live within their means.

?We don?t use our credit cards anymore,? said Lisa Merhaut, a professional at a telecommunications company who lives in Leesburg, Va., and whose family last year ran up credit card debt it could not handle.

Today, Ms. Merhaut, 44, manages her money the way her father did. Despite a household income reaching six figures, she uses cash for every purchase. ?What we have is what we have,? Ms. Merhaut said. ?We have to rely on the money that we?re bringing in.?

The shift under way feels to some analysts like a cultural inflection point, one with huge implications for an economy driven overwhelmingly by consumer spending.

While some experts question whether most Americans, particularly baby boomers, will ever give up their buy-now/pay-later way of life, the unraveling of the real estate market appears to have left millions of families with little choice, yanking fresh credit from their grasp.

?The long collapse in the United States savings rate is over,? said Ethan S. Harris, chief United States economist for Lehman Brothers. ?People are going to start saving the old-fashioned way, rather than letting the stock market and rising home values do it for them.?

In 1984, Americans were still saving more than one-tenth of their income, according to the government. A decade later, the rate was down by half. Now, the savings rate is slightly negative, suggesting that on average Americans spend more than their disposable income.

Though the savings rate does not account for the increased value of stock and property, or the gains on retirement accounts, many economists still view it as the most useful gauge of the degree to which Americans are making provisions for the future.

For the 34 million households who took money out of their homes over the last four years by refinancing or borrowing against their equity ? roughly one-third of the nation ? the savings rate was running at a negative 13 percent in the middle of 2006, according to Moody?s Economy.com. That means they were borrowing heavily against their assets to finance their day-to-day lives.

By late last year, the savings rate for this group had improved, but just to negative 7 percent and mostly because tightened standards made loans harder to get.

?For them, that game is over,? said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. ?They have been spending well beyond their incomes, and now they are seeing the limits of credit.?

Many times before, of course, Americans have found innovative ways to finance spending, even when austerity seemed unavoidable. It could happen again.

The Me Decade was declared dead in the recession of the early 1980s, only to yield to the Age of Greed and later the Internet boom of the 1990s. Over the longer term, the economy should keep growing at a pace that reflects improving productivity and population gains.

But for the first time in decades, credit is especially tight as the bursting of the housing bubble has spread misery across the financial system. In homes now saturated with debt, conspicuous consumption and creative financing have come to seem a sign of excess not unlike that of a suntan in an age of skin cancer.

The return to reality is on vivid display at shopping centers, where consumers used to trading up to higher-price stores are now heading to discounters. Wal-Mart and T. J. Maxx are thriving, but business has slowed at Coach, Tiffany and Williams-Sonoma.

Not long ago, Elena Gamble would have looked at the Cadillac parked across the street from her modest home in Elk City, Okla., and felt a twinge of jealousy.

?We live in a small town, and everybody looks at your clothes and what you drive and where you have your hair done,? said Ms. Gamble, who earns about $2,600 a month as a grievance counselor at a local prison.

Now, she and her husband ? a prison guard who brings home $2,000 a month ? are grappling with $10,000 in high-interest debt. They no longer go to the movies or out to eat, except occasionally to McDonald?s. They quit their Internet service. Their car was repossessed. ?What we say now is, ?If we can?t afford it, we can?t buy it,? ? Ms. Gamble said.

And when she looks across the street at that Cadillac, her envy has been replaced by pity for the neighbor on the hook.

?I say, ?Oh my, you?re living here, and driving that? There?s got to be something wrong,? ? Ms. Gamble said. ? ?You?re in debt, and you?re in trouble.? ?

For decades, that envy has been a prime engine of economic growth. Debt-willing consumers hungering for the latest-generation this and the fastest that kept factories busy from Michigan to Malaysia.

From 1980 to 2007, consumer spending swelled from 63 percent of the economy to over 70 percent, according to Economy.com, while the share of after-tax income absorbed by household debt increased from 11 percent to more than 14 percent.

During the technology boom of the 1990s, an extravagant mind-set took hold. In ads for the discount broker Ameritrade, a spiky-haired hipster ridiculed middle-aged professionals for settling for conventional returns.

Even after the ?stock market as money machine? line of thinking proved bogus, extra spending continued. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near record lows, banks marketed mortgages with exotically lenient terms and another fable of wealth creation took hold: the notion that housing prices could go up forever.

The come-ons for stocks were replaced by a new crop of advertisements. A house was no longer a mere place to live; it was a checkbook that never required a deposit. Between 2004 and 2006, Americans pulled more than $800 billion a year from their homes via sales, cash-out mortgages and home equity loans.

?People have come to view credit as savings,? said Michelle Jones, a vice president at the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Atlanta.

Some Americans have so much wealth that they can spend enough to fuel much of the economy. The top fifth of American earners generates half of all consumer spending, noted Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays Capital.

For the others, some say credit is an intrinsic part of modern life, and Americans will soon be back for more. ?A river of red ink runs through the history of the American pocketbook,? said Lendol Calder, author of ?Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit.?

?Partly because of desire, partly because of optimism, partly because lenders have been free to invent useful borrowing tools that minimized shame and bother,? he added, ?I think it will take a great catastrophe, greater than the Great Depression, to wean Americans from their reliance on consumer credit.?

Credit counselors are now swamped by calls not just from people of modest means, but from professionals earning six-figure incomes, their access to finance warping their distinction between necessity and desire.

?The longer someone has lived on a high income, the harder it is for someone to cut back,? said Manuel Navarro of Money Management International in San Diego. ?I ask them, ?Do you really need to have a 60-inch flat-screen TV hanging on your wall?? ?

Fran Barbaro has an M.B.A. and a resume; of computer industry jobs with salaries reaching $150,000 a year. She used to have a stock portfolio worth about $1 million. She hung original art on the walls of her three-bedroom house in Boston.

But divorce, illness and motherhood drained her savings. Her home is worth less than she owes, and she owes another $200,000 to credit card companies, banks and tax collectors.

Ms. Barbaro, 50, said she knew she was living beyond her means. But her house demanded work. Her two boys needed after-school programs running $25,000 a year. Medical bills multiplied.

?These were simple day-to-day expenses,? she said. ?The money was always there.?

Until it wasn?t. Her take-home pay is $5,200 a month, but her debt payments reach $4,400.

Ms. Barbaro has rented out her house while negotiating to lower her mortgage. She has moved to an apartment, where her sons sleep in the lone bedroom while she sleeps on a pull-out sofa.

?It?s the worst,? Ms. Barbaro said. ?How do you salvage what you have and hopefully go back??

And in Riverside, California:

RIVERSIDE, Calif. ? Look around at the still-life of half-built neighborhoods and red-tiled roofs, all so new, planted during the Miracle-Gro years when homes became A.T.M.s.

Look closer and you think you?re staring into a ghost exurb ? empty homes left to bankers. This is the new America, Southern California?s affordable edge city, drowning in a sea of debt. In the Inland Empire, the eastern-most suburbs of Los Angeles, one out of every 43 households is facing foreclosure proceedings.

Peek behind the palm trees and there you see the most shocking sight: abandoned swimming pools, fetid and green, left to the elements and choked with algae. Thousands of people have walked away without even draining the water. Mosquito control agents now patrol these murky pools, treating them with pesticides to keep disease-carrying larvae from forming.

?With the skyrocketing foreclosure rate, the problem is compounding daily,? said Jared Dever, a spokesman for the government district that monitors insect breeding grounds. He said about 2,000 abandoned swimming pools would have to be treated in just one part of Riverside County.

The new year dawned with banks set to repossess more homes than any time since the Great Depression ? about 2 million residences, according to various forecasts.

Is this the image of our consumptive age: the empty swimming pools of Riverside County? The epitome of middle-class life as just another cash play? People who took out loans on houses they never could afford, hoping for a quick flip, have left this squalor under the sun to the mosquito-control agents.

[robbie36]

My favorite us sub prime related graph is this one...

http://www.speculativebubble.com/images/homevalues1.gif

oooops....

[beej]

My favorite us sub prime related graph is this one...

http://www.speculativebubble.com/images/homevalues1.gif

oooops....

P O P !