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Indybay Feature
Just Say AAA: PAUL KRUGMAN - Housing Bubble; FRANK RICH - Wider Cheney Plot +
KRUGMAN: The housing bubble, like the stock bubble before it, is claiming a growing number of innocent victims.
COHEN: Tax authorities in the United States and Britain have lost touch with the super-rich, as has most of humanity.
THE COMPLETE ARTICLES AND MORE
COHEN: Tax authorities in the United States and Britain have lost touch with the super-rich, as has most of humanity.
THE COMPLETE ARTICLES AND MORE
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Just Say AAA
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 2, 2007
What do you get when you cross a Mafia don with a bond salesman? A dealer in collateralized debt obligations (C.D.O.’s) — someone who makes you an offer you don’t understand.
Seriously, it’s starting to look as if C.D.O.’s were to this decade’s housing bubble what Enron-style accounting was to the stock bubble of the 1990s. Both made investors think they were getting a much better deal than they really were. And the new scandal raises two obvious questions: Why were the bond-rating agencies taken in (again), and where were the regulators?
To understand the fuss over C.D.O.’s, you first have to realize that in the later stages of the great 2000-2005 housing boom, banks were making a lot of dubious loans. In particular, there was an explosion of subprime lending — home loans offered to people who wouldn’t normally have been considered qualified borrowers.
For a while, the risks of subprime loans were masked by the housing bubble itself: as long as prices kept going up, troubled borrowers could raise more cash by borrowing against their rising home equity. But once the bubble burst — and the housing bust is turning out to be every bit as nasty as the pessimists predicted — many of these loans were bound to go bad.
Yet the banks making the loans weren’t stupid: they passed the buck to other people. Subprime mortgages and other risky loans were securitized — that is, banks issued bonds backed by home loans, in effect handing off the risk to the bond buyers.
In principle, securitization should reduce risk: even if a particular loan goes bad, the loss is spread among many investors, none of whom takes a major hit. But with the collapse of the $800 billion market in bonds backed by subprime mortgages — the price of a basket of these bonds has lost almost 40 percent of its value since January — it’s now clear that many investors who bought these securities didn’t realize what they were getting into.
--MORE--
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/07/just-say-aaa-paul-krugman-housing.html
Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON
Labels: banks, bonds, bubble, C.D.O., economy, financial markets, housing, mortgages, New York Times, News, PAUL KRUGMAN, Politics, stocks, Subprime loans
When the Vice President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal: FRANK RICH - Wider Cheney Plot
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/07/when-vice-president-does-it-that-means_02.html
The Filthy Rich Are Different From You and Me: ROGER COHEN
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/07/filthy-rich-are-different-from-you-and.html
CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWSWIRE - JULY 1, 2007
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/07/crimes-and-corruption-of-new-world.html
AND MORE
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/38
Just Say AAA
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 2, 2007
What do you get when you cross a Mafia don with a bond salesman? A dealer in collateralized debt obligations (C.D.O.’s) — someone who makes you an offer you don’t understand.
Seriously, it’s starting to look as if C.D.O.’s were to this decade’s housing bubble what Enron-style accounting was to the stock bubble of the 1990s. Both made investors think they were getting a much better deal than they really were. And the new scandal raises two obvious questions: Why were the bond-rating agencies taken in (again), and where were the regulators?
To understand the fuss over C.D.O.’s, you first have to realize that in the later stages of the great 2000-2005 housing boom, banks were making a lot of dubious loans. In particular, there was an explosion of subprime lending — home loans offered to people who wouldn’t normally have been considered qualified borrowers.
For a while, the risks of subprime loans were masked by the housing bubble itself: as long as prices kept going up, troubled borrowers could raise more cash by borrowing against their rising home equity. But once the bubble burst — and the housing bust is turning out to be every bit as nasty as the pessimists predicted — many of these loans were bound to go bad.
Yet the banks making the loans weren’t stupid: they passed the buck to other people. Subprime mortgages and other risky loans were securitized — that is, banks issued bonds backed by home loans, in effect handing off the risk to the bond buyers.
In principle, securitization should reduce risk: even if a particular loan goes bad, the loss is spread among many investors, none of whom takes a major hit. But with the collapse of the $800 billion market in bonds backed by subprime mortgages — the price of a basket of these bonds has lost almost 40 percent of its value since January — it’s now clear that many investors who bought these securities didn’t realize what they were getting into.
--MORE--
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/07/just-say-aaa-paul-krugman-housing.html
Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON
Labels: banks, bonds, bubble, C.D.O., economy, financial markets, housing, mortgages, New York Times, News, PAUL KRUGMAN, Politics, stocks, Subprime loans
When the Vice President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal: FRANK RICH - Wider Cheney Plot
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/07/when-vice-president-does-it-that-means_02.html
The Filthy Rich Are Different From You and Me: ROGER COHEN
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/07/filthy-rich-are-different-from-you-and.html
CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWSWIRE - JULY 1, 2007
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/07/crimes-and-corruption-of-new-world.html
AND MORE
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/38
For more information:
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/
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