The Sun Sentinal article: “In an effort to halt what one official called ‘an investment world version of a run on the bank,’ state officials froze withdrawals Thursday from a $27 billion investment fund that local governments drained by almost half during the past two weeks.” (bold type by me for emphasis) “‘It is certainly…
Tag: subprime
Trahant Keeps Hitting Them Out of the Park
Mark Trahant is definitely my favorite writer for any of the local papers. If we ever get around to having a Seattle Bubble meet-up, he’s definitely invited, and his drink is on me. His latest piece continues to hammer home the reality of the world we live in today: mortgage / housing market is a…
Explore Seattle’s Sub-Prime Status
A couple people pointed me to a great article in today’s Wall Street Journal on the prevalence of sub-prime lending across the country over the last few years. The article discusses the surge in such risky loans, and the fallout that is already underway and likely to continue. The data suggest that financial suffering is…
My Clients Don’t Have Any Money
Living most of my life in Florida, cockroaches were a fact of life. In general, if you spotted one cockroach, that meant there were at least 1,000 others somewhere, waiting in the wings. In the past few months homeowner subprime sob stories have been coming at us from all over the country, ad nauseam. With…
WaMu Trying to Cope With Slowdown
Local mortgage giant Washington Mutual has been in the news quite a bit the last few days. On Tuesday, Seattle Times business reporter Amy Martinez made the (not-so-bold) prediction that WaMu won’t escape subprime turmoil. During the housing boom of the past several years, Washington Mutual was among the nation’s top lenders in the high-risk…