Tough times have got people doing strange things.  One Kentucky man has resorted to a pretty deperate measure to get "affordable housing": It was Wednesday morning when a man walked into a Stock Yards Bank on Mud Lane in far southern Jefferson County. He allegedly handed a teller a note demanding cash and indicating he was armed with a gun. "The teller complied with the suspect’s demand and the suspect had a seat and indicated he was going to wait for police," Mueller said. "He wouldn’t take the money." Mueller said when officers arrived, 38-year-old Edward Taylor Sutherland III raised…
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… there is still sturdy demand for Treasuries from abroad; foreigners refused to dump them even when they lost confidence in mortgage-backed debt last year. But America cannot take things for granted. [1] The full Economist article has a lot more nuance, but the underlying message is clear. Something is up. This week’s Reuters report [2] reverts to recent form after last week’s a trend-busting reversal. However, the total of Treasury & Agency Debt held by foreign central bank rose just $2.661 billion in the week. That’s clearly not enough to support all the contemplated T-bill sales in the medium…
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  Our thanks to KXTV10 who sent us this update on the continuing Saga of Christopher Warren. Warren confessed and apologized for committing massive mortgage fraud on his company website. He has now apparently left the country on a private jet: [If you have difficulty viewing the embedded version, you can see the video on KXTV10's website here.]

It’s Friday, and I liked  the above quote so much I decided to use it to kick off today’s discussion.  Here’s more from writer Joshua Holland:   Theoretically, if you could reinflate the bubble to some extent by increasing the number of people looking to buy, it’d help distressed homeowners, who would be able to refinance at lower rates or for longer terms, and it’d help lenders, who would have fewer "nonperforming" loans on their books. And it would help the financial industry unwind all those complex "toxic" mortgage-backed securities. In theory. But nothing in that equation would change the…
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