… 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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… If this is true, it could be a sign that the FSA is rethinking the classification of dark pools under MiFID. Some of the newer players such as Chi-x, Turquoise, BATS Europe and Nasdaq OMX have become MTFs but these are lit markets, although Turquoise has a dark component. The two leading institutional dark pools, Liquidnet and ITG Europe, were ATSs previously but become MTFs. In addition, NYFIX Euro Millennium, a dark pool for European stocks, already operated as an ATS in the UK, but has become an MTF under MiFID. And on Feb. 2nd, the NYSE Euronext’s SmartPool…
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From Bloomberg this morning: Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) — The average U.S. rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage rose this week, thwarting Federal Reserve efforts to cut borrowing costs, on investor concern the government will increase spending. The fixed rate rose to 5.25 percent from 5.10 percent last week, Freddie Mac said in a report today. Last month the rate fell to 4.96 percent, the lowest in data that goes back to 1971, according to the McLean, Virginia-based mortgage buyer. “Investors are growing a little bit nervous about all the Treasury bonds they’re going to be asked to buy to finance…
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When I read this guy’s story yesterday I thought, "This has GOT to be fake.  NO ONE would confess to making millions, committing mortgage fraud, and then post it on the internet."  I was wrong, and he did. It was not apparently written as a confession, but as a resume.  The author, Chris Warren, says he wants a job investigating mortgage fraud, and wanted to demonstrate that he has the background for the job. [You can read the confession/resume here.] If he did what he said he did, he’s got to know more about mortgage fraud than just about anybody….
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Lenders are getting tired of their properties languishing on the market and are auctioning them off: [Hat tip Mr. Twist!] Foreclosure Auctions On The Rise [Watch video here.]  

Do you remember hearing how we needed to bailout banks so they would start making more loans?  Well it didn’t work:   Rather than investing in the banks best equipped to increase lending, the government invested disproportionately in banks that needed money to solve problems. Those banks often were ill-equipped to increase lending because of financial limitations such as a lack of deposits. The volume of loans outstanding from U.S. banks fell about 1 percent during the last three months of the year, according to Federal Reserve data. The decline was more than twice as large among banks that accepted…
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"What are buyers waiting for?" is the question that the housing industry and government are asking.  After all, if consumers would get out there and buy up all of those empty houses that are sitting around, expectations are that the economy would recover. Diana Olick of CNBC discussed the question yesterday: [Thanks L!] We debate it on the air pretty much every day: What will it take to get potential home buyers off the fence and into a home? Is it a tax credit? Lower interest rates? A real bottom in home prices? The official mandatory silencing of all real…
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This is likely to be the last post on the "Resulting Trust" drama, but I felt that this was worth reposting.  HousingDoom is committed to an ethical, upfront approach to reporting; we do not yield to legal threats, especially bogus ones from people who have delusions of legal grandeur. Email: You may have thought what was meant was that your posting of the video was in error. But, from the standpoint of what was observed, you simply pointed others to the Youtube video, which is perfectly acceptable. What is NOT acceptable is the re-posting of the press release accompanying the…
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"If you somehow take that bonus out of the [New York City] economy, it really will create unemployment. … It means less spending in restaurants, less spending in department stores, so everything has an impact." – Rudy Giuliani [1] Whether it’s TARP-funded annual bonuses for executives in failing banks, or the new Bad Asset Repository Fund,[2] the corridors of power are alive with the sound of public money gushing into one humongous swill-trough for the benefit of  Russ Winter’s Pig Men. What do American Doomers think? Is it worthwhile indenturing your grandchildren on the off chance that some of those…
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Post summary:  If you don’t want your videos to be used by the public, do not post them on YouTube. If you post your videos there, we can legally use them- and will. ************************************************ Last Thursday I posted a couple of videos that had been uploaded to YouTube. These videos were posted by a man who claimed that the local sheriff  [Along with the assistance of the SWAT team] was trying to unlawfully evict him.  In response to this posting, I received the following email: [I do have a policy of not posting email without the author’s prior permission, but…
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Is anyone going to bother paying their mortgage anymore? Embedded video from CNN Video