There’s been a lot of talk about how to reduce the inventory of empty and foreclosed homes.  One of the solutions is to use them for something else.  How’s this idea from FEMA- let’s use these homes as hurricane shelters: Trying to make the best of a bad situation, federal officials might use foreclosed homes as temporary housing for hurricane evacuees in Florida as soon as this summer. But the idea is still in its infancy and many questions remain unanswered, including whether the banks that own the foreclosed homes would agree to such a plan. "It makes all the…
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Brad and his merry band of readers at the CFR are having a lively discussion [1] on whether Chinese public opinion might turn against their government’s massive holdings of US debt. But meanwhile, this week’s Reuters report [2] documented a redoubling of the surge of foreign central banks into Treasury Debt. The report was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site.[3] Here is Doom’s updated CSV version of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set.[4]   Speaking of redoubling, the cenbanks’ large $15.757 billion treasuries buy was almost precisely twice…
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It’s Friday, and Angelo Mozilo, former CEO of Countrywide Financial Corp and iconic symbol of the excesses of the lending industry, is now under investigation by the SEC.  Apparently Mozilo didn’t see the need to warn investors that it was tougher to get a library card than a loan from Countrywide.  The company  wasn’t the kind of place he wanted to keep in his portfolio though: [Thanks to all who sent in this story!] “While hiding his hand from investors, Mozilo was actively taking his own chips off the table” SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami told journalists in Washington. “Concealed…
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