(Cross-posted at Doom Network) Eliot Brown from the Wall Street Journal Online reports that the March delinquency rate for mortgage-backed commercial loans has reached a new high of 9.42% delinquency in March. Loans tied to commercial mortgage-backed securities hit a record delinquency rate in March, with 9.42% of all such loans having missed payments, loan research-service firm Trepp LLC said. The rate has been on an upward climb since the real-estate market began to turn in late 2007. Facing significantly lower values than when loans were taken out during the peak years of 2005-2007, a number of landlords have been…
Read more…

(Crossposted at Doom Network) What if the United States was a corporation? What would the financial statements look like? Mary Meeker and other contributors decided to ask that question when they published a report called “USA Inc.” in February 2011. In the report, they generate income statements, balance sheets, net worth graphs, and “corporate” debt data for USA Inc. The report also goes into great depth about entitlement spending programs including unemployment, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This is what they had to say: Imagine for a moment that the United States government is a public corporation. Imagine that its…
Read more…

(Crossposted at Doom Network) The Standard and Poor’s/Case-Shiller numbers for January have just been released today and they show some dire trends. Reuters has a copy of the S&P data here. While the eternal optimists kept saying, “See, the market’s recovering!” when the prices were climbing in 2009, many bubbleheads knew better — and it turns out we were right. The numbers indicate the market is heading toward a double-dip. Who know’s how low it’ll go this time. Reuters reports: U.S. single family home prices fell for the seventh straight month in January, bringing prices to just above April 2009…
Read more…

(Crossposted at Doom Network) While many bubbleheads have known for some time that the housing market is doomed and is nowhere near a recovery, it seems the mainstream media is finally catching up. MSNBC reports: Two high-profile reports on home sales this week confirmed that the housing market is still mired in a deep slump with prices still falling and sales activity sluggish at best. In fact, the market may be in much worse shape than even those numbers suggest. Figures from the National Association of Realtors that are among the most closely watched indicators on the housing market have…
Read more…

Cross-posted at Doom Network. DailyFinance reported today that a former Balboa Insurance Group employee has leaked sensitive internal documents and e-mails that allegedly implicate the Bank of America subsidiary in force-placed insurance fraud. The information was released via the website BankofAmericaSuck, which is the handiwork of the ‘Anonymous’ hacker group. The informant’s allegations taken from BankofAmericaSuck include: Balboa Insurance/Countrywide [is] knowingly hiding foreclosure information from federal auditors during the federal takeovers of IndyMac Federal (a subsidiary of OneWest) and Aurora Loan Services (a subsidiary of Lehman Bros Holdings), falsifying loan documentation in order to proceed with foreclosures by fixing letter…
Read more…

It looks like the aging former Rat Pack Sahara hotel-casino in Las Vegas is closing (and shuttering) its doors in May 2011. The hotel-casino was purchased back in 2007 (shortly after the bubble had peaked) by Sam Nazarian, a Los Angeles nightclub owner and businessman. Nazarian had promised to make the aging casino more appealing to Las Vegas visitors. According to the L.A. Times: Nazarian, who also owns L.A.-area watering holes MI-6 and Hyde Lounge, purchased the Sahara at the tail end of the two-decade-long Las Vegas building boom. He intended to transform the run-down property into a hot spot…
Read more…