From Premium to Discount on 30-Year Mortgages In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, funds for jumbo mortgages virtually dried up. At a time when rates on conventional, 30-year mortgages were fetching around 4.5%, jumbo rates were 6% or 6.5% — if you could find such products at all. Today, that premium and scarcity has been replaced by...Read More
Punishing the Whistle Blowers “I saw the crisis coming; why didn’t The Federal Reserve?” –Dr. Michael Burry, 2012 UCLA Economics Dept. Commencement Address If you read Michael Lewis’ “The Big Short,” you doubtless remember Michael Burry: the brilliant, one-eyed medical doctor/investment savant with borderline Asperger’s who predicted — and cashed in on — the looming financial...Read More
Adding Fuel to the Fire — Then Buying Fire Insurance According to Margin Call — the most recent movie to tackle the Wall Street-authored financial bust — the honchos running the nation’s biggest investment banks realized too late that the market for mortgage-backed securities was going to collapse. So, literally overnight, they did a 180, dumping their...Read More
Why is This Man Still Collecting Speaking Fees? Why can’t Alan Greenspan retire? About to turn 85 next month, it’s not that he isn’t old enough. And, after all these years of lucrative consulting and speaking fees, it’s not exactly like he needs the money. So, why is Greenspan spending his time going around the...Read More
See . . This . . Movie Calling Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job” a documentary is like calling The Gettysburg Address a speech. Bar none, it is the clearest, most succinct explanation of the Wall Street-engineered financial crash — whose aftermath we are still very much dealing with — that I have seen. More than a...Read More
