All through last year, Jim Melcher saw the signs of a rapidly deteriorating American housing market — riskier mortgages, rising delinquencies and more homes falling into foreclosure. -Today's NYTimes
What numbers was he looking at?
The Delinquency Survey of the Mortgage Bankers fellows shows only a slight uptick in delinquencies, overall.
Even if the sub-prime numbers are far worse than the averages, it is the average that is important to economic growth and probably even to credit availability, generally.
Money quote for policymakers:
Few professionals on the losing end of these trades are willing to talk publicly about how what started out as a crisis in an obscure corner of the credit market — subprime debt, for borrowers with weak credit — managed to infect stocks and bonds. For example, officials at Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s most dominant firm, have provided little detail into how one of their hedge funds lost 30 percent of its value in just weeks.
Update
Here's another story of Wall Street being loopy.
money quote:
His departure was so sensitive inside Goldman that when Mr. McGoldrick resigned in January, the firm didn't send out an internal memo. Instead, some executives hinted that Mr. McGoldrick suffered a medical crisis, ...
