Mohave.net

I found this a really interesting article:

By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: September 16, 2007
TOKYO, Sept. 15 — Since the credit crisis started shaking the world financial markets this summer, many professional traders have taken big losses. Another, less likely group of investors has, too: middle-class Japanese homemakers who moonlight as amateur currency speculators.

Ms. Itoh is one of them. Ms. Itoh, a homemaker in the central city of Nagoya, did not want her full name used because her husband still does not know. After cleaning the dinner dishes, she would spend her evenings buying and selling British pounds and Australian dollars.

When the turmoil struck the currency markets last month, Ms. Itoh spent a sleepless week as market losses wiped out her holdings. She lost nearly all her family’s $100,000 in savings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/business/worldbusiness/16housewives.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Bank of England tries to stop a run on mortgage bank
By Tariq Panja, Associated Press Writer

LONDON — The Bank of England provided emergency funding to mortgage lender Northern Rock on Friday after the bank, citing the global credit squeeze triggered by the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, said it was unable to line up short-term loans from other financial institutions.
Even after the central bank issued a statement saying Northern Rock was solvent, slow-moving lines of customers snaked through the doors at the bank’s branches to make withdrawals.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2007-09-14-british-bank_N.htm

Northern Rock Gets Emergency Bank of England Funding (Update8)
By Ben Livesey and Jon Menon

Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) — Northern Rock Plc got emergency funding from the Bank of England, the biggest bailout of a British lender in 30 years, after rising credit costs left the mortgage provider unable to make new loans.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a7WvTBECy164&refer=home

Northern Rock Crumbles
Vidya Ram, 09.14.07, 9:40 AM ET

LONDON -
The moment that the British banking sector has been dreading came on Friday. Northern Rock, the country’s fifth-largest mortgage lender, confirmed late on Thursday that it had requested and received a line of emergency funding from the Bank of England.

http://www.forbes.com/markets/2007/09/14/northern-rock-britain-markets-equity-cx_vr_0914markets03.html

Home sales and median prices dipped again in San Diego County.
By KELLY BENNETT Voice Staff Writer

Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007 Fewer homes sold last month in San Diego County than in any August in 15 years, DataQuick Information Systems reported Wednesday.

The 3,104 homes sold marked a 19.4 percent drop in sales volume from August 2006, and a 48 percent drop from the nearly 6,000 homes sold in August 2005.

Many of the deals that closed in August — and that show up in data now — began in July or early August, before the squeeze. Still, the same trouble that has plagued the region’s home sellers and overleveraged homeowners for more than a year continued last month, with acute trouble in the south and east parts of the county.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2007/09/13/housing/915dqaug091307.txt

Prices drop in most Southland ZIP Codes, and the number of sales is the lowest in 15 years for that month.

By Annette Haddad, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 13, 2007

Home prices fell in most Southern California neighborhoods and the number of sales tumbled to a 15-year low for August — driven down by tougher lending standards, mounting foreclosures and skittish buyers.

Sales for the month plunged 36% from a year earlier. What’s more, 71% of the Southland’s ZIP Codes showed price declines, according to figures released Wednesday by DataQuick Information Systems. The survey excluded areas with 14 or fewer sales…..

“People just don’t have the income to support these prices except with crazy mortgages — and now the mortgage money is going away, and people are walking away from their homes,” Thornberg said.Nearly 9% of the homes sold last month were foreclosure properties, DataQuick reported, up from 2.2% a year earlier.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-homes13sep13,0,611742,full.story?coll=la-home-center

Worsening credit crunch has area repossessions on the rise, experts say

By RICK BARRETTrbarrett@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Sept. 11, 2007

More consumers are getting swamped in their boat loans as credit woes worsen.

In the Milwaukee area, companies that repossess recreational watercraft say their business is up between 20% and 50% from a year ago. They’re hauling away boats that cost tens of thousands of dollars, or more, after the owners fall several months behind on their payments.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=660784

As more lenders file bankruptcy, this could become a bigger problem.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118955540976824460.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo

By PEG BRICKLEYSeptember 12, 2007; Page A15
Thousands of homeowners face an “imminent risk” of losing their homes because of clashes between American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. and its former financial backers, according to Freddie Mac, a government-chartered housing financier.

In documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., Freddie Mac said it seized $7 million that homeowners sent to American Home to cover principal and interest payments, property taxes and insurance just before the company’s Aug. 6 collapse. American Home quit making payments to tax authorities and insurance companies Aug. 24.

Freddie Mac said 4,547 loans valued at nearly $797 million are at stake. It said it doesn’t have the loan files necessary to pay insurance premiums and property taxes on them, however. “Therefore, there is the imminent risk that borrowers’ insurance policies may lapse for nonpayment, subjecting the borrowers to a risk of loss of their mortgaged properties,” Freddie Mac said.

This article has some interesting California stats:

http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=6291

Double-digit increase in foreclosure sales statewide

September 12, 2007 4:59am

• Realty speculators walk away from $1.71 billion in mortgage loans
• ‘Rampant speculation … played a leading role’

A total of 9,477 properties – with a total loan value of $3.86 billion – were sold at auction in California last month, a 10.4 percent increase over July, according to figures compiled by ForeclosureRadar, a Discovery Bay-based foreclosure information service.

Speculator-owned properties (non-owner occupied properties) accounted for $1.71 billion of that total and represented 44.3 percent, or 4,199 of the properties sold at foreclosure auction.

“Many blame subprime lending for our current real estate crisis, but rampant speculation, even by those with great credit, played a leading role,” says Sean O’Toole, founder and CEO of ForeclosureRadar.com……

• Almost all (90.3%) of all foreclosure sales in California in August were for homes purchased or refinanced in 2005 and 2006.

• Of properties sold at auction, 95% went back to the bank – for a total of 9,015 properties with a loan value of $3.7 billion.

September 3, 2007
From theTrumpet.com

The unfolding “made in America” worldwide subprime mortgage crisis has foreign bankers demanding international regulation of American markets, banks and rating agencies. By Robert Morley

In his foreign-policy speech on August 27, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for an enhanced global rule book to avoid financial crises. Sarkozy, who has vowed to “moralize financial capitalism,” said such crises could reoccur if “the leaders of major countries” did not take “concerted
action to foster transparency and regulation of international markets.”
International bankers and investors from China to France and Germany have lost billions of dollars because U.S. investments, sold as safe, turned out to be far riskier and worth much less than what American investment-rating agencies and banks led them to believe. They don’t want to be deceived again.

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=4208.2381.0.0

By Reuters 11 Sep 2007 01:54 PM ET

Some 57 percent of mortgage broker customers were unable to refinance their adjustable-rate loans to avoid higher monthly payments in August, suggesting the U.S. housing slump may worsen, according to a national survey on Tuesday. …..

The Campbell survey also found that a third of home purchase closings were canceled in August. Loan closings were canceled for 56 percent of subprime borrowers in the month amid failed approvals, while closings for 21 percent of home buyers with good credit were foiled.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/20723118

By Erik Larson

Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) — Marsha Slotten’s bad news came in April by e-mail, from a tipster warning that the company holding her retirement nest egg had collapsed.
After racing in a panic to the office of Southwest Exchange Inc. outside Las Vegas, she found a locked door and a sign saying the staff was “in training.” It never reopened.
“I was devastated,” said Slotten, 58, who said she was forced to cancel early retirement after the disappearance of $2.74 million she made selling a strip mall. “I thought I knew what I was doing, but now my nest egg, my retirement plan, is gone.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ary1hm_rkIgU&refer=home