What you must know about EU downgrades. Plus a funny picture.

One might conclude that the success of Black Friday was at the expense of last week.

High profile mortgage industry lawsuits will continue for some time and I’ll continue covering them. Here are three lesser known suits that have bubbled up. (1) Taylor, Bean & Whitaker: the gift that keeps on giving. Most, if not every, mortgage company has an accounting firm. In what could be a very closely watched case, [...]

I swear that I did not start any appraisal controversies in the press last week when I brought up valuation problems, but there was a coincidental flurry in the press about the subject. Maybe it was the appearance that NAR keeps blaming “bad appraisals” for the lack of appreciation in the housing market. Regardless, the [...]

Great infographic from Visible via Ritholtz. Click image for full size.

Before the S&P downgrade last Friday, I wrote the following about the debt deal: I have said little about the default possibility simply because I estimated the possibility at near-zero. From my point-of-view what happened was an enormous and bogus media campaign getting people worked up about something an then an illusion that something had [...]

This weekend we covered the likely consequences of the S&P downgrade in three parts (1, 2, 3). While the day is young, it looks as if the heart of these forecasts is what’s happening: equities are selling and those dollars are seeking the safe haven of U.S. Treasuries and mortgage backed securities.  While it may [...]

Here we are after S&P’s U.S. downgrade (here’s my take) and stocks are down again and the bond market is rallying. Markets set rates, not rating agencies, and it would seem that money is flowing into bullion and into the bond market, as many expected would happen. Perhaps the United States really is still viewed [...]

Here’s an S&P downgrade/U.S. budget edition of my Originations linkfest, complete with an epic photoshop from my boy h1ghway. Background for the less pop culturally obsessed: the pimp who sets Idiocracy’s nation-in-decline plot in motion is named Upgrayedd—pronounced ‘upgrade’ but “spelled with two Ds for a double-dose of his pimping.” -S&P Downgrade Q&A (Reuters) -Fear [...]

Remember being glued to your computer or TV in Fall 2008 trying to figure out what was next in the market meltdown? The debt ceiling circus in DC and S&P’s subsequent U.S. downgrade have captured consumers’ attention in a similar way. But this topic is much more complicated and consumers mostly get information in two [...]