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How I Became A Subprime Borrower And Blew Myself Up
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This Link is located in the Public Channel Clusterstock.
Posted by MyPropsMonkey 310 days ago (feedproxy.google.com). Views: 18
Tags: wall street finance stocks |
| Related Tags: economics business video forbes infesting investing gold bailout |
New York Times economics reporter Edmund Andrews describes his journey to the heart of the American nightmare--debt, default, and dread. It's a journey that tens of millions of other Americans are now intimately familiar with.
Andrews doesn't blame anyone else, including his mortgage broker (startling and refreshing). He doesn't curse the economy. And he speaks openly and forthrightly about an all-too-familiar topic that most people are embarrassed to talk about.
Don't miss it.
If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us.
But in 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages. Nobody duped or hypnotized me. Like so many others — borrowers, lenders and the Wall Street dealmakers behind them — I just thought I could beat the odds. We all had our reasons. The brokers and dealmakers were scoring huge commissions. Ordinary homebuyers were stretching to get into first houses, or bigger houses, or better neighborhoods. Some were greedy, some were desperate and some were deceived.
As for me, I had two utterly compelling reasons for taking the plunge: the money was there, and I was in love. It was August 2004, just as the mortgage party was getting really good. I was 48 years old and eager to start a new chapter in my life with Patricia Barreiro, who was then my fiancée...
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Photo excerpt: The New York Times
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