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Thornburg Sells $21 Billion of Mortgage Assets at a Loss; Plans Return to ‘Business As Usual’ - housingwire

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Luminent Agrees to Bailout at 74 Percent Discount - housingwire

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about “Equity cushion” - … First American CoreLogic, a housing and mortgage data supplier in Santa Ana, recently found that nearly 7% of 32 million U.S. households studied as of December owed more than their homes were worth, based on computer estimates of the property values. An additional 4% had home equity of 5% or less. Since then, house prices have edged down in much of the country, erasing more home equity. by Tim Iacono - themessthatgreenspanmade

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1. why the Fed dropped the discount rate - A rush to pull out cash - Worried about the stability of mortgage giant Countrywide Financial, depositors crowd branches. In Laguna Niguel, Bill Ashmore drove his Porsche Cayenne to the bank’s office and waited half an hour to cash out $500,000. “It’s got my wife totally freaked out,” he said. - LA Times
2. Countrywide Bank works to reassure clients - LA Times

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Arnold Kling questions and article by Paul Krugman - Mortgages, Securities, and Bailouts - Arnold Kling - EconLog

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The Panic of 2007 - John Mauldin’s Weekly E-Letter - frontlinethoughts.com

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more than mortgages - WHEN DEBT FREEZES OVER - thanks Ira Artman - Peter Slatin slatinreport

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about Residential Property Index, or RPX, a creation of Radar Logic Inc. - HOUSING ON THE SPOT (MARKET) - thanks Ira Artman - slatinreport

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this is bad - Former Aegis Employees Without Health Insurance - housingwire

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Mortgage pinch causes domino effect of pain - … If conditions in the mortgage market don’t get much better in the next 30 to 60 days, we could be in for a major national correction, instead of a soft landing,” says Hessam Nadji … USA Today

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good read - Tales from the front - housingbubbleblog

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good charts - Why the Fed’s rate cut did not come as a surprise - Prieur du Plessis’s international investment blog

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NOT SO SMART NOW - QUANT FUNDS’ BRIGHTEST MINDS COULDN’T PREDICT VOLATILITY - NY Post

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How Many ARM’s Set To Reset in 2008…? - quick summary - urbandigs.com

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Leverage is wonderful when asset prices are rising. It is a bear when asset prices start to retreat. It creates a vicious cycle. Both the sinners and the sacred get got in the undertow.”Paul Kasriel on Leverage - The Big Picture

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Worse than LTCM: Not Just a Liquidity Crisis; Rather a Credit Crisis and Crunch - Nouriel Roubini’s Blog