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He was--at least up to a point--the most durable human being in American history, possibly in world history. Over 30 attempts were made to murder him. He survived them all. He was truly incredible. His name was Michael Malloy, and he was a bleary-eyed, unsteady diminutive Irishman originally from County Donegal. While his insurance policy would later falsely give his age as 45, he was actually 60 years old. Once, in better times, he had been a fireman, but now in 1933 his almost full-time occupation was alcoholic.

A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure. In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure. MERS is an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company that registers mortgages electronically and tracks changes in ownership. The significance of the holding is that if MERS has no standing to foreclose, then nobody has standing to foreclose – on...

Describing events in the bond market in 2008—and their future implications—is a bit like describing the construction of a house of cards. It helps to understand the structural differences between trading stocks and trading bonds. Stocks trade on electronic or bricks-and-mortar exchanges where buyers and sellers converge in a central meeting place and transact with anonymity. Bonds trade on an over-the-counter market using an intermediary, such as a bank or broker with full knowledge of the trade counterparty. It’s similar to trading in your car with a car dealer, which then looks for a buyer. The dealer is taking a...

he story of the two-bedroom, one-bath shack on West Hopi Street, is the story of this year's financial panic, told in 576 square feet. It helps explain how a series of bad decisions can add up to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Less than two years ago, Integrity Funding LLC, a local lender, gave a $103,000 mortgage to the owner, Marvene Halterman, an unemployed woman with a long list of creditors and, by her own account, a long history of drug and alcohol abuse. For a $350 fee, an appraiser hired by Integrity, Michael T. Asher, valued...

Lehman Brothers' credit default swaps settled without major damage *************************************** NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks on Tuesday scaled back declines after the Lehman Brothers credit default swaps settlement was completed with no major fallout, helping offset bleak forecasts from Texas Instruments Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Video: Buy Stocks Now? Is it time to buy U.S stocks? Alec Young of Standard & Poor's says it's too soon to be sure and cautions that corporate earnings could get worse before they get better. (Oct. 21) "U.S. equities have pared losses on the Lehman CDS settlement, which apparently was completed without...

Welcome to Lesson 1 of ‘The Basics of Credit Derivatives’. For this lesson I will be referencing the following article: The Ballooning Credit Derivatives Market: Easing Risk or Making It Worse?, which was published in November 2005 by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. My comments will be in Red. Let’s get started: The Ballooning Credit Derivatives Market: Easing Risk or Making It Worse? Published: November 02, 2005 in Knowledge@Wharton When Delphi filed for bankruptcy October 8, investors had to start assessing their losses on more than $2 billion in the auto parts maker's bonds, which have recently...

Lesson 1 can be found here: Lesson 1 Welcome to Lesson 2 of ‘The Basics of Credit Derivatives’. For this lesson I will be referencing the following article: The Ballooning Credit Derivatives Market: Easing Risk or Making It Worse? , which was published in November 2005 by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. My comments will be in Red. Let’s get started: The Ballooning Credit Derivatives Market: Easing Risk or Making It Worse? (continued) Published: November 02, 2005 in Knowledge@Wharton Credit Default Swaps Credit derivatives are contracts that go up or down to track the fortunes of underlying...

I thought that I would pose a few questions to the sharpest knives in the drawer, Freepers, and perhaps incite some discussion by those more knowledgeable than myself and in the process enlighten us all a bit. I have been employed in the residential mortgage business for the last 6 yrs. and may have a little better grasp of what is happening than the average guy on the street, though far from an expert.

Investment banks getting slaughtered on writedowns. Rumours that Goldmans and Citi might have double-digit writedowns. No end in sight for illiquidity in CDOs, ABSs, and anything else subprime related. Housing market still teetering on the verge of things getting REALLY ugly. My solution: Offer US citizenship to every Mexican illegal on the condition they buy a house with a 20% downpayment. Housing market saved. Flow of Dollars South of the border staunched. Fire away.

"If every CDO [manager] was forced to mark to market their subprime holdings, it would be - well, I can't think of a strong enough word to describe what it would be," US policymaker quoted in ft.com June 28, 2007 Thomas Midgley Jr. is not a name well known to those in the world of finance. But Midgley shares a distinction with a name the paper boys do know well-Drexel Burnham Lambert-the US investment bank that sold billions of dollars of junk bonds to investors which turned out to be, after all, junk. Midgley's fame came from inventing leaded gasoline-which...