This is from Short News:
“CSI” writer and producer Sarah Goldfinger has been sued by real estate agents Melinda and Scott Tamkin, after a pair of shady characters strongly resembled them in one of the plots of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”.
According to the suit, Goldfinger tried to buy a house in 2005 from homeowners represented by the Tomkins. In the Las Vegas-set show, a woman called Melinda dies and her husband Scott is the prime suspect in the mysterious death.
Scott Tucker in the episode was a pornography-watching, alcoholic mortgage broker. In the suit, it is claimed that the original screenplay showed Melinda and Scott’s last name as Tamkin.
And there’s more:
Brit gossip rag, the Daily Mail offers full coverage.
Seen circulating around mortgage trading desks today — set to Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab:”
They want to make me try to refi,
but the Bank said - No-No-No!
Documents I lack,
but once my LTV comes back.
You will know-know-know.
I haven’t paid on time,
but the Treasury thinks I’m fine.
They want to make me try to and refi,
but the Bank said - No-No-No!
I’ve got a 7% FHA,
ain’t paid it in 90 days
Cause there’s nothing, nothing the bank can do… to reach me
Unless they come take my keys…away!
Longtime HW readers might recall a chart we publicized years ago from Credit Suisse that looked at loan resets and recasts — it’s since become widely part of the housing blogosphere, but we were actually the first to disseminate it publicly years ago.
Today, the OC Register’s Mathew Padilla has the first update to this chart that’s been publicly released since we first published the original chart in mid-2007. And it shows pretty clearly why the nation’s housing mess is far from over — and let’s be honest, it illustrates the real pain California has facing it in the next few years. Like through 2012 and into 2013. Remember, foreclosures take time to work through the pipeline; while new defaults on subprime loans are on the downswing, foreclosure sales... more»
The German Finance Ministry is planning to create a bad bank to hold, on its own balance sheet, risky assets to be swapped with government backed bonds, according to information released on its website.
The announcement is in some ways surprising, considering the central government’s positioning against such measures. The country is also home to the oldest covered bond platform, the Pfandebrief, where asset-backed bonds must be held on balance sheet. Germans hold a special place in their heart for this product and often view securitization as a sort of wicked step-child. This move will no doubt further ingrain this mentality and may prove to be more damaging in the long-term that envisioned.
Therefore it is likely that the bad bank will apply more to securitization structures, such as... more»
Yes, it’s come to that: a horror film about mortgage lending.
Okay, so maybe the fright, suspense and gore isn’t directly related to mortgages, but the premise of director Sam Raimi’s film, Drag Me to Hell, appears to center around a young, aspiring loan officer who, for the sake of prudential lending standards, must refuse to grant a third extension on the mortgage payment of a frail, elderly borrower, despite her pleas for mercy.
And who would’ve thought that a director with so many other outstanding horror creds, such as Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, Darkman and The Gift, could find a way to top himself yet again?
But he does.
In Drag Me to Hell, the loan officer’s moral turmoil on the decision is evident: “We would have to throw her out... more»
A dear colleague found this on YouTube the other day — an actual FAS 159 rap. For those of you who aren’t accounting geeks, FAS 159 is the fair-value option that was the foundation for the mark-to-market brouhaha we’ve been forced to hear about for about the past 12 months.
