hi,
IT is just going to get worse for the banks. Give it a few years when interest rate will have to go up and stay up. The bank with have all these low interest fixed rates. While they are paying higher and higher interest. You think the banks are in trouble now.

Ken

A great piece by Denny Hatch...

Your core business is everything. Do not neglect it.:Business Common Sense

"Bear Stearns strayed from its core business.

Powered by greed, the firm got into creating indecipherably complex investment funds designed to cover the tracks of indecipherably complex consumer home loan contracts.

Nobody understood this stuff. Not Bear Stearns’ managing directors, not the sales people hawking this fatuous crap. Not the greedy investors that saw obscene returns. Not the original mortgage lenders. And certainly not the dodos who got way in over their heads borrowing to buy homes by signing adjustable rate mortgage contracts that sucked them dry.

But hey, if I was a renter and was offered a $220,000 loan to buy a $200,000 home, who is the dodo—I or the lender? I get to live like royalty, and if I find I cannot afford it, I become a “mortgage walker” who hands the house keys to the lender and says ta-ta.

The operative rule of thumb: If a thing looks too good to be true, it is."

And guess what guys...the UK is heading the same way
as the US by the look of it.

The IMF are forcasting a 30% drop in house prices over here.
Mortgage companies are pulling mortage deals left, right and centre.
The 125% mortgage deal has gone.
(You actually have to put down a deposit now...)

The decade of spend, spend, spend is well and truly over .

We sold our house six weeks ago and have decided to rent to see what happens
in the next 6 months.

All my friends think house prices won't drop down here - Cornwall
the south-west bit sticking out to the US - because people are moving
down from up country. But people still have to sell to move...

It's going to be an interesting 12 months

best regards

Mark

Forgot to add this bit;

They reckon the UK banks are in for £20 Billion over the
US sub-prime market.

Had a mortgage guy contact me a month ago about marketing.

He used to lend to people who'd missed 4-5 mortgage payments.
They're history now over here. No lender wants to know.

He's now after the people who miss 1or 2 payments.

mark

That's the one right there.

Every industry I know that has a "bill me" option without asking for any money up front has had collection problems.