EMERGING MARKET FUNDS

[Slojab]

I can't quote statistics like you can jt, lol, but I still have a sour taste in my mouth from the S & L crisis. Many people didn't think that would cause as severe a problem as it did. Start rolling a snowball downhill and eventually...

Being in the real estate appraisal business, I've been disgusted by the idiocy I've witnessed with all the gimics being conjured up by banks to get loans for people who can't afford the houses they're buying.

And it's not just the sub prime market that's being hit. Did you see what happened to American Home Mortgage? They're not a subprime lender.

NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of American Home Mortgage Investment (AHM) plunged 90% Tuesday after the company raised fears it may become insolvent, renewing concern about worsening credit quality in the mortgage market and killing a Wall Street rally.
The struggling mortgage lender said its financial backers have essentially pulled the plug. The Wall Street banks that lend American Home Mortgage money for home loans — which include firms like UBS, Bear Stearns and JPMorgan Chase — will not extend the company any more money, and some have demanded back the money they have lent.

Dozens of mortgage lenders have gone bankrupt this year as more people miss payments on home loans, housing prices sag and skittish investors flee risky mortgage debt.

But while most of the bankrupt lenders catered to "subprime" borrowers — or borrowers with checkered credit histories — almost none of American Home Mortgage's $58.9 billion in loans last year were classified as subprime.

American Home Mortgage specializes in adjustable-rate mortgages, which carry interest rates that reset according to certain benchmark interest rates. This type of debt has hamstrung a lot of borrowers in the past year because interest rates have jumped.