Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

Notes

¹Matt Krantz, “Mobile Home Madness: Prices Top $1 Million,” USA Today, July 5, 2005. One even sold for $2.7 million. Meanwhile, in Malibu in 2005, the average house sold for $4.4 million.

²“Home for Sale: Over $100 Million,” AP, International Herald Tribune, October 3, 2006.

³Chad Abraham, “For Sale: Nation's Most Expensive Home,” Aspen Times, July 12, 2006.

⁴Bureau of Economic Analysis, Average Wage per Job, http://bea.gov/bea/regional/reis/drill.cfm., CA34.

⁵Kirsten Downey, “Mortgage‐Trapped,” Washington Post, January 14, 2007, F01. From 2000 through the third quarter of 2006, the share of nontraditional loans rose from 2 percent to more than a third. See also “Breaking New Ground in U.S. Mortgage Lending,” FDIC Summer Outlook, 2006. In 2001, only 25 percent of all subprimes were of the “stated income” variety. By 2006, loans with limited documentation numbered 40 percent. By 2005, the number of no‐money‐down mortgages was 32.6 percent. See Lon Witter, “The No Money Down Disaster,” Barron's, August 21, 2006.

⁶Niall Ferguson, “Debt Nation: Reason to Worry,” New York Times Magazine, June 11, 2006. Numbers cited range from around $1 trillion worth of ARMs readjusting for 2007 to a high figure of $3 trillion worth for the period 2006–2008.

⁷FDIC Summer Outlook, 2006.

⁸Marcia Vickers, “The Bonnie and Clyde of Mortgage Fraud,” Fortune, November 14, 2006, told the story of the Bonnie and Clyde of mortgage fraud, who did very naughty things—pretending to be who they weren't, borrowing ...