#En av mine kjeppehester i finanskrisen har vært å prøve å forklare at subprime-lån IKKE er det samme som boliglån til fattige. Det virker som om dette nesten har blitt en sannhet i diverse medier. Så, igjen, subprime betyr IKKE det samme som lån til fattige. Wall Street Journal har sett litt nærmere på endel av boliglånene som var del av den nå så berømte Abacus-handelen gjennomført av Goldman Sachs. De illustrerer mitt poeng ganske godt. For eksempel: #
One mortgage in the Abacus pool was held by Ms. Onyeukwu, a 43-year-old nursing-home assistant in Pittsburg, Calif. Ms. Onyeukwu already was under financial strain in 2006, when she applied to Fremont Investment & Loan for a new mortgage on her two-story, six-bedroom house in a subdivision called Highlands Ranch. With pre-tax income of about $9,000 a month from a child-care business, she says she was having a hard time making the $5,000 monthly payments on her existing $688,000 mortgage, which carried an initial interest rate of 9.05%. #Min utheving. Selv ikke i USA kan noen som eier et hus med seks soverom (se bildet over), tjener $108.000 i året og har et lån på $688.000 kalles spesielt fattig. WSJ har også en lysbildeserie med typiske ‘subprimehus’. #Nonetheless, she took out an even bigger loan from Fremont, which lent her $786,250 at an initial interest rate of 7.55%—but that would begin to float as high as 13.55% two years later. She says the monthly payment on the new loan came to a bit more than $5,000. #
For en utfyllende gjennomgang av hva subprime er, anbefaler jeg Tantas “What is subprime” #
What we call “prime” lending was based on the idea that all three C-questions had to get at least a minimally correct answer before proceeding. You had to be sufficiently creditworthy and sufficiently capable and have sufficient collateral before we made the loan [...] “Traditional” subprime lending was about loans to people who had capacity but not creditworthiness or who had creditworthiness and capacity but not great collateral. The first instance is the borrower who has defaulted on debts in the recent past, but who has sufficient income to carry a new debt (for example, a borrower whose bankruptcy has been discharged, and whose income is now more in line with expenses). The second instance, a large portion of traditional subprime lending, was loans for manufactured housing (mobile homes), rural properties, urban mixed-use residential/commercial properties, and, of course, substandard housing in general. #Videre skriver Tanta #
In essence, the old “hard money” or “collateral dependent” loan went mainstream, except that it went from the margins of the housing stock—manufactured homes, dilapidated row houses, the old farmstead—to the front and center—new homes, flashy condos, high-quality existing homes whose previous owners were heading for the McMansion. #Altså akkurat det motsatte av det media ser ut til å tro. Problemet var at subprimelån ble vanlig for relativt rike for å kjøpe seg større hus enn det de hadde råd til. Alt ut fra troen at boligprisene ville fortsett å vokse, og i alle fall ikke kollapse. #
Så kjære media, vær snill å slutt med å koble subprimekrisen sammen med fattige amerikanere!
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