Word: meltdown
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...residential real estate bust has been a slow-motion wreck too. (It started in 2006!) But the commercial meltdown will take even longer for two main reasons. One is that while commercial real estate lenders certainly got sloppy during the boom, they didn't go utterly crazy the way their residential peers did. Commercial lenders still demanded down payments and evidence of income. They didn't factor in a 40% decline in prices or the worst economic downturn in 70 years. The housing bust preceded and precipitated the recession. The commercial bust is an aftereffect. (See 25 people to blame...
Washington commissions and hearings are often yawn-inspiring affairs. But this one, officially called the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), could trigger some fireworks in part because of the severe damage caused by the financial-industry meltdown. What's more, the commission's chair Phil Angelides, a Democrat and former California state treasurer, has already come out swinging against Wall Street, calling the bonuses financial firms are planning to hand out soon for last year "unjustifiably wrong." So it's no real surprise that the first ones to be in the hot seat are the bankers themselves. (See pictures...
...raiding and pillaging of foreign lands. Today, there are new sagas being told on the craggy island about the greedy attempts by two foreign powers, Britain and the Netherlands, to pry every last krona from Iceland's shattered economy in order to repay debts incurred during the financial meltdown. The rift that's developing between Iceland and its European neighbors is threatening to leave the island isolated - and could even destroy its hopes of finally joining the European Union...
...Taliban," says Magnus Arni Skulason, a founding member of InDefence, a grass-roots campaign that helped secure 62,000 names - over a quarter of Iceland's 320,000 people - on a petition calling for the referendum. Skulason says Iceland has become the whipping boy in the financial meltdown. "Yes, there was a regulatory problem in Iceland. But this is a joint responsibility: the financial authorities in the U.K. and the Netherlands should have been overseeing it too," he says. (Read "Global Financial Crisis Claims Iceland...
Since the housing market's peak in July 2006, home prices have plunged 30% on average, with prices in some markets, such as Las Vegas, Phoenix and parts of Florida, falling more than 60%. NAR's Yun estimates home-equity losses from the housing meltdown totaled $7 trillion...