Stockton, Calif. winning city for home repossession in US

[donsu]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7164898.stm


City of debt shows US housing woe


The city of Stockton in California is at the centre of the mortgage crisis now sweeping America.

Because, with house prices tumbling, more people in Stockton face the repossession of their homes than anywhere else in the US.

-long snip full of the whys and wherefors-
----------------------------

[tularetom]

1. Friggin greedy banks

That's your money they're making all those risky loans with. Almost makes you want to keep it in a sock under your bed, don't it?

Not to mention the idiots that kept borrowing against the equity in their homes until it disappeared. That's what funded most of the consumer spending in the US the past 2 or 3 years.

And it's all gonna come crashing to earth just in time for the new Dem president to get blamed.

[fed-up]

2. "the banks which set them up found that they were still responsible for them."

from the article...

Loans held in SIVs were technically off banks' balance sheets, but when the value of the loans inside SIVs started to collapse, the banks which set them up found that they were still responsible for them.

[kineneb]

3. heard the report on the Beeb

and thought, "That kind of reporting would never make it onto US airwaves."

Got to say, though, that given where Stockton is located, in relation to the SF Bay Area, the whole mess is not surprising. People commuted from Stockton to B.A. jobs because it was a more "affordable" area to buy.