As you'll recall from the movie "The Big Short", (and if you haven't had a chance to take a look at that, please do. It will enlighten as well as infuriate), CDOs were the big thing in the late 90s and 2000s. A CDO is a collateralized debt obligation, and it was comprised of a multitude of mortgage loans, thousands of them, which were then tossed onto the open market by the banks to make quick sales or trades, like any other stock. What people didn't take into account was the mortgage loan explosion, which drove some loan payments to balloon heights of 400%, 600% or more. People couldn't afford these payments, they lost their homes, and investors lost billions. No one, it seemed, ever realized or imagined a homeowner would not upkeep his or her mortgage loan payments. After all, it's your home. You'd do anything you could to save it, right? =)
Unfortunately, with the mortgage rate increase, and the disastrous rate at which mortgage loans were given out, even with tons of risk, it all came crumbling down. CDOs, once the rule of the roost, were destroyed.
Or were they?
Here's a little term to Google next time you have some curiosity.
"Bespoke Tranch Opportunity"
What is it? It's pretty much what a CDO was. Wild, huh? The banks didn't learn their lesson the first go around, and they're poised to learn an even harder lesson this time. Why? Because mortgage rates are going back up again, all over the country. There is a CHANCE, a slim one, the economic powers-that-be will raise the federal rate up a half-point by September, or at least by the end of 2016.
A higher federal tax rate will almost surely drive mortgage rates up again. Higher mortgage rates will almost surely lead to delinquent or non-payments while families scramble for federal assistance. More than 1,000,000 people lost their homes in 2008. Foreclosures that year rose over 80%, and there are still literal ghost towns filled with foreclosed properties that no one has touched yet.
People are going to want those homes eventually, and they're going to get a mortgage loan to cover it eventually...
Whoever becomes president in 2017 is in for a baptism by fire that could make the 2008 housing collapse seem like child's play, and I only hope he (or she) is ready to deal with it.
Edited by
PassionateWriter
on Tue 05/24/16 03:06 PM