Mortgage meltdown still gaining steam

Within the past few weeks, I read about the second (and worse) wave of mortgage failures about to come. The gist of the article was that the mortgage meltdown only gained widespread recognition is the summer of 2007 with The Billionaire Bankers beginning their writeoffs in the fall of 2007.

But the bad loans continued getting worse and worse through May of 2007... with the upcoming crop of not-yet-bellyup loans beginning to be issued in early 2006.

And homeowners are still able to make payments because those mortgages haven't begun multiplying yet... but those ballooning payments will begin to kick in this fall.

And related to all those mortgages, I read this in Wednesday's WSJ (By CARRICK MOLLENKAMP):

The crunch will begin next month, when some $95 billion in floating-rate notes mature. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. analyst Alex Roever estimates that financial institutions will have to pay off at least $787 billion in floating-rate notes and other medium-term obligations before the end of 2009.

Even The Billionaire Bankers may feel that... though I'm sure Bernanke / Paulson will do everything they can to protect their friends on Wall Street.

Tim White