So far, the sub prime crisis has had a limited direct impact on Latin America s mortgage markets.

The housing recession the worst in US history and worsening every day will eventually see house prices fall by more than 20 , with millions of Americans losing their homes.

The Right Weights for Mortgage Risks

Occupy the Mortgage Lenders

Mortgages became more widely available.

The problem was not just sub prime mortgages.

Losses are spreading from sub prime to near prime and prime mortgages, commercial mortgages, and unsecured consumer credit (credit cards, auto loans, student loans).

Unlike virtually every other country, US residential mortgages are effectively no recourse loans.

Mortgage debts, too, must be written down.

So they've created deductions, subsidies and insurances.

Moreover, the US housing market appears to be stabilizing....Overall, the US mortgage market has remained resilient, although the sub prime segment has deteriorated a bit more rapidly than had been expected.

a rapid reduction of insolvent households debt burden, preceded by a temporary freeze on all foreclosures

Mortgage brokers were happy to get in on the act.

It was called securitized mortgages.

Credit card, electronic wallets, mortgage back security stock options.

After the subprime crisis erupted, mortgage and consumer debt was paid down by households either with their savings or by default.

Its members could not agree even on how to define subprime mortgages and calculate how many such mortgages there were in the United States at the time of the crisis.

One place to start is the tax deduction for interest payments on home mortgages.

Housing prices began to rise by 10 a year.

Indeed, the foreclosure rate is increasing.

The terms of mortgages need to be adjusted to the homeowners ability to pay.

But mortgage markets remain underdeveloped in most emerging economies.

What is needed is a quick write down of the value of the mortgages.

In the fourth act, the real estate bubble will burst.

If you have a mortgage, refinance with another bank.

As a result, mortgage brokers maximize their income by generating larger volumes of mortgages, as do the banks that package these loans into mortgage backed securities (MBS s).

In Mexico, all mortgages carry fixed interest rates, unlike the infamous exploding ARMs that left US homeowners ruing their choice of adjustable rate mortgages when interest rates rose. Mexican mortgages are indexed to inflation, but the state mortgage agency links that index to the minimum wage and makes up the difference if mortgage interest adjustments for inflation outpace wage growth.

The state is an epicenter of the housing bust and the foreclosure crisis.

Around sixty sub prime lenders have already gone bankrupt.

Some limited previous experience with mortgage modifications is not encouraging.

There was a huge moral hazard courtesy of the government in the mortgage market.

But that is precisely why a government managed mortgage market is dangerous.

The entire housing finance system has been overhauled and a two tier system has been established with the Federal Mortgage Bank at the apex with a network of primary mortgage institutions as the second tier.

Wall Street has polluted the economy with toxic mortgages.

Sub prime mortgages made the American dream come true.

The sub prime crisis has exposed serious problems that we must address.

like subprime mortgages or Bernie Madoff's pyramid scheme, the devil is always in the details.

But it is the economic slowdown that renders all developed countries less resistant to the financial shocks resulting from the sub prime problem and from the mixed loan packages that are then used to dilute the risks attached to sub prime debt.

They are likely to place much greater emphasis on consumer lending, especially mortgages and credit cards.

For, if you are unable to pay for your mortgage, they will take your property.

When normal mortgages did not prime the pump enough, he encouraged them to take out variable rate mortgages at a time when interest rates had nowhere to go but up.

Forgiveness of underwater mortgages (where the outstanding loan exceeds the home s current market value), as well as reducing the foreclosure overhang of some 1.5 million homes, must be part of that solution.

Many banks have already acknowledged their open ended losses in residential mortgages.

But, in America s home mortgage market, this is much less common.

In this way, the Fed contributed to creating the sub prime crisis.