Subprime Crisis: An Interactive Experience With Stick Figures

Maybe you've heard? The economy had a few hiccups this week, but nothing major. Uh, ya. That would be a one way to put it. I mean at this point, my credit's so bad, even those offshore bankers contacting me about gaining my assistance in helping them move a few million dollars into the US are even wary of me. Okay, I'm not going to take up time your waxing eloquent on who's at fault, and what should be done as there are many far more intelligent people out there already all over it.

However, when my wife showed me this basic breakdown of the sub-prime mortgage crisis (see link below), I couldn't help but post it. I wish this information would have existed a few years ago, given what I was doing for a living. I'm sure allot of people do. Working for a large public homebuilder as a sales manager whose division focused on first-time buyers, monitoring mortgage approvals were my life. Although I tried to ensure that every home closed had a legit mortgage behind it or that the buyers could afford the payments, but when you close over a 1,500 homes in a year, crap's going to get through. I could write a book with the odd-ball stories I saw.

I used to marvel that people fresh off a slew of defaulted credit cards and repo'd vehicles could "qualify" without any real proof of income. It was more than suspicious, but when you are being held to the projections promised to your corporate headquarters, and the loan officer says they're good to go, you just go with it. That's not to say my company did anything knowingly wrong, they were just rolling with it too. Somewhere in the back of my mind, however, I figured this couldn't go on forever, the question just was a matter of when.

After I transferred to Chicago, I remember the day the branch manager of our company's mortgage division came into a meeting to inform us all all the sub-prime loan products were over. It was in the same sad tone one might announce the president had been shot, or the space shuttle had exploded. Well, like they say, what goes up must come down.

I guess I'm receiving my Karma for those hand-over-fist days. 

You may have seen this already, but click on the link below for the full show. And as a side note, there's some rough language, just so you know.

Mortgage Failure explained in simple terms by stick figures

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