The Credit Market And Filing Personal Bankruptcy
Since its beginning in January of 2007, there has been hundreds of articles written about the mortgage and real estate crisis. As of early 2009, foreclosures and individuals filing personal bankruptcy are at an all-time high. Housing prices have fallen off the cliff, along with housing sales. And even if you want to buy, no one is making mortgage loans. People who thought their future was secure with the large amount of equity in their biggest investment—their home—now find themselves “under water”: owing more on mortgages than their property is worth.
It’s bad, so bad that we haven’t seen a mortgage or real estate market like this since the Great Depression. And despite these horrors, not much has been done to fix it. The TARP program seems to have just paid Wall Street hundreds of billions of dollars without getting much for the taxpayers’ investment. Credit markets are still tight, and nothing has happened to help ordinary folks deal with high mortgages, low prices and record foreclosures.
