"Liar Loans" Come Home to Roost

The hysterically ridiculous (read as: zero) underwriting done on many home loans in recent years has, predictably, returned to haunt lenders with historically high mortgage loan defaults. Delinquency rates on single-family mortgages have reached their highest level on record (the Fed started tracking this statistic in 1991), dragging up the delinquency rate on all loans held by U.S. banks.

This chart is more proof that, despite lowered interest rates, there are a record number of mortgages in the hands of subprime borrowers who can’t make their payments. These delinquency rates show that the financial system has not emerged from the credit crisis, but rather, entered a new stage where bad loaning schemes are blowing up in the face of the lenders who created them.