The way subprime crises, housing bubbles and financial meltdowns seem to sneak up on the US may puzzle casual observers. But to people in the real estate industry, it is hardly a mystery.
Edmund L. Andrews recalls his personal experiences in the great financial war in Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown (220 pp, W.W. Norton & Company, $25.95).
Andrews, a financial reporter for The New York Times, records concisely and lucidly how the banks and hedge funds made home loans to people who had no money whatsoever. He makes a vivid description of the brokers specializing in “unusul situations,” that is to say, how to procure a half-million-dollar mortgage for someone who has no “stated income.What is interesting and special about Andrews’ book is that he, with an annual salary of over $100000 (682,000 yuan) was one of those millions of Americans who were descending into the abyss of financial quicksand. Thanks to mortgage bankers, he got the “three-bedroom cottage at the end of a tree-lined lane in suburban Maryland he has always dreamed of having. He offered nearly half a million dollars for a house he has not even seen.
There was also love. He asked for the hand of his new wife, Patty, “brainy, regal, sexy, fiery and eclectic,” over the phone, before they have even kissed
“The fever for romance and the speculative fever to get rich have a lot in common,” he said. He asked himself, “Why had I tried to keep up the image of a centional suburban family man, when nothing about my situation was conventional??Both Andrews and Patty left their long-term spouses and “proudly risked everything to be together” in a “glorious gambleAndrews has often wondered how he wound up at the brink of foreclosure. “The short answer is that, first, I was divorced and desperately in love and eager to get remarried. I was carrying huge child-support payments and so I was n a very delicate, fragile financial situation but wanted to buy a house and start this new chapter in my life,?he says.
