CreditSlips

Do you have good credit? Compared to whom? While your credit price may depend largely on how your credit fares against objective criteria (above 680 to avoid being "subprime," for example), do you ever wonder how you are doing compared to everyone else? Maybe you think the national banks would give credit to a ham sandwich; what you want to know if whether you are  keeping up with the Jones in managing your financial behavior.

The U.S. mortgage servicing industry is in deep doo-doo. To foreclose on a mortgage, you must own the note and the mortgage. That's a lot of paperwork to keep track of, especially when you're trying to package as many mortgage loans into as many securitizations as you can before the market dries up. If we have learned nothing else in the past four years, it is a lot to ask Wall Street to make sure they get things right when there is money to be made.

Professor Curtis Bridgeman (FSU College of Law) has an article on The Morality of Jingle Mail:  Moral Myths About Strategic Default.  I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with the article, but it's got a lot of very good, clear analysis of arguments about strategic default, including a very useful typology of argument.  

Anybody who cares about consumer rights should take a look at this recent article by Professor Dan Schwarcz, a law professor and insurance expert from the University of Minnesota Law School. This guy actually gets his jollies reading insurance policies, and what he has learned can help you. Well, sort of…..