Quoting a Fitch report: “Delinquency cure rates refer to the percentage of delinquent loans returning to a current payment status each month. Cure rates [for prime] have declined from an average of 45% during 2000-2006 to the currently level of 6.6%.”
…
“In addition to prime cure rates dropping to 6.6%, Alt-A cure rates have dropped to 4.3%, from an average of 30.2%, and subprime is down to 5.3% from an average of 19.4%. ‘Whereas prime had previously been distinct for its relatively high level of delinquency recoveries, by this measure prime is no longer significantly outperforming other sectors,’ said Slump.”Yipes.
“They say you’ve got great leadership skills. What’s your secret?”
- “When you pull a rope, it goes wherever you want it to go.”
” Now, try pushing the rope. The rope goes nowhere.”
Caption: Leaders are salesmen, and what they sell is hope.
(Not sure this works, actually. Pulling is hard work. -B)
Brazilian subways have installed “priority seating for obese people”, with helpful color-coding. Weird, I thought everyone in Brazil looked like Gisele.
We track the dirty, congested and expensive things.
researchers have discovered that the sensation of being highly stressed can rewire the brain in ways that promote its sinister persistence
This lucky mouse has had a gene knocked out of his genome by researchers in Hei Sook Sul’s lab. The observation that mice without this gene can eat all the carbs they want and stay slim — while other mice fed a high-carb diet do indeed become fat — leads Dr. Sul to conclude that her lab has found a gene that plays a critical role in the process of converting carbohydrates to fat. And that discovery points to an important new target for drug developers hoping to find a way to prevent and perhaps even reverse obesity in humans.
we felt like the ‘Chosen Ones,’ with no obligation to do anything except the research we loved best
John P. Holdren, who Mr. Obama is expected to name on Saturday as his choice for presidential science adviser.
We cannot keep throwing money at the problem, hoping for a different result. We need to approach the old challenge of affordable housing with new energy, new ideas, and a new, efficient style of leadership. We need to understand that the old ways of looking at our cities just won’t do. That means promoting cities as the backbone of regional growth by not only solving the problems in our cities, but seizing the opportunities in our growing suburbs, exurbs, and metropolitan areas. No one knows this better than the outstanding public servant I am announcing today as our next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development — Shaun Donovan.
Clausewitz said that you have to have a plan for the battle but the plan had better include plenty of room for the absolute certainty that the plan will start growing fur from the first moment of its execution.
The balance between taking measures domestically and taking measures abroad is completely skewed right now,” said Mahi Sideridou, the managing director of the European unit of Greenpeace. “We are giving a signal to the rest of the world that we don’t want to reduce our emissions at home, but just go shopping for cheap offset credits,
