Just When You Thought the Sub-Prime Mortgage Was Dead

…it’s back, at least in England.

An interesting and somewhat frightening article by Rupert Jones appeared in the Guardian today and it took my breath away.  

One either learns from history or becomes the victim of it and subprime mortgages are pretty recent history. One can imagine the victims lining up and they are (of course) the marginally desperate. The timing is predatory as well.

Home prices in England, particularly London, are among the highest in the world. They are already looked upon as a housing-bubble. According to the article several Australian investment banks are hot and heavy into what you and I had likely assumed was an illegal and discredited market scam. Scam may be too loose a term, but if it quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck—it probably is a duck.

According to the Guardian piece, “Sub-prime mortgages, widely blamed for causing the 2007-08 financial crisis, are making a surprise comeback in the UK, with several new lenders launching home loans for people with …