Subprime lending crisis and you - Page 3

conraddobler · March 12th, 2007, 06:53 PM

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...ketFreeze.aspx

Divide Et Impera · March 13th, 2007, 06:36 AM

Man, I just got into work today and I see that our subprime guidelines just bumped way up (so to speak). Now you gotta have a 540 to do ANY type of loan product (up from 500). Now you gotta be a 580 to go over 90%LTV (used to be 580 to 100% full doc). Now you can only go to 90% if you have mortgage lates (down from 100%).

Honestly, these are GREAT adjustments that needed to be made, but I can just see this completely bogging the RE market even MORE than what it has been. Hopefully prices will normalize (thank God I'm in a big home that I LOVE and won't be moving anytime soon).

This is going to affect A LOT of people - subprime OR prime. People will be negative on their homes regardless of credit scoring. There will be some large numbers of foreclosures for the next few years and people who currently have AAA credit will lose that. I feel bad for the AAA family who bought at the top of the market (September 2005)....

conraddobler · March 13th, 2007, 12:39 PM

http://biz.yahoo.com/cnnm/070313/031....v=1&.pf=loans

It's still amazing you have all these people saying but the economy is good, it's not like people are losing jobs.

They just don't get it, these loans were structured horribly!! I can't emphasize enough that instead of needing a down economy to spur defaults that these defaults will cause the down economy.

Chris_Sanders · March 13th, 2007, 03:44 PM

Another big drop at the stock market based on this. Fortunately 82 has told me it is all a bunch of hogwash and he knows it all so we are fine.

Quote:

Stocks plummet on subprime lender woes By MADLEN READ, AP Business Writer
40 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Stocks plunged Tuesday, driving the Dow Jones industrials down more than 240 points to their second-biggest drop in almost four years, as troubles piled up for subprime lenders.

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Investors, bracing for a wilting economy, fled the already deflated subprime mortgage sector on more news that lenders New Century Financial Corp., Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co. and General Motors Acceptance Corp.'s residential unit are facing financial problems. The Mortgage Bankers Association bolstered the belief that the struggles are widespread after it said new foreclosures surged to an all-time high in the last quarter of 2006.

All three major stock indexes were knocked down about 2 percent.

"The market's still jittery, and they're starting to get full-blown concerns over a bleed in the larger subprime mortgage market," said Matt Kelmon, portfolio manager of the Kelmoore Strategy Funds.

Subprime lenders provide mortgages to people with poor credit. Though they are a relatively small part of the U.S. economy, their difficulties raise larger concerns about the housing market, which until its slowdown in recent years was a big source of money for consumers. That, coupled with the Commerce Department's report Tuesday that U.S. retailers eked out a meager 0.1 percent rise in sales last month, led Wall Street to reconsider whether Americans' buying power will withstand an economic slowdown.

Tuesday's selloff was accentuated by options expiring soon and by volatility that has increased since the market's big plunge on Feb. 27 — a 416-point drop in the Dow that was caused partially by the escalating distress among subprime lenders.

The Dow fell 242.66, or 1.97 percent, to 12,075.96. On March 24, 2003 the index dropped 307 points when U.S. casualties began mounting in Iraq.

The blue chip index is now down about 710 points, more than 5 percent, from its record close reached Feb. 20. Many market watchers suspect that the market's correction is not over.

The Dow is still above the low for the year of 12,050.41 reached March 5 and has yet to slip below the 12,000 level, which it reached for the first time last October.

Broader stock indicators also fell by their largest amounts in two weeks. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 28.65, or 2.04 percent, to 1,377.95, and the Nasdaq composite index slid 51.72, or 2.15 percent, to 2,350.57.

Consolidated volume on the New York Stock Exchange, where declining issues outnumbered advancers by 5 to 1, was high at 3.49 billion shares — more than the 2.62 billion shares traded a day earlier, but lower than the 4.56 billion shares traded on Feb. 27, when the Dow took its largest plunge since Sept. 17, 2001.

Trading collars were triggered Tuesday afternoon when the New York Stock Exchange Composite index lost more than 180 points. The collars put a chokehold on certain orders, forbidding transactions that capitalize on discrepancies in prices.

Subprime lending jitters and sluggish retail sales drove up bond prices. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 4.50 percent from 4.56 percent late Monday.

Gold prices fell, and the dollar was lower against most major currencies. A drop in the dollar versus the yen renewed anxiety about traders unwinding their yen "carry trades," or taking money out of high-yielding dollar assets bought with the low-yielding yen.

The subprime worries have been mounting for weeks now, but came to a head when the New York Stock Exchange took steps to delist shares of New Century, which said Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission would be probing accounting errors that inflated its loan portfolio.

"Investors are poking around to see how much rotted wood there is here," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer for Harris Private Bank. "It looks like the notion was subprime was contained, and now we're starting to see that maybe this problem has moved into other areas of the market. That's causing investors great concern."

Accredited Home contributed to the anxiety after it said it is in need of cash. Its shares plunged $7.43, or 65 percent, to $3.97.

Wall Street sold off further when the Mortgage Bankers Association's quarterly report on the mortgage market seemed to confirm investors' worries that the entire sector is floundering and could weaken further: not only did new foreclosures hit a record high in the fourth quarter of last year, but late mortgage payments soared to a 3 1/2-year high.

Late in the session, General Motors Acceptance Corp. — General Motors Corp.'s part-owned financing arm — reported that its fourth-quarter profit rose, but struggles in its Residential Capital LLC unit were eating into earnings. That news gave investors extra motivation to sell.

"The fear index is rising," said Steven Cochrane, senior managing director for Moody's Economy.com. "(Subprime mortgages) are our No. 1 concern right now."

That anxiety hit stocks of homebuilders, as lending obstacles could further cripple the lagging housing market. D.R. Horton Inc. fell 86 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $22.31; Centex Corp. lost $2.15, or 4.8 percent, to $42.76; and Toll Brothers Inc. dropped 67 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $27.34.

Investors trying to gauge how far problems in the subprime sector have spread pounced on comments from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The investment bank said that while the subprime sector showed "significant weakness," the broader credit environment "remained strong." Goldman Sachs fell $3.57 to $199.03, despite record first-quarter profit thanks to strong revenue from trading and investment banking.

Government data on Tuesday suggested that consumer spending might be getting crimped. The Commerce Department said sales at U.S. retailers rose 0.1 percent in February as wintry weather in much of the country kept shoppers away from stores. Investors had expected an increase of 0.3 percent from January.

"I think a big question mark on this is how much of this is weather-related," said Rob Lutts, chief investment officer at Cabot Money Management. "We had two or three days during the month which knocked out activity. ... I think it is causing a little bit of alarm short-term."

Several retailers stumbled following the Commerce Department's report. Federated Department Stores Inc., parent of Macy's and Bloomingdale's, fell 85 cents to $44.09; Wal-Mart Stores Inc. slid $1.08, or 2.3 percent, to $46.18; and Target Corp. fell $1.76, or 2.8 percent, to $60.47.

Traders now await the producer and consumer price indexes, scheduled to be released Thursday and Friday, respectively. The two inflation gauges should give investors a better idea of whether costs are escalating too fast, and if the Federal Reserve might give consumers some relief by lowering interest rates later in the year.

Of the Dow's 30 blue chip stocks, the only gainer was AT&T Corp., which rose 20 cents to $37.26.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 19.88, or 2.52 percent, to 769.12.

Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 0.66 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 fell 1.16 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 1.36 percent, and France's CAC-40 fell 1.15 percent.

Light, sweet crude fell 98 cents to settle at $57.93 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Divide Et Impera · March 13th, 2007, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris_Sanders

Another big drop at the stock market based on this. Fortunately 82 has told me it is all a bunch of hogwash and he knows it all so we are fine.

Settle down, Chicken Little. Don't you know how great things are for everybody under this Bush administration?

conraddobler · March 13th, 2007, 05:55 PM

Well I took 4 applications today from people who would like nothing better than to throw money at me to fix their mess.

Their houses are all worth less than when they bought them, they're all behind and their rates are all going up.

It's difficult to tell someone in a nice way you're screwed.

82CardsGrad · March 13th, 2007, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divide Et Impera

Settle down, Chicken Little. Don't you know how great things are for everybody under this Bush administration?

You guys are too funny... I never said this issue wasn't going to be an issue. I said and still maintain that it won't be nearly as catostraphic as you "end of the world" believers paint it to be... By the way, the drop in the Dow today had much more to do with Retail Sales than the sub-prime issue...

conraddobler · March 13th, 2007, 07:52 PM

http://www.billcara.com/archives/200...ica_is_in.html

Treesquid · March 13th, 2007, 08:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by conraddobler

Well I took 4 applications today from people who would like nothing better than to throw money at me to fix their mess.

Their houses are all worth less than when they bought them, they're all behind and their rates are all going up.

It's difficult to tell someone in a nice way you're screwed.

See that's your problem you are too nice, these are the same people who look down on you everyday because you don't have meaningless depreciating assets like they do. Let me tell ya there will always be people who can't handle money. And they work at Walmart at age 75 too, the faster you accept that there is nothing you or big brother can do to stop that the better you will feel.

You seem like a guy who knows a little about money, why sweat it? if there is a down turn cash will stil be king and I am stocking it up like a motha, cash will rule, stocks always come back eventually. The very poor don't really get hurt by down turns as much, they are already poor and used to being a bit resilient, it's the couple who makes 60K a year, yet couldn't stand living at 60K a year. Yet when the economy bites them in the ass they hate you because you actually chose to live below your means and save your money. Too bad, so sad IMO.

Yeah, I live in a cheap 1600 sqft home in south chandler and I drive a paid off 2000 civic with a jacked up window, people scoff at me when I drive around in Scottsdale, land of the leveraged and 1/40 net worth of me, but at least I can sleep at night knowing they will be f'ed and I will buy their homes as a real investment at half the price they did. Muhahahahahahah!

And just for the record, I found Micro Economics much more interesting than Macro.

conraddobler · March 13th, 2007, 09:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Treesquid

See that's your problem you are too nice, these are the same people who look down on you everyday because you don't have meaningless depreciating assets like they do. Let me tell ya there will always be people who can't handle money. And they work at Walmart at age 75 too, the faster you accept that there is nothing you or big brother can do to stop that the better you will feel.

You seem like a guy who knows a little about money, why sweat it? if there is a down turn cash will stil be king and I am stocking it up like a motha, cash will rule, stocks always come back eventually. The very poor don't really get hurt by down turns as much, they are already poor and used to being a bit resilient, it's the couple who makes 60K a year, yet couldn't stand living at 60K a year. Yet when the economy bites them in the ass they hate you because you actually chose to live below your means and save your money. Too bad, so sad IMO.

Yeah, I live in a cheap 1600 sqft home in south chandler and I drive a paid off 2000 civic with a jacked up window, people scoff at me when I drive around in Scottsdale, land of the leveraged and 1/40 net worth of me, but at least I can sleep at night knowing they will be f'ed and I will buy their homes as a real investment at half the price they did. Muhahahahahahah!

And just for the record, I found Micro Economics much more interesting than Macro.

The pain will be immense and you really don't know when the wrecking ball of fate will hit you in the head.

The law of unintended consequences will be running around wild in this and I'm not so sure some of the tried and true strategies of cash is king will work, ie if they hyperinflate cash pretty much sucks.

It's going to be tricky to call exactly what to do, I just saw a video of a guy pimping gold, it's tanking.

Bonds, eh not so much that could get you crushed and hyperinflation is bad for cash unless I guess you have it in some form of savings account hooked to rocketing interest rates.

I think some using the old rules will find they get crushed, buying up someone's house does diddly poo if it dosen't go up in value for 10 to 15 years.

Theres an even more incredible sidebar to this, just as the baby boomers will be retiring and presumably downsizing in housing this hits, the implications of that are flat out frightening. The last dynamic they caused was hyperinflation when they entered the housing market in droves, that measn outright deflation on their exit is not out of the question, in that case you better be a surgeon or something critical if you want to be 100% sure you don't lose your job, in the last go around of this they took peoples land and houses as payment to save them.

Sure there have to be plays that work but it's always knowing the right ones that is the trick.

P.S.

I rarely feel glee in most peoples problems, that's karmic badness that can latch onto you in a grim way.

Brian in Mesa · March 13th, 2007, 10:03 PM

So, let me get this straight...people made bad decisions with their money?

I'm shocked.

Divide Et Impera · March 14th, 2007, 08:46 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...031301733.html

Quote:

'No Money Down' Falls Flat

By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, March 14, 2007; Page D01

Today's pop quiz involves some potentially exciting new products that mortgage bankers have come up with to make homeownership a reality for cash-strapped first-time buyers.

Here goes: Which of these products do you think makes sense?

(a) The "balloon mortgage," in which the borrower pays only interest for 10 years before a big lump-sum payment is due.

(b) The "liar loan," in which the borrower is asked merely to state his annual income, without presenting any documentation.

(c) The "option ARM" loan, in which the borrower can pay less than the agreed-upon interest and principal payment, simply by adding to the outstanding balance of the loan.

(d) The "piggyback loan," in which a combination of a first and second mortgage eliminates the need for any down payment.

(e) The "teaser loan," which qualifies a borrower for a loan based on an artificially low initial interest rate, even though he or she doesn't have sufficient income to make the monthly payments when the interest rate is reset in two years.

(f) The "stretch loan," in which the borrower has to commit more than 50 percent of gross income to make the monthly payments.

(g) All of the above.

If you answered (g), congratulations! Not only do you qualify for a job as a mortgage banker, but you may also have a future as a Wall Street investment banker and a bank regulator.

No, folks, I'm not making this up. Not only has the industry embraced these "innovations," but it has also begun to combine various features into a single loan and offer it to high-risk borrowers. One cheeky lender went so far as to advertise what it dubbed its "NINJA" loan -- NINJA standing for "No Income, No Job and No Assets."

In fact, these innovative products are now so commonplace, they have been the driving force in the boom in the housing industry at least since 2005. They are a big reason why homeownership has increased from 65 percent of households to a record 69 percent. They help explain why outstanding mortgage debt has increased by $9.5 trillion in the past four years. And they are, unquestionably, a big factor behind the incredible run-up in home prices.

Now they are also a major reason the subprime mortgage market is melting down, why 1.5 million Americans may lose their homes to foreclosure and why hundreds of thousands of homes could be dumped on an already glutted market. They also represent a huge cloud hanging over Wall Street investment houses, which packaged and sold these mortgages to investors around the world.

How did we get to this point?

It began years ago when Lewis Ranieri, an investment banker at the old Salomon Brothers, dreamed up the idea of buying mortgages from bank lenders, bundling them and issuing bonds with the bundles as collateral. The monthly payments from homeowners were used to pay interest on the bonds, and principal was repaid once all the mortgages had been paid down or refinanced.

Thanks to Ranieri and his successors, almost anyone can originate a mortgage loan -- not just banks and big mortgage lenders, but any mortgage broker with a Web site and a phone. Some banks still keep the mortgages they write. But most other originators sell them to investment banks that package and "securitize" them. And because the originators make their money from fees and from selling the loans, they don't have much at risk if borrowers can't keep up with their payments.

And therein lies the problem: an incentive structure that encourages originators to write risky loans, collect the big fees and let someone else suffer the consequences.

This "moral hazard," as economists call it, has been magnified by another innovation in the capital markets. Instead of packaging entire mortgages, Wall Street came up with the idea of dividing them into "tranches." The safest tranche, which offers investors a relatively low interest rate, will be the first to be paid off if too many borrowers default and their houses are sold at foreclosure auction. The owners of the riskiest tranche, in contrast, will be the last to be paid, and thus have the biggest risk if too many houses are auctioned for less than the value of their loans. In return for this risk, their bonds offer the highest yield.

It was this ability to chop packages of mortgages into different risk tranches that really enabled the mortgage industry to rush headlong into all those new products and new markets -- in particular, the subprime market for borrowers with sketchy credit histories. Selling the safe tranches was easy, while the riskiest tranches appealed to the booming hedge-fund industry and other investors like pension funds desperate for anything offering a higher yield. So eager were global investors for these securities that when the housing market began to slow, they practically invited the mortgage bankers to keep generating new loans even if it meant they were riskier. The mortgage bankers were only too happy to oblige.

By the spring of 2005, the deterioration of lending standards was pretty clear. They were the subject of numerous eye-popping articles in The Post by my colleague Kirstin Downey. Regulators began to warn publicly of the problem, among them Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Several members of Congress called for a clampdown. Mortgage insurers and numerous independent analysts warned of a gathering crisis.

But it wasn't until December 2005 that the four bank regulatory agencies were able to hash out their differences and offer for public comment some "guidance" for what they politely called "nontraditional mortgages." Months ensued as the mortgage bankers fought the proposed rules with all the usual bogus arguments, accusing the agencies of "regulatory overreach," "stifling innovation" and substituting the judgment of bureaucrats for the collective wisdom of thousands of experienced lenders and millions of sophisticated investors. And they warned that any tightening of standards would trigger a credit crunch and burst the housing bubble that their loosey-goosey lending had helped spawn.

The industry campaign didn't sway the regulators, but it did delay final implementation of the guidance until September 2006, both by federal and many state regulators. And even now, with the market for subprime mortgages collapsing around them, the mortgage bankers and their highly paid enablers on Wall Street continue to deny there is a serious problem, or that they have any responsibility for it. In substance and tone, they sound almost exactly like the accounting firms and investment banks back when Enron and WorldCom were crashing around them.

What we have here is a failure of common sense. With occasional exceptions, bankers shouldn't make -- or be allowed to make -- mortgage loans that require no money down and no documentation of income to people who won't be able to afford the monthly payments if interest rates rise, house prices fall or the roof springs a leak. It's not a whole lot more complicated than that.

Divide Et Impera · March 14th, 2007, 08:46 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...031300505.html

Quote:

Mortgage Report Rattles Markets
Dow Down 2% On a Big Rise In Delinquencies

By David Cho and Dina ElBoghdady
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 14, 2007; Page A01

A national survey showing that a soaring number of homeowners failed to make their mortgage payments in the last quarter of 2006 rattled lawmakers in Washington and the markets in New York yesterday, as the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 2 percent, or nearly 243 points.

The report, which sent every major stock market indicator tumbling when it was released at noon, revealed that the problems in the market for "subprime" mortgages -- loans made to home buyers with blemished credit histories -- might be spilling over to the broader mortgage industry, analysts said.

While the number of risky borrowers who missed payments climbed to a four-year high, the number of foreclosures on all homes jumped to its highest level in nearly four decades, according to the survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Home buyers who relied on loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration also had record default rates.

Several lawmakers, including House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), said they would offer legislation to rein in risky mortgages. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) told reporters that Congress will have to consider providing several billion dollars of aid to at-risk homeowners.

The survey was released as the market for high-risk mortgages is collapsing. Over the past few years, highflying lenders of these loans helped millions of Americans buy homes they otherwise could not afford. The firms have seen their businesses unravel as these homeowners could not make their monthly payments. Some companies have been delisted from stock exchanges in recent weeks, while more than two dozen have shut their doors.

The consequences of the subprime mortgage meltdown now are extending beyond those lenders. Washington Mutual, the nation's largest savings and loan, told analysts that its loans to risky home buyers were performing "exceedingly poorly" and would be a drag on its earnings. H&R Block said it will delay reporting its third-quarter results because woes in the mortgage market forced the firm to recalculate its earnings, resulting in a $29 million loss that wasn't included in its previous filings.

Shares of Washington Mutual fell 5 percent, to $39.79, its lowest in 16 months. H&R Block fell 4 percent during the day and another 5 percent to $19.05 after its announcement.

"It's pretty clear that the fear is the increase in delinquencies in the subprime market will work its way through the entire financial systems," said Alan Kral, managing director of Trevor Stewart Burton & Jacobsen.

Traders said the impact of the delinquency survey was immediate. After the numbers were released, the Dow shed 70 points in half an hour. The survey measured the last three months of 2006, and some on Wall Street are worried the beginning of this year will be worse.

"People are concerned that the subprime problems are going to infect all of housing and the rest of the economy," said Donald H. Straszheim, an economist at Roth Capital Partners.

Federal and state investigators are looking at what has been going on in the mortgage industry. New Century, one of the largest subprime mortgage lenders, said yesterday it had received a federal grand jury subpoena for its trading and accounting practices. New Century, which stopped making loans last week, was delisted by the New York Stock Exchange yesterday.

Massachusetts' top securities regulator, Secretary of State William Galvin, said yesterday that he issued subpoenas to two Wall Street investment banks, UBS Securities and Bear Stearns, as part of a probe into whether the firms' researchers ignored the mounting problems among subprime lenders.

On top of these investigations, other prominent subprime lenders shed more light on their financial woes yesterday. Shares of Accredited Home Lenders Holding, another large subprime lender, lost 65 percent of their value after the San Diego firm said that it had not met the financial terms of its creditors, which are now demanding money that Accredited does not have. This is the same situation that New Century is facing.

Locally, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group is considering selling its First NLC subprime mortgage loan business after cutting costs and tightening loan policies. The Arlington company said in a statement that it "will explore strategic alternatives to maximize the value" of the division.

Selling loans to people with questionable credit was a popular trend over the past few years. Lenders could repackage these mortgages as bonds and sell them on the market for high returns. These lenders believed homeowners simply could sell or refinance their homes if they had trouble making payments.

But when the market cooled, and home prices leveled off, millions of those borrowers could not afford to refinance or sell their homes, wreaking havoc on the once-thriving subprime market.

Especially onerous were the adjustable-rate mortgages, which offered low teaser rates that spiked in later years.

Those types of mortgages grew in popularity in spring 2004, when interest rates hit a low, said Barry Glassman, senior vice president of financial planning firm Cassaday & Co. But now that these mortgages are starting to adjust, some borrowers face interest payments that are at more than double the original rate.

Yesterday's Mortgage Bankers Association report, which surveyed 43.5 million loans, shows how this phenomenon played out in the last three months of 2006.

According to the report, 4.95 percent of all home mortgages were delinquent, meaning they were at least 30 days late. The most dramatic rise was among subprime borrowers. The survey also showed that lenders initiated foreclosures against 0.54 percent of borrowers -- or about one in every 200 -- the highest in the 37-year history of the survey.

While most of the turmoil has been driven by the subprime market, even credit-worthy borrowers appear to be facing some of the same issues. Their delinquency and foreclosure rates also inched upwards. The rate of foreclosures that started during the fourth quarter more than doubled since the start of 2006 for credit-worthy borrowers.

"There's some indication here, and it's not apocalyptic by any means, that the problems might not be contained in the subprime market," said Nicolas Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

Russ Smith · March 14th, 2007, 09:28 AM

Market down again today on this. I have half my vacation fund in a CD and half in a mutual fund. Strongly considering pulling it out of the mutual fund although by the time I go on vacation(should be Feb) I would hope the market has turned. But I'm thinking a short term savings(vacation) in a long term fund(mutual) is a bad idea with something like this hanging over the market.

Article in my paper today saying this won't be a big deal in Silicon Valley because we didn't do a lot of those mortgages. Same paper that had a front page article a few days ago about just this sort of thing and how a family was lucky that the lender lied on the application and they were able to sue the lender company to get out of the house they couldn't afford. So I don't know what to believe but I strongly suspect that Silicon Valley has LOTS of
these mortgages and is just in denial?

Sheesh.

Divide Et Impera · March 14th, 2007, 09:31 AM

I worry about the people in OH and MI. The economy there is already horrible and a seemingly vast majority of people have subprime credit and the ownership contingency there cannot handle or sustain an even worse downturn in the market there. Talk about a mini-depression. Then you look down south in MO, AL and such and it's the same thing. There's some tough places to be right now....

As Russ stated, I'm not too worried about the Silicon Valleys, the Aspens and all the other affluent areas, but the people living in these mini-depressed economies is what affects me....