Financial Crisis Monitor

Ameriquest has stopped taking mortgage applications and its parent company has sold its remaining mortgage assets to Citigroup. The mortgage company — which was once the nation’s largest subprime lender — announced the moves Friday. Citigroup agreed to buy the wholesale mortgage assets and service of parent company ACC Capital Holdings.
The acquisition includes [...]

Kwaku Atta Poku a naturalized citizen and an immigrant from Ghana built a small taxi service, but now finds himself financially ruined. He came to the United States in 1992, gravitating to Columbia, Maryland two years later. He built his AAAA Star cab service from scratch, driving by day and learning how to repair and [...]

This may come as a shocking revelation to many of our readers. The Federal Reserve, and specifically the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, already had data about subprime mortages. That data did not look good at all. Executives from specific lenders were called to testify before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, [...]

The mortgage industry looks more like a party that ended abruptly when the parents came home a day early, only to discover the children and hundreds of their friends were caught with their pants down. Every day more reports of job cuts and layoffs come to our attention.
EquiFirst, the subprime lending unit [...]

LandAmerica Financial Group Inc., primarily a title insurer, said Tuesday it plans to cut 1,100 jobs in the second-half of 2007 because of a slowdown of the mortgage origination market.
The cuts would slash the company’s payroll by 13 percent from its June 30 level. LandAmerica has already eliminated 1,000 positions since the start of the [...]