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Encouragingly spry 78-year-old Morley Safer hustles around the Sunbelt interviewing ruthless defaulters . In the very unlikely event that the embed works, it’s worth watching: Courtesy of Calculated Risk

Excerpt from: 
Sympathy for the Deadbeat: 60 Minutes On Strategic Defaults

At Slate ’s Big Money column, Alyssa Katz suggests a new answer to a longstanding question: Why was the state of Texas spared the worst excesses of both the real estate bubble and the subsequent bust? Katz argues that Texans were constrained by an ancient state law that makes it very hard to take equity out of your home.

Read the rest here: 
Did Emperor Agustín I Prevent Texas Real Estate Bust?

One of many ill-advised pieces of the Home Affordable Modification Program may be getting a quiet retirement. The Second Lien Modification Program, which was announced back in April, seems to be on the skids. Calculated Risk puts the story together: Housing economist Tom Lawler emailed the HAMP administrative website to obtain a list of servicers who had signed up for the Second Lien Modification Program.

Read more from the original source: 
First Smart Move In a Long Time: Government Surrenders on Second Mortgages

Here’s a deceptive headline from the Boston Globe : "Lenders avoid redoing loans, Fed concludes." Actually, this remarkably straightforward study [pdf] from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston begins with the ( old ) news that lenders have "performed payment-reducing modifications on only about 3 percent of seriously delinquent loans." The meat of the discussion paper "Why Don’t Lenders Renegotiate More Home Mortgages? Redefaults, Self-Cures, and Securitization," by Manuel Adelino, Kristopher Gerardi, and Paul S. Willen, is an exploration of why loan modifications, or renegotiations, are so rare

Original post: 
Boston Fed: No Way Out of Foreclosures

Here’s a fairly dramatic encounter from this afternoon’s Suze Orman Show .

Original post:
Suze Orman’s Personal Finance Advice: Quit Your Job