We’ve securitized mortgages, which is that a bank has lent me money and turned around and sold my mortgage to somebody else. And groups have emerged, first organized by the government and then by the private market, which packaged those mortgages and sold them to investors.Those mortgage-banked securities were stepped in a direction of greater liquidity compared to the traditional 30-year mortgage, until, that is, homebuyers, who had been taking ever riskier adjustable rate loans, ran up against rising interest rates and payments they could no longer afford.

Now what happened is that process went in reverse. Everybody said, “I don’t really trust what is inside those bundles, because I don’t know who really did the evaluation of the worth of this. I also don’t know that there’s as much interest in buying mortgages as there was a few months ago. So I’m going to stop buying as many of those as I used to.”

And that starts the cycle. The mortgage-backed securities go down in value. Somebody had borrowed against the mortgage-backed securities that looked like a solid asset. They, then, try to sell off more of them to make payments back to the original bank. The original bank says, “Well, I don’t really want to be paid back in mortgage-backed securities. I want to be paid this cash.” That leads to another round of selling, and so on and so on.

A more thorough explanation here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec07/reserve_09-17.html

This angers me.

A waiter in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who left his shift to rescue a woman being attacked by an armed carjacker was fired after the heroic effort.Police said a 22-year-old woman was attacked by a knife-wielding man outside the 84 Thai Food restaurant in the Southland Shopping Center on Monday.

Restaurant waiter Juan Canales spotted the attack and ran to help.

Canales said he tackled the culprit, who police identified as Albert Means, and held him until police could arrive.

However, when Canales went back to work, he said his boss terminated him. “He told me you’re dismissed, you’re fired,” Canales said. “And I looked him and I said, ‘Are you serious?’ (He said) go get out of here, you’re fired.” “Did he give you a specific reason why?” the reporter asked. “No, he did not,” Canales said.

The woman he saved, Massiel Marquartdt, said she did not understand why Canales was fired. “I couldn’t believe that after he’s done something so noble, they would actually go ahead and fire him,” Marquartdt said.

The restaurant manager said Canales may be a hero but he just wasn’t that good of an employee.

http://www.local6.com/news/14099344/detail.html

From mod.