Mar

2

NEW YORK, March 2 (UPI) — Foreclosures among high-risk U.S. mortgages could create the worst mortgage crisis since the 1980s, a published report said Friday.

Rising foreclosures and defaults have pushed more than 20 lending companies into bankruptcy, The Christian Science Monitor says. Some housing specialists worry the mortgage industry will respond by raising its lending standards so high that would-be homeowners with less-than-perfect credit will be frozen out, extending the current U.S. housing slump.

"It's the most serious threat to the economy," Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com says. "It has the potential to set the housing market back another big notch since there could be a whole class of people who can't get credit."

"Subprime" mortgages, for people who do not qualify for the conventional mortgages, now account for 18 percent to 24 percent of all mortgages, up from 5 percent in 1995, Wall Street analysts estimate.

Back when I was doing college radio news, each shift would leave a roster of stories and angles to be worked on by the next group of reporters to come in. That sheet was called a budget.

UPI helpfully ran this story a few moments ago, so the Sunday chat show wranglers and business section chin-tuggers can line up their interviews and get the talking points straight.

Key words to use frequently: mortgage, crisis, foreclosure, bankruptcy, credit, slump, threat.


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