baji kimran

Bailout 'Profit' Is Taxpayers Loss

In the news business, it seems as if headline writers, such as the one that wrote the NYT's headline “As big banks repay bailout, U.S. sees profit”, are less interested in specificity and accuracy than getting people to read the story. A more accurate headline would have substituted the word TARP for bailout.

I have seen the same phenomena on Seeking Alpha. A writer's article can become quickly assailed because of a poorly written headline. Rolfe's article above correctly takes headline writers to task.

Number of U.S. Homes With Negative Equity Is Stunning

I assume that the chart is from

www.nytimes.com/2008/1...

Keep in mind the percentage is calculated as: number of homes with mortgages with negative equity/number of homeowners with mortgages.

For example there are approx. 11 million people in Ohio. The number of households in Ohio is 4.4 million, the homeownership rate is 69.1%. Those the number of homes in Ohio is approx. 3.2 million.. This is from

quickfacts.census.gov/...

The chart for Ohio says 419,000 homes with negative equity, also given is the 22% with negative equity. Using all homeowners the percent of negative equity is 420,000/3,200,000 = 13.125%, which makes sense since a lot of homeowners (between one third and one half) have no mortgage.