by Calculated Risk on 3/05/2009 07:33:00 PM

Another busy day. And I'm still struggling with the comments (I'm receiving many complaints). First the news, and then a chat room.

The MBA released their quarterly delinquency survey today. They reported that the delinquency rate was at a record 7.88 percent of all loans outstanding as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2008. "The percentage of loans in the foreclosure process at the end of the fourth quarter was 3.30 percent ... The combined percent of loans in foreclosure and at least one payment past due was 11.18 percent." Ouch.

American CoreLogic released their most recent report on households with negative equity. They reported 8.3 million mortgage holders are underwater, and using their data - and the scenarios from the Treasury department - I estimated the number of households with negative equity could rise to 17 to 23 million by the end of 2010. Another Ouch!

Paul Kiel at ProPublica has compiled a list of the Stress Test "19".

And the weekly initial unemployment claims showed a small decrease, but the 4-week average continued to increase.

Comment System

The comment system has problems. I'm receiving numerous complaints of lost comments, comments being reordered, slow loading and no comments appearing. I'm talking with JS-Kit about the problem. Unfortunately I need their help to switch back to Haloscan. For now, I've changed back to the inline version of JS-Kit (no pop-up). I apologize for the inconvenience, and I'm working to resolve the problem.

Meanwhile here is a chat room that might be fun to try for discussion.

NOTE: I've removed the chatroom for now. I think we overwhelmed them!