NOW REPORTING FROM BALTIMORE. An eclectic, iconoclastic, independent, private, non-commercial blog begun in 2010 in support of the federal Meaningful Use REC initiative, and Health IT and Heathcare improvement more broadly. Moving now toward important broader STEM and societal/ethics topics. Formerly known as "The REC Blog." Best viewed with Safari, FireFox, or Chrome.
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I'd not intended to do any blogging tonight. They finally fixed our furnace after 33 days of freezing our butts off. We're tired. But than I saw the PBS piece. What might be nefariously afoot in TrumplGriftLand?
Feasible answers don't require all that much rationally speculative imagination.
Red my above-linked Tranche Warfare piece. Good place to start. More ASAP...
UPDATE
My wife and i were renters from 1974 to 1992 (Seaatle, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Knoxville TN). After Cheryl was promoted by her company and transferred from Tennessee to Las Vegas in 1992 (QA Mgr, Nevada Test Site DOE nuke cleanup project), we bought our first home, a new one we watched being built across the summer out near Summerlin. 30 yr. fixed rate conventional mortgage. Eleven years later (2003), we sold and moved across town. A great property, on the near- south side, close to the Strip, 10 minutes from McCarran Airport. We did a fixed rate 15 yr note.
Vegas Valley residential was heating up rapidly. Our 2nd house doubled in comps value within 3 yrs.
Then things started going seriously south. Subprime had metastasized to the housing market, and by 2008 the financial crisis was in Code Red. Had we not done a 15 yr, we'd have been underwater when it came time to leave Vegas in 2013 and relocate to the SF Bay Area. We'd never messed with any 2nd mortgage / "HELOC" paper, and had very little consumer debt. We both maxed out our 401k contributions every year
We were lucky. Our second Vegas house sold in one week post-listing—for a good bit more than our Ask. We banked a good bit of dough.
After 6 yrs in the Bay Area (again renters), we moved to Baltimore in 2019 to be close to our Son. Last Kid Standing. We'd sat on our Vegas realty profits, so we put 50% down on our Baltimore house and, again, a 15 yr fixed note (@ 4%). We've toyed recently with doing a HELOC for some big-ticket house improvement work, avoiding too large (and taxable) IRA distribution at a time when the IRA remains very profitable. Our home equity is growing rapidly. Borrow against some of it?
After seeing this PBS video segment, though...
NAHHH...
This stuff may well be a material adverse component of the next financial crash ("AI Bubble?” “Crypto Custerfluck?”). See some of my prior Andrew Ross Sorkin posts.
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So, Trump wants to re-privatize Fanny Mae & Freddie Mac, wants to get the Treasury Dept into crypto, has recently been touting 50 yr residential mortgages and 15 yr car loans. What could possibly go wrong?
"BAD PAPER"
The "Zombie mortgage" is an insidious form of "Bad Paper." From "Tranche Warfare," which recounts my tenure in subprime credit risk management:
"Bad Paper" companies traffick in debt that has been deemed uncollectible by its current owners and is written off their balance sheets -- hence "charged off." You may default on a loan, but down in the fine print is the staple loan contract provision that the account still represents an "asset" which can be sold to a "holder in due course" to whom you are subsequently legally accountable. Bad paper typically trades at between a fraction of a cent to several cents on the nominal dollar, depending on the buyers' assessed "quality" of its eventual collectibility.
Beyond loan defaults going to home mortgages and HELOCS (inclusive of the "Undead" ones), cars, boats, etc., Bad Paper goes all the way up. to wit, when the huge Washington Mutual bank (WaMu) went under, it was sold off for 60 Basis Points (6 tenths of a cent on the dollar). A veritable forest of Bad Paper.
One hopes that Bezos's summarily RIF'd jpurnalists and staffers will get to carry on their important work elsewhere forthwith. We certainly need them.
And, yeah, I know that WaPo has not yet closed its doors.
I went back decades as a reader and subscriber. I cancelled after Bezos began overtly interfering with editorial decisions to curry favor with Donald Trump.
On Friday January 2nd, 2026 we awoke to a cold house in Baltimore. Living room temperature was 54F. The Carrier HVAC system (fairly new, and still under warranty) had failed during the night.
One
month later, it remains in disrepair. Carrier shruggingly advises our
local HVAC install vendor A.J. Michaels that the requisite replacement
parts are on "90+ days' backorder."
We moved to Baltimore in April 2019 from the San Francisco area to be close to our son. In March 2020 we replaced the HVAC through a Baltimore/BGE initiative incentivizing homeowners to upgrade to more energy-efficient heating & cooling systems. Carrier was one of the participating HVAC suppliers.
Carrier is a $22B/yr corporation HQ'd in W. Palm Beach, FL. They remain unresponsive.
In the wake of this failure (the 2nd for this unit), we've now experienced a month of getting by with (episodically fuse-blowing) AC space heaters throughout this 91-yr old house, through what has been a near- all-time record period of sub-freezing cold (3rd longest on record), strong winds, and 7-8" of snow. A week after the major snowstorm blew through, we have yet to see any snowmelt. We reportedly face yet another week of sub-freezing days and nights.
Moreover, on January 6th, we commenced our latest episode of Pop & Meee-mo's at-home "GreyCare" service for our newborn Grandson Arlo so his Momma could return to work. Don't need this meat locker.
Try to imagine my anxieties, concerns, frustrations, and anger. I'm fixin' to turn 80 a week from today. I wrassle with Parkinson's, and could certainly do without this CusterFluck.
I've not whined about any of this online prior to just now. There're tons of people in our nation and around the planet in far more dire circumstances.
We are unreservedly—arguably undeservingly—blessed to have this man with us at this time in history.
My wife and I attended his Baltimore Speakers Series talk a week and a half ago. It was riveting, inspiring. Listen closely to every second of the 51:30 of this Meet The Press interview with Kristen Welker.
*NOTE, there's an embedded transcript. I'm trying to extract it for you. (Got it, here.)
