Financial Crisis
Five years ago, I thought the world as I knew it was ending
September 21, 2013
A look back at Sept. 29, 2008. It’s been five years since that ugly September week. And it really wasn’t about investment banks and derivatives and mortgage portfolios. It was about people enduring agonizing stress as lives changed.
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The final days of the nation’s 7th-largest bank, National City, outlined in court documents
Everyone knows how the story ends: with National City’s sale to Midwest rival PNC Financial Services Group. What has never been told publicly is what really happened in the bank’s final agonizing weeks.
Some 3,000 pages of court documents, part of shareholders’ lawsuits over the sale, show that National City executives were terrified the bank could actually run out of money and fail.
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New mortgage rules may make banks less willing to lend: Changes could hit at bad time for housing
The industry says it’s facing a slew of new regulations, and banks say some will force them to stop approving as many home loans.
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Under new rules for ‘qualified mortgage,’ some borrowers won’t get approved
If new federal mortgage rules announced Thursday had existed 15 years ago, Greater Cleveland’s housing market wouldn’t have been obliterated by sleazy lending. Likewise, the nation’s economy wouldn’t have collapsed five years ago under the weight of millions of dollars in mortgages that shouldn’t have ever been approved.
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The little banks that could: Smart lending decisions helped keep them from falling off track like larger counterparts
If you wanted to count the number of bad mortgage loans at Valley Savings Bank in Cuyahoga Falls, you could do it on one hand. In a year when most banks locally and nationally have had big problems with mortgages, a handful of area banks like Valley Savings have escaped significant losses.
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