The Herald Tribune - "The no-risk models that weren't" (8-12-07)

"For something that everybody assured us was 'contained,' the subprime mortgage mess certainly has spread. Last week, the hemorrhaging credit markets bled right into the stock market. The major indexes are still up for the year, thankfully, but the Dow Jones industrial average, which hit 14,000 just three weeks ago, has lost 5.4 percent of its value since then. And the Standard & Poor's 500 is down 6.4 percent from its July peak."

The Herald Tribune - "How the gears jammed in the housing machine" (8-12-07)

"When an investment banker set out in July to buy a $1.5 million home on Long Island, his mortgage broker quoted an interest rate of 8 percent. Three days later, when the buyer said he would take the loan, the mortgage banker had bad news: the new rate was 13 percent. 'I have been in the business 20 years, and I have never seen' such a big swing in interest rates, said the broker, Bob Moulton, president of the Americana Mortgage Group in Manhasset, New York. 'There is a lot of fear in the markets. When there is fear, people have a tendency to overreact.'"