(Update: to be fair, Bank of America did take a hit this past quarter)
In order to create incentive and get consumers’ as well as investors’ confidence back up to levels before the financial crisis started, it seems the media and their overlords, whoever they may be (I personally think Goldman, JPMorgan, BofA, et al. :] ), are intent on continuing to mask the reality of the actual crisis in the housing market and the broader market that is getting worse and apparently far from over, where there is an increasing amount of pain and hurt; something those very banks helped create and are profiting from now.
Case in point: foreclosures for the third quarter versus foreclosure filings year over year.
“The number of households caught up in the foreclosure crisis rose more than 5 percent from summer to fall as a federal effort to assist struggling borrowers was overwhelmed by a flood of defaults among people who lost their jobs.”
Now while the above is certainly a true number and an accurate reading of the number of actual foreclosures for the third quarter, the reality going on behind the scenes can be seen in this article, which has come out on the same day as the last article:
“U.S. foreclosure filings climbed to a record in the third quarter as lenders seized more properties from delinquent borrowers, according to RealtyTrac Inc.
A total of 937,840 homes received a default or auction notice or were repossessed by banks, a 23 percent increase from a year earlier, the Irvine, California-based seller of default data said today in a report. One out of every 136 U.S. households received a filing, the highest quarterly rate in records dating to January 2005.”