Callahan's heads up on BBC story about Cleveland

BBC NEWS Business Foreclosure wave sweeps America --Bill Callahan linked to this fairly comprehensive story by the BBC about Cleveland's preeminence in the foreclosure arena. There's a good quote from Jim Rokakis and a really neat map with four different data perspectives.

The one thing I haven't seen yet is talk of why lenders are negotiating more with foreclosed borrowers on either coast than they are the people of Cleveland and Pittsburgh. One of our friends on the West Coast tells us that the people who oversee the foreclosed-mortgage portfolios, the blocks of foreclosed housing, want to hang onto the properties of the Midwest, because they have fallen--relatively--less than the properties on the coasts and have therefore retained a greater percentage of their original, or book, value. Our properties in Cleveland bolster the sick portfolios of the lenders, who want our properties for themselves, to make their handiwork look not as serious as it really is, outside the Midwest.

These are not nice people. They deserve few breaks and little compassion.