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Repiglican Roast

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Name: TheFuriousGourmet

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Friday, August 25, 2006

Ford

Management intends to clear out its bloated inventories of 2006 model-year cars and trucks by targeting buyers with lousy credit histories. Ford intends to offer everyone, including so-called "subprime" borrowers, 0% financing for up to six years.

For those of you keeping score, automakers Ford and GM (NYSE: GM) first introduced the concept of large-scale 0% financing in response to flagging sales trends in the wake of the twin disasters of the 2000 bubble burst and Sept. 11.
[...]
In a May column from The Wall Street Journal, analysts from Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC), First American (NYSE: FAF), Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH), and Credit Suisse (NYSE: CSR) were unanimous in blaming the "relaxed" lending standards and "aggressive" extending of loans to subprime buyers for the rise in residential mortgage delinquencies to 4.7% in Q4 2005. (That may not sound like much, but it's a significant rise from 4.38% in Q4 2004; what's more, the Bear Stearns analyst noted that certain categories of high-risk loans were showing year-over-year increases in delinquency of as much as 208%.)
[...]

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