It’s a podcast by This American Life first broadcast in May, 2010, in which National Public Radio journalists buy a mortgage backed security and track down the homeowners in the toxic asset.
The reason I love this is because it delves beyond writing about mortgage backed securities and tells the story of how they have affected people, starting with an 80-year-old man that undergoes a strategic default.
The bond, which they name Toxi, includes cases of foreclosure, crime, loan modification, and the unintended consequences of bailing out both huge corporations and individual homeowners… And they even speak to an English tax-payer in a Westminster pub.
Listen here, read the transcript here.
David Kestenbaum, radio correspondent for National Public Radio, who co-presents the podcast:
What’s so awkward about this is this is probably the first time someone who invested in a toxic asset, who actually owned a homeowner’s mortgage as part of one of these massive bonds, actually tried to get in touch with the homeowners. And think about what that means. The genius of these mortgage backed securities was that they connected people with money to people who wanted to borrow. This happen to the tune of $3 trillion. Hundreds of thousands of investors, millions of home buyers, but the two sides never met. Until now.
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