There are some assumptions underlying the proposed interpretation of data here. If 10% of loans result in a repo, it does not follow that 90% of borrowers don't lose their car, if borrowers have multiple loans. As for the alternative transport to work issue, getting a ride with friends and buying a new car may be ambiguous responses, especially allowing for the optimism bias. Those categories may represent borrowers with at least some difficulties posed by losing their car. In other words, one could say 66% of borrowers report not working or having reliable alternative transportation. Finally I would want to inquire a bit about the Oregon and Virginia data to see if some legal environment or reporting issue skews them from the other states.

Thanks for the comments. I did mean loss mitigation in the literal sense. Foreclosure delays are in many instances allowing less costly foreclosure alternatives to go forward. The federal banking agencies found last year that mortgage servicers systematically engaged in unsound practices including foreclosing on loans with approved modifications in place and failing to communicate with borrowers effectively about loss mitigation. Treasury suspended HAMP payments to Chase and BoA last year because they were seriously underperforming their peers in making NPV positive modifications. etc. There is ample evidence of "irrational", i.e. wasteful, conduct by mortgage servicers, largely due to agency problems. As for the comment about costs being passed on to consumers, that begs the question whether foreclosure delays impose net costs or benefits due to increased loss mitigation.

Congratulations indeed! I must say, though, that this consumer advisory board seems rather heavily weighted towards financial services providers and light on consumer advocates.

LSTB, I'm fully aware of the FCRA/fair value debate. Clearly administrative costs have to be added into FCRA profit/subsidy numbers, and I mention that. I have a problem with the whole market risk concept, and the related liquidity premium concept, as a measure of cost for a federal government loan program. The argument is essentially that Treasury should calculate its lending costs as if it were a private lender. If the cash flow projections for student loan repayments already reflect reasonable default and recovery assumptions, the higher market price for student loans reflects only things the Treasury doesn't need to pay for: the higher cost and liquidity risk of funding student loans via securitization, and the higher cost of capital in the private market. Treasury has lower funding costs and basically no liquidity risk, and those savings are currently going to the General Fund, not to student loan borrowers.

Nathalie, the full codebook for the survey is here: http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/scf/files/codebk2009p.txt There is only one question on payday as far as I can tell (did you get a payday loan in the past year.) The question was asked in both 2007 and 2009, for whatever that's worth.

Nice report! To clarify, I think I said I know of no contested judicial foreclosure case where a lender proved standing based on the Note by resorting to Article 9 or common law, i.e. without relying on possession of the endorsed note or the lost-note alternative under Article 3. If there are any such cases, let me know. There are also a few states where the note does not seem to be relevant, and standing is based only on the mortgage transfer.