Here's a snapshot of the latest from the US mortgage market. Let's hope this is one American export we don't get...
"A week is a long time in politics", Harold Wilson's famous comment, could equally apply to the stock market of the last few days.
When, seven business days ago, I described the developing horrors in the US housing market and the potential fallout effects on the UK, the FTSE index stood just below 6,700.
Today it is struggling to stay above 6,200. Investors have panicked and now believe rising US mortgage defaults will hit the financial system hard enough to pole-axe the share-buyout boom.
So let's get to the root of the problem and see what's been happening on the US domestic property scene.
The world had been aware there were some problems in the American 'sub-prime' mortgage market, where borrowers with flawed credit histories could take out higher-cost mortgages from lenders equally happy to lend them the money.
But two developments have just freaked both debt and share markets.
Firstly, US sub-prime problems are getting much worse. Secondly, the disease is spreading.
America's biggest mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial, has just revealed that sub-prime 'delinquencies' worsened sharply in the last quarter, with payments being late on as many as 23.7% of sub-prime mortgages, up from 15.3% for the same period in 2006.
But here's the really scary bit. Countrywide also said that a growing number of its 'prime' customers -- once considered to be good credit risks -- were having trouble meeting their mortgage repayments.
The lender reported that payments on 3.4% of prime first mortgages were at least 30 days late at the end of the second quarter, up from 2.1% a year earlier. Missed payments by prime second mortgage borrowers were considerably worse, with a default rate of 4.6% compared with 1.8% a year earlier.
Countrywide's proud claim of approving 80% of home loan applications might in time prove a bit over generous. In the last quarter, around $400m of supposedly good quality home loans have been written down.
The national sales picture looks equally grim.
According to the US Commerce Department last Thursday, demand for American houses continues to slump. Sales of new single-family homes fell 6.6% last month, equivalent to a staggering 22% collapse over the last year and fully 40% below the housing market peak in mid-2005.
America's National Association of Home Builders' Housing Market Index has just fallen to its lowest level since the recession times of January 2001, with overall sales of both new and existing homes dropping sharply in June by as much as 6% year-on-year.
"A significant increase in mortgage interest rates and tightening of sub-prime mortgage lending standards clearly weighed on home buying in June," said NAHB Chief Economist David Seiders. "Home builders continue to trim prices and offer large non-price sales incentives, but many prospective home buyers obviously are reluctant to sign on the bottom line. We still expect to see signs of stabilization later this year, although downside risks appear to be mounting."
For the future, Countrywide has slashed its 2007 full-year forecast for the second time, blaming an "increasingly challenging" housing market. The chief executive said that before the nation's domestic housing market could begin to recover, the supply of unsold homes needed to start decreasing and the slide in house prices had to stop, a process he predicted would take another 18 months.
Over here, sub-prime mortgages account for less than 5% of the total market compared to 20% in the US, but still amounted to almost £25bn at the end of 2006. Shares have been suffering on both sides of the Atlantic but for now the UK housing market still appears stable even if prices are now cooling.
Rising negative equity is now reality for many Americans. Let's hope the Special Relationship doesn't include importing this particular American-ism.
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