Mind Over Market

They call themselves "orphan grandparents" -- elderly people whose grown children have left for jobs in other cities, putting stresses on China's traditional three generation households. Here, a group of elderly women meet for a game of mahjong at the Xintu Center for Health Promotions in Shanghai.  Photo:  Mike Hricik/Penn State University/MCT By Mike Hricik McClatchy Tribune Newspapers July 24, 2013 SHANGHAI — Yan Meiyue, 90, said her 72-year-old daughter rarely visits. She doesn't even come home at the annual Spring Festival when families traditionally get together. Yan has been a widow since her husband died nearly 10 years ago. She now spends every weekday at a modest community center near her home. There she plays the Chinese board game mahjong and eats meals prepared by a volunteer staff. “The volunteers keep us company,” Yan said with a smile. She is one of a rapidly growing number of “orphan grandparents” who say they feel abandoned by their younge...

Readers who want to understand the causal link between mortgages and the financial crisis will find it revealed in Black Box . LaMalfa on Books Black Box Casino: How Wall Street's Risky Shadow Banking Crashed Global Finance By Robert Stowe England Praeger, 2011 Mortgage Banking April 2012, page 25 There's been no shortgage of new books the past several years on the topic of financial crisis caustion. However, until now all have failed to connect the dots from the housing boom that began in the mid-1990s to the crash of 2008. Robert Stowe England, a senior writer for Mortgage Banking magazine, connects more dots than most in his new book, Black Box Casino: How Wall Street's Risky Shadow Banking Crashed Global Finance. Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner's Reckless Endangerment (2011) took readers deeper into the central role that Fannie Mae played in the financial crash than did Michael Lewis ( The Big Short ), Bethany McClean and Joe Nocera ( ...