Absolutely number one – Foreclosureblues. The writing is excellent and they are doing very well on staying on top of the situation. Read it! Here’s a quote –

The failure to uphold fiduciary duties of even a few larger institutions will put the entire banking system in doubt. What we witnessed in 2008 and early 2009 was a loss of trust, faith, confidence. It was a classic solvency crisis masquerading as a liquidity crisis – with doubt about which specific institutions had engaged in reckless behaviour putting a cloud over every bank in the entire system and causing liquidity to dry up economy-wide. When banks engage in unsafe and unsound business practices, they put the entire economy at risk in a way that you see in no other sector of the economy. This is why regulators in the US are supposed to take prompt corrective action in closing insolvent institutions and those institutions with unsafe and unsound business practices.

Rortybomb is fantastic. Read it! This guy is sharp and he keeps an eye on the rest of the internet that I can only envy.

I think a simple dose of game theory helps with these things. Given that servicers are being sued by their investors, wouldn’t they want a moratorium, want the government to step in with a heavy-hand and lend credibility? Nobody believes them, and nobody has a reason to. And I can’t tell what is scarier: that Bank of America knows it isn’t credible here, and just wants to hope it goes away, or Bank of America is simply too large, complicated and poorly functioning to figure out and/or learn whether or not they have a problem here.

How’s that returns to scale in banking working out for everyone?

Another site I recommend you check regularly with is National Foreclosure News. They keep tabs on the news across the nation on the foreclosure crisis. It gives you a good feel for how the whole thing is playing out in the media. It doesn’t take long to scan one days entry. So, it’s a good place to go for a summary picture of the foreclosure mess.

The web site, Living Lies, is very good place to go. However, it’s really for attorneys. Nevertheless for the layman there is still a lot of interesting stuff there.

$hame the Banks is another good web site. It’s definitely got some teeth. I really like it. There is a lot of material on this site. Here’s a quote.

After years of high-flying success and millions of dollars in profits, the future suddenly looks grim for the Law Offices of David J. Stern. The firm, which was the subject of a long MoJo investigation published in August, used to be one of the nation’s most powerful “foreclosure mills,” those assembly line-like operations that handle hundreds of thousands of foreclosure cases for the nation’s largest mortgage companies.

(In 2009 alone, the Stern firm handled 70,382 foreclosure cases.) But in the past few months, the corner-cutting and alleged fraud in the foreclosure business, as described in my August story, erupted into a national scandal. As a result, the Stern firm has seen its fortunes plummet, with major clients, like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Citigroup, cutting ties to Stern. Stern’s operation has also laid off hundreds of employees in recent weeks.

This is a realtor site but the guy has some independent thoughts. It’s a brand new site, so you might check it from time to time and see how it develops. It’s called Gilbertazrealtor’s Blog.

That’s my best advice at this time. As the crisis continues there will be other web sites dealing with the issue. I’ll try to get them up as quickly as I can.

James Pilant