I didn't notice this earlier...

This is substantial. Mortgage insurance is a default insurance that provides security to banks issuing mortgages with less than 20% down-payments, which is to say, most mortgage loans made over the last several years. Mortgage insurance companies are ratcheting up their requirements, and simply won't issue insurance in large categories of loans in a variety of areas - and by "areas" I mean areas like "California," and other well-known states.

Click here for a PDF listing the areas now categorised as "restricted markets" by MGIC, one of the largest mortgage-insurance companies. Click here for the new guidelines (also a PDF). Note all categories of lending are tightened; restricted areas are just tightened most severely.

In this article, you can see MGIC is stating that these standards changes "will negatively impact MGIC's volume of new insurance written," which I suspect is quite an understatement. In the listed areas, for those who put down less than 20% - which is everyone who really needs this - some very large percentage not already barred from refinancing through lending-standards tightening will be barred through this route. This also reduces the size of the potential buying pool for properties rather significantly - the 2006 average California credit score, for example, would now mandate 10% down minimum to buy any property at all, and the minimum downpayment moves up to 5% for any credit score, no matter how good. The median house price in California (from Zillow, just now, so add salt) is $517,220, so the average-2006-credit-score buyer would have to have just under $52,000 down payment. A bit better than average cuts that in half, of course.

In 2007, average California credit scores moved initially higher - and average was just above the new requirement for 9.99%-5% down - but I have to wonder how well that's held up, given the way things have augured in with rotating credit and current mortgage numbers, and such.

So the big questions are: what percentage of current mortgagees will be prevented from refinancing? And what percentage of the potential (former) market does this freeze out?

Oh, and as a reward for anyone who wades their way through these dismal discussions, please have these two minutes of awesome, courtesy urbaniak.

I've been asked about my economics reading list...

I've been asked a couple of times recently about my economics/business news reading list. I kind of think I've already posted this somewhere here before, but I don't remember where, so here's it is. I do not read all of this every day, I assure you - this is pretty much the set of my financial links.

Articles and analysis:
RGE Monitor: http://www.rgemonitor.com/
     Daily. Particularly Dr. Roubini's and Brad Setzer's column.
     Particularly the comment sections and links from there to articles.
Minyanville: http://minyanville.com/
     Most days. Not everything, of course, but.
Marketwatch: http://www.marketwatch.com/
     Daily. Decent headlines source.
Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter: http://ml-implode.com/
     Not really so interesting anymore.
Bank Implode-O-Meter: http://bankimplode.com/
     Not really so interesting yet.
Prudent Bear: http://prudentbear.com/
     Gold bugs, but interesting article links
Market Ticker: http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
     Lately, often. Technicals-trader wonkery; forum occasionally interesting
     for news links, but also has a bunch of zomg crazy, so be warned.

Raw data sources:
Misc: http://www.marketwatch.com/
Misc: http://money.cnn.com/markets/IRC/
Commodities futures: http://futures.tradingcharts.com/menu.html
ABX data: http://www.markit.com/information/products/abx/history_graphs.html
CMBX data: http://www.markit.com/information/products/cmbx/history_graphs.html
Dollar index: http://quotes.ino.com/chart/?s=NYBOT_DX&v=s&w=1&t=l&a=2
Japan markets: http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/CF/FR/MKJ/
Overnight stock futures: http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/futures.html
Hong Kong markets: http://www.hkex.com.hk/index.htm
Fed slosh report: http://www.gmtfo.com/RepoReader/OMOps.aspx
Fed funds: http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/omo/dmm/fedfundsdata.cfm
M3 Data (1): http://www.shadowstats.com/cgi-bin/sgs/data
     Take with salt.
M3 Data (2): http://www.nowandfutures.com/key_stats.html
     Take with salt.
Shadow Statistics: http://www.shadowstats.com/cgi-bin/sgs?
     Take with salt.
More commodities futures: http://quotes.ino.com/exchanges/futboard/