Oct 11, 2008

Pareto's sub-prime mortgage mess

I just saw a report on JP Morgan's residential loan portfolio that stated about 80% of the 3Q08 losses were from California and Florida, despite the fact that loans from those states only make up about 37% of the portfolio in question. This is primarily due to 2006 and 2007 vintage loans. It's not quite at the 80/20 ratio that the Pareto principle would suggest, but it does suggest that the law of the vital few is at work in the current mortgage mess.

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