The French word for “dead” is “mort,” and it is no surprise that our English word “mortgage” also has the connotations of death built into it. This is the field where we conspiracy theorists belong, not contesting biochemistry and things we failed at high school science. To my mind it does not matter what the causes of the present so-called pandemic pandemonium are, bioweapon, natural evolution of nasty bugs, 5 G or whatever. I am agnostic about the biology and causation. But not so the economic effects, which are real. For the US, a mortgage crisis is underway, and this alone could ring in another GFC, not KFC, apart from every other economic mystery and misery:
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/here-comes-next-crisis-30-all-mortgages-will-default-biggest-wave-delinquencies-history
“Unlike in the 2008 financial crisis when a glut of subprime debt, layered with trillions in CDOs and CDO squareds, sent home prices to stratospheric levels before everything crashed scarring an entire generation of homebuyers, this time the housing sector is facing a far more conventional problem: the sudden and unpredictable inability of mortgage borrowers to make their scheduled monthly payments as the entire economy grinds to a halt due to the coronavirus pandemic. And unfortunately this time the crisis will be far worse, because as Bloomberg reports mortgage lenders are preparing for the biggest wave of delinquencies in history. And unless the plan to buy time works - and as we reported earlier there is a distinct possibility the Treasury's plan to provide much needed liquidity to America's small businesses may be on the verge of collapse - an even worse crisis may be coming: mass foreclosures and mortgage market mayhem. Borrowers who lost income from the coronavirus, which is already a skyrocketing number as the 10 million new jobless claims in the past two weeks attests, can ask to skip payments for as many as 180 days at a time on federally backed mortgages, and avoid penalties and a hit to their credit scores. But as Bloomberg notes, it’s not a payment holiday and eventually homeowners they’ll have to make it all up. According to estimates by Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, as many as 30% of Americans with home loans – about 15 million households – could stop paying if the U.S. economy remains closed through the summer or beyond.