The economy works in mysterious ways. This week, we highlight the unusual circumstances our economic drought has left us in, and the newly hatched plans being made to survive it.
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Including a partially-renovated condo building in Chicago, whose developers have abandoned it—though they didn’t bother to tell the 19 unit owners who still live there, paying their mortgages. And a story which tracks the FDIC during its most covert operation: Taking over an unsuspecting bank
Prologue
Is The Condo Half Empty, Or Is The Condo Half Full?
Ira goes to Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood to talk to some condo owners who are in a precarious situation—since the housing market crash, the developer who renovated and sold them their units—Haso Meseljevic—has all but disappeared. He's in foreclosure on half of their building's units. His son Samel Meseljevic and lawyer Hugh Howard aren't much help either. In the meantime, they have no one to pay for the repairs and maintenance of the building they all bought into.
In the story Ira speaks to Brian C. White, the Lakeside CDC executive director, which is a not-for-profit lobbying for affordable housing in the northernmost neighborhoods in Chicago. He also speaks with condo owner/mortgage banker Jon Miller, who has a website at chicagomortgagefinance.com. (21 minutes)
Unbreaking The Bank
NPR reporter and Planet Money contributor Chana Jaffe-Walt reports this story of what it really looks like when a bank fails and is taken over by the FDIC. She talks to the former employees and a handful of FDIC staff about the Friday night when the Bank of Clark County was interrupted and closed by 80 FDIC employees, who had every step of their secret operation down to a science. (20 minutes)
Short-circuit City
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