4.12.2008

Greenspan's Body Count: the Eleven

I know, I know. It's been rough going a week and a half without a Body Count update. I was jonesing as bad as you were. Fortunately, this morning's news brings us our fix. Today's victims: Maurice and Natasha Pereira of Lake County, Florida:
Deputies found a retired couple shot dead in their rented home Friday, victims of an apparent murder-suicide, a Lake County Sheriff's Office spokesman said. [...]

The Pereiras were new to the southLake County subdivision. They filed for bankruptcy in September, records show, and Circuit Judge Mark Hill was scheduled next week to hear a mortgage company's request to sell property in Tavares that the couple had defaulted on.

Court records show two other lending companies sued the couple last year, one accusing them of failing to keep up with monthly payments on a 2006 Cadillac De Ville and the other accusing them of defaulting on a property they had bought in Leesburg.

Congratulations, Alan Greenspan. These two kills are unquestionably credited to you.

Greenspan's Body Count now stands at eleven:

Maurice Pereira
Natasha Pereira
Mark Achilli
Raed Al-Farah
Andrew Kissel
Rufus Shaw Jr.
Lynn Flint Shaw
Mr. Pierce
Walter Buczynksi
Marci Buczynski
Jason Washington

We've mentioned before that we believe that we are vastly understating the true Body Count, as many suicides are kept quiet out of respect for the family. Even those press reports that do cover suicides often do not mention whether mortgage and foreclosure problems were troubling the deceased.

A recent local case is a perfect example of this. W.C. Varones Blog reporters are currently investigating the suicide of a prominent, high-income stockbroker and community leader who jumped off the Coronado Bridge. Was he overextended on a McMansion he bought at the peak? Did he lose millions of his clients', or his own, money on Greenspan's bubble stocks like Countrywide or New Century? Seems pretty likely, but we'd never know from press reports. In fact, the suicide was not even covered in the press. The only press coverage is an obituary that omits the cause of death. We only know about this case through personal connections. There are likely hundreds, or thousands, of these Greenspan victims across the country that go unreported.

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