Yes and no to both questions. The interest rates themselves aren't bad. What's bad is that this type of loan is even on the table, because it has all the bells and whistles of the types of loans that have grossly inflated our housing market in the first place over the past almost-decade (and then some). So my concern wouldn't so much be that it can subprime people (as I said, I don't think that's done in Denmark right now). It's that it can prop up/further inflate/create a new housing bubble. And we really have had enough of that lately.

And what I particularly don't like is the fact that it was kept... well, not exactly secret, but sufficiently under wraps that it came as a surprise to several watchdog groups. That raises a lot of little red flags in my mind.

As to the second, I don't know whether we're officially in recession yet (I don't think so; the housing market didn't start going sour until spring, and AFAIK the bottom hasn't gone out of it yet, so we probably haven't had half a year of sustained downturn - yet), but we've already had two (albeit minor) banks go belly-up from a shrinking housing market and the newsies are speaking doom and gloom about the economy.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.