Greenspan's Body Count: Manuel Lopez, Christina Garcia, Christian Garcia

Greenspan’s Body Count is usually the story of someone driven to murder and/or suicide by despair resulting from the effects of Greenspan’s easy money policies.

Today’s story is a little different. This family of three died by fire, living in squalor in an abandoned foreclosure in the wreckage of Greenspan’s bubble.

Among [subprime lender Accredited Home Lenders' loans] was a balloon mortgage for $384,000 in November 2005 to one Domingo Cedano, who used the money to buy a three-family building at 2321 Prospect Avenue in the Bronx. The mortgage carried an interest rate of 7 3/8 and monthly payments of $2,491. Mr. Cedano put none of his own money into the purchase.

By this week, Mr. Cedano had long since stopped making payments. The property was in foreclosure. Accredited Home Lenders itself had gone bankrupt.

On Monday morning, when a fire in the building killed three people who lived on the top floor, it was a warren of rooms nested inside rooms. As the stairway roared with flames, illegally built walls blocked access to the fire escape for Manuel Lopez and Christina Garcia and their 12-year-old son, Christian Garcia.

Where Greenspan is going, he’ll get to know how Manuel, Christina, and Christian felt in those last terrifying moments.

Greenspan’s Body Count stands at 162.

Read more at W.C. Varones