优马思每周慢速商务英语新闻 2007-03-20次优级贷款阴云笼罩美国市场

Subprime loans are high-interest loans made to borrowers with bad credit ratings. Now that the US housing market bubble has burst, more of these borrowers are defaulting on their mortgages, and this is causing big problems for subprime lenders and perhaps, eventually, for the US economy. New Century Financial Corporation, the largest independent subprime lender in the US, is nearly bankrupt; their stock price has gone down by almost 99%, their lenders have cut off their money, and the New York Stock Exchange wants to take them off of the exchange. Nearly 20 subprime lenders have gone out of business recently, and General Motors has had to invest a billion additional dollars in GMAC, its former financial division, because of their reliance on subprime loans.