Another one bites

So I was looking for this article Gene gave me a couple of years back about hedge funds providing credit to sub-prime consumers, and I tracked in down in the Financial Times in August 2004, using the trusty internet. Actually, Gene found it.

And I'm reading in there about this fund that finances car purchases for losers and miscreants with no credit -- Centrix Capital Management --, and I think, well, that's two years ago, I wonder whassup with them. Turns out, after getting big and successful and financing the Denver Grand Prix and becoming one of the biggest auto financers in Phoenix, to some extent supporting the car market there, the retail arm of the thing went bankrupt a few weeks back after a regulator sat on it and some shareholders sued because the founder seemed to be playing shell games with $5 million or so.

One wonders: is it a good thing that a hedge fund was there to provide liquidity to that market? Could this excess liquidity even be an ecological ill, if it supports unsustainable sprawl? Praps.