Morning Mortgage Meltdown: "Tip of the Iceberg"

Is alternative-A the new subprime? Prime the vocab centers of your brains for the riskiest home loan after subprimes, "alt-A," because industry watchers are getting a tingle in their Spidey Sense that tells them the alt-A's are about to come crashing down too— and when they do, the fallout's gonna be way worse than the subprime meltdown. In April, the percentage of alt-A loans that were behind payment hit 12 percent, four times the rate of the year before — and there are way more alt-A loans out there than there were subprimes. Says one Chicken Little analyst: "Subprime was the tip of the iceberg." Run. [NY Times]