What We're Hearing

Guess who the largest unsecured creditor of Accredited Home Lenders is? Answer: HSBC Holdings, the London-based bank which is owed $90 million by the once high flying subprime lender. This is the same HSBC that six years ago ponied up $14 billion to purchase (then) subprime giant Household Finance of Prospects Heights, Ill. Today the old Household franchise (which included Beneficial Finance) has been liquidated or is in the process there of. William Aldinger, the former head of Household cleaned up on the sale to HSBC. Ah, those were the days: build up a business and find a foreign buyer (sucker) to sell it to. Meanwhile this just in (according to The Chicago Tribune): A civil judgment against Mr. Aldinger for making misleading public statements when he was chairman and CEO of Household raises thorny ethical and legal issues for the corporate boards he sits on, governance experts said Monday. The Trib reports: "On Thursday, a federal jury in Chicago found that Aldinger helped deceive Household shareholders by acting recklessly with respect to numerous public statements the company made between 2001 and 2002 about its lending practices"…