Oh no! The mortgage market is almost as troubled as way back in ... 2002

There were a lot of headlines today about the bad news in the Mortgage Bankers Association's quarterly delinquency survey. Fair enough--mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures are up, and the percentage of loans entering the foreclosure process in the fourth quarter of 2006 (0.54%) was the highest on record.

But still, the overall percentage of mortgages that were delinquent in the fourth quarter was 4.95%. It was 4.97% in the second quarter of 2003, and above 5% for most of 2002. And 1.19% of mortgages were in foreclosure, compared with 1.51% in the first quarter of 2002. Even in the subprime market, delinquencies (13.33%) and foreclosures (4.53%) are below their 2002 levels.

Now it could be we're just getting started here, and those data are more than two months old. But Countrywide Financial, one of the biggest mortgage lenders, reported yesterday that its delinquencies were, at 4.71% in February, unchanged from January and down from December.