Dear Michael,
the best illustration of companies shifting good investments into
their own accounts and bad ones to those of their customers is the
infamous Prudential Insurance case c. 1980. the Senate committees
hearings on the repeal of Glass-Steagall leading up to 1999 were rife
with examples of why the barriers between trust banking and commercial
banking should be maintained to prevent this kind of trading.
The situation was done by Ghanian coffee traders daily. They would
buy both "up" and "down" gambles. At the end of the day they would assign
the winners to their personal accounts, the losers to the government accounts.
Regarding floating-rate mortgages, there are a number of real
estate advisory firms such as the National Association of Realtors who
track this. The Fed should be able to tell you where to get national
statistics. FNMA and GNMA have statistics on their particular profiles in
this respect.
Michael Hudson
Michael