Doris J. Dungey | Influential blogger, 47

Doris J. Dungey, 47, an influential blogger who under the pseudonym Tanta wrote about the failing U.S. mortgage industry, died of ovarian cancer Sunday at Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus. She previously lived in Upper Marlboro, Md.

Ms. Dungey wrote for Calculated Risk, a finance and economics blog that became a favorite of skeptics of the overheated housing loan business largely because of her knowledge and wit.

Among her fans was Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate, New York Times columnist and Princeton University economist, who quoted her "muddled metaphor index" in his blog.

Analysts at the Federal Reserve also footnoted one of her posts in the Fed paper "Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit."

The Wall Street Journal called her work "one of the smartest and most influential blogs on the mortgage meltdown and resulting financial crisis," and more than 1,000 of her readers indicated that her literary allusions and clear prose illuminated some of the most arcane corners of the industry.

Ms. Dungey worked for Mortgage Dynamics of Falls Church, Va., on its securitization due diligence team, visiting loan originators and investors and reviewing thousands of mortgage files in the late 1990s.

She worked for E-Trade Capital Markets in Arlington County, Va., from 2003 to 2005.

After her cancer was diagnosed in 2006, she worked from home for Mortgage Dynamics, doing contract review and technical writing.

Ms. Dungey, under the childhood nickname Tanta, began commenting two years ago on the Calculated Risk blog, taking issue with some of the posts written by owner Bill McBride. Her witty and knowledgeable comments led McBride to offer her the right to post under a pseudonym.

- Washington Post