The week ends on yet another a low note for Novastar (NFI). The subprime mortgage company fired 85 percent of its remaining staff and had its securities delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. The setbacks are hardly a shock, given that Novastar spent 2007 slashing jobs as its business - making high-cost loans to people with poor credit histories - collapsed under the weight of rising defaults. At Friday’s closing price of $2.92 a share, Novastar has lost 95 percent of its value since a year ago. The stock has also lost almost two-thirds of its value since the day in mid-October when the NYSE began delisting procedures. Novastar has turned into such a debacle that even the CEO got thrown out last month, though the company’s press release politely said he was leaving. Now almost everyone else who was at Novastar is out on the streets, too - though chances are good that most people didn’t get a nice severance payment the way ex-chief Scott Hartman did.

Michelle Leder makes a good point at footnoted.org about the disclosure disconnect at mortgage lender Novastar (NFI). The company issued a press release last week announcing that CEO Scott Hartman and finance chief Gregory Metz “will leave the company.” But two days later, in its SEC filing on the subject, Novastar said the two had been “terminated.”

The shift prompts Leder to wonder, “Why would NovaStar not just state the facts the first time around? I mean it’s not as if anyone would be surprised that a company might want to fire the folks who were running the show when the stock dropped through the floor.”

And indeed, disclosure shortfalls are far from the biggest problem at Novastar. The company’s business has collapsed along with the implosion of the subprime mortgage market. Novastar recently posted a third-quarter loss of $64.05 a share, which helps to explain why it has seen its shares drop to $3 and change recently from a reverse split-adjusted $107 apiece at this time last year.

As for the difference between leaving and being terminated, no one answered the phone Friday at Novastar. But note the last line of boilerplate in recent Novastar press releases: “This press release speaks only as of its date and we expressly disclaim any duty to update the information herein.” It seems like that’s not the only duty Novastar’s flacks are disclaiming.