Some context for you: I live in swimming distance to your fair border and enjoy your own foreign national/US residents buying up our devalued housing in droves.
Why is that?
Perhaps one viewing of HGTV home and garden evening tellie featuring exhorbidant home prices and living standards in Oh-Can-a-da is a hint. What country can say their gubermint is NOT benefitting the banks and corporate investors? Speak to your leadership, not down to me.
Apologies for the late reply to my post last Friday suggesting homeowners in America benefit personally from the bailouts. I have been so busy refinancing hapless homeowners and saving them $300 per month on their mortgage payments I fogot to tell that a 'strong person of honest measure' would rather die than accept this help to their families given by the godfathers as you so kindly refer to our banks. Tell corporate investors who are making wads on rigged gain from their hedge funds and treasuries to suck up and walk the other way and maybe the housing market will take your preferred permanent nosedive and bring down the banks (what a lovely thought). Not the out of power (and power bill money) homeowner. Their home is likely their only investment and they are counting on having a roof over their heads.
I could swear I heard Sharkie's old mean streak harping away at my posting last week, Ilya. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are owned (managed) by the tax payer. Of course they should be lowering our interest rates if it means staying in our homes. That's one good (imagine) benefit of the bailouts. Cheaper money for lenders to keep them afloat means more low interest rate money available to lend. While you say "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" you forget that Fannie and Freddie hold the lion's share of investor portfolios upon which many a straight laced investor counts for their daily crust.
For underwater homeowners (one in five homes in America is deemed underwater): would you prefer they walk and force the swift decline of the enitre housing industry so you can buy up the street? We are talking about people who have been just fine with the 6.00% they originally signed up for on their home mortgages being offered a break down to 4.00% and saving wads of cash every month. Cash they might reinvest or just ease their lives. What's not to like? Did they gamble and buy at the top? Maybe, but these are homes - you know - where people live at the center of their communites; not stocks you can dump when the mood strikes you. If you put yourself in 'mortgage prison' that's your own doing.
Take advantage of the offer if you can as HARP loans set to expire at the end of 2012. Stability is not such a bad thing if it means keeping more lights on in your street at night. Think about it.
I could swear I heard Sharkie's old mean streak in there, Ilya. We are talking about people who have been just fine with the 6.00% they originally signed up for getting a break down to 4.00% and saving wads of cash every month. What's not to like? Did they gamble and buy at the top? Maybe, but these are homes where people live at the center of their communites; not stocks you can dump when the mood strikes you. If you put yourself in 'mortgage prison' that's your own doing. Your GSE's are charged with helping you out. Nothing more. Take advantage of the offer if you can as there is a limited window of opportunity on HARP loans set to expire at the end of 2012. Stability is not such a bad thing if it means keeping more lights on in your street at night. Think about it.
GSE (government sponsored enterprise lenders, including loans in the portfolio of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) servicing home mortgage lenders have been merrily refinancing for a few years now for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Loan holders with great results. These Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) loans are part of the Stimulus Bill designed to help people stay in their homes despite equity losses. To date, they have been limited to 125% Loan to Value. That means for underwater loans originated before May 2009 even if your home is worth 25% less than your loan, you are likely to get a terrific refinance rate of the day. The hitch: in many areas, home values have dropped so drastically that their LTV is over 125%.
As of February 6th, 2012 the 125% LTV limit will 'go away'. Literally no Loan to Value limit for 30 year fixed rate refinance terms for home owners who have been paying their mortgages faithfully and for whom these terms would benefit.
For many, this may mean between 1 - 2% drop of interest rate. 15 year refinance loans become effective in June, 2012. How long will this last is dependent upon the GSE bond auctions holding up and 'the creek don't rise'.
Anyone with a Fannie or Freddie home loan that was funded prior to May 2009 should run not walk to their lender and prepare your application. Eligibility crucial questions: Has your income dropped since you originated your mortgage (income test)? (NO) Has there been more than one late mortgage payment in the last 12 months? (NO) Are all original borrowers still on title? (YES) Is the occupancy the same as when you closed your loan? (investment or owner occupied)(YES), etc.
..."Confidence to take on debt points to confidence in the jobs market and is a significant plus for the outlook on consumer spending."
Bill, I am doubtful of the source of this so called confidence in the jobs market pointing to willingness to take on debts. Rolls nicely off the tounge. Locally I see a lot of people forced to take on debt while waiting for help to arrive and managing with their unemployment checks or deferred home maintenance or delayed propety taxes to keep one step ahead of the grim reaper. If we have learned anything since this crisis began it's to question our need to spend.
A little (very) cultural perspective from my travels in Greece and living among Greeks in Australia (guy on my sailing team). Their cultural practices support men drinking coffee all day while women birth babies and take the olives to market by donkey. Women run things but they let men think they do. My hostess had the priest bless her stock portfolio when he came to christen the new baby on the kitchen table. I think they will be fine without the EU.
Oh I don't know about that, Grym. From where I sit, perhaps an inside corporation with serious resouces and friends - or at least begrudging respect - deserves a crack at solving economic issues from which it will - hint hint also benefit. Nothing like good old Yankee ingenuity and opportunistic entrepreneurial spirit!
Actually I posted this for the lively debate that might ensue. Given my role in the debt generation engine; any view I might offer is highly suspect! However, I am not in particular agreement with Krugman's therory and wonder how much he supposedly knows about such things - as a Wall Street editorialist. And who pays for THAT?
"Its a sad day when the 10yr and 30yr bonds are in the top ten performers for the year when those investments do nothing but indebt us and our kids further and further and produce nothing but the funds necessary for a corrupt government to malinvest into more corruption..."
Certainly indebtedness is the bain of the overly indebted. Who put our kids there? Who believed they could afford $100,000 in college loans or buy a $300,000 home on a $2,000 per month income? Who signed the promissory note they didn't even read that stated the terms of the mortgage? Denial by choice is not victimization. It is not the easy money or the banks that provide the funds that put them into debt. The choices were theirs: to be responsible and informed or not.
You could make that statment above about Big Oil, Big Insurance or Big Pharma - but it's only half true. The other half is that we bring these calamities upon ourselves.
Insurance companies responded to market demand for extending life and easing pain. If you have bought into an insurance based system to pay for your drugs or therapies - you are now funding Big Pharma. Are they pushing their expensive chemistry upon a populace in denial of other choices? Are those same companies creating unhealthy processed GMO foods that contribute to the cycle of ill health? Are we propping up depressed people with chemicals that destroy their livers - so they can consume more 'health care'?
We always have a choice. We may choose healthy diets or therapy or what the heck - dying a natural death if we are not fit for survival. To blame the institution that provides a means of extending credit or ease from pain is pointing in the wrong directon.
Only by our own choices - in this moment - we may become happier, healthier and more prosperous. Able to contribute to communities like these. And for that I am very grateful.
Lies can only be weighed for their effect in the light of truth. For without one the other cannot exist. In our dualistic concepts of right and wrong we are forever attempting to determine what exactly is THE right thing. Dropping bombs on Japanese citizens or creating hedge funds are acts committed by those sure they doing God's work.
Frustration is one particular reaction to what is. Often, we are reacting to what we have wrought. What we really 'have' in life is this moment in which we take action. On a daily basis we have the choice to make better decisions. Based on our intellect, training, sense of morality and the desired outcome. There are no absolutes. There are no ultimate villains or perfect heroes. Humanity is frail and full of conflicts. Einstein's therory of relativity was quite the comment on action and reaction. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The goal might be to have less opposition and more equality. Less making the other guys wrong and looking into our own hearts perhaps.
Your intent determines whether an act results in karmic debt. If your father intended to do good, and truly felt that his action of murdering Japanese by bombs was the better choice for humanity, despite his own misgivings, then his action has less karmic weight than if he intended to kill those same people with anger toward them.
Are our bad choices based on greed? Ignorance? Innocence? Peer pressure? Understanding of the debt cycle is just not taught in schools and I suspect this is by design to keep our populace a nation of enslaved consumers. I blog for cathartic relief about all the grief I see. Perhaps we should both be writing books for parents and teens on the truth of money and debt. Speaking to the converted is a start.
You know I have the ultimate respect for your perspective and information. I read with interest your recent post where you asked:
"What was TARP other than a free pinball for the bankers?"
As you know, I have worked in the home mortgage industry for the last near decade and observed from the broker and banker perspective the entire fiasco. From my current 'inside' view, I happen to have a fondness for helping people refinance their homes so they can stay put until the market or their situation improves and they can pay off their debt faster. TARP funds subsidizes underwater loans through various initiatives. Intiatives that come with the privildege of banks continuing to borrow money.
Some of these home mortgage refinance options pay for principal write downs and modifications for the truly financially stressed. Others for the less stressed borrower who still have their income, although their home mortgage is underwater. TARP funds allow a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac client that is up to 125% Loan to Value (i.e., their current loan balance is 25% more than the home is worth today) to refinance, often saving 2% or more in rate and tens of thousands over the life of the loan. One program takes about 20 minutes on the phone and the papers are mailed to your home to be notarized after underwriting does their thing. An example of who would qualify for such a loan is a person who funded their home loan prior to May 2009 and for whom the rate is 5% or more. This program has been extended another year. It is very likely the borrower (if they qualify) will be offered better terms for little to no cost.
As you might suspect - while you follow the money dealings with the Fed and Congress (thank you for posting here) - there are many good people on the inside of banks, large and small, and no doubt the Fed, who are working hard for borrowers. I just got off the phone with a minority elder Vietnam Veteran who was lured into an exploding ARM that is now over 8% and he qualifies for a VA fixed loan at 4%. I just spent a week helping clarify a contractual matter for a client that saved him $40,000. Banks and bankers are not all bad.
Please give up the greedy bastard tar and feathers gig for something a bit more informed and respectful. We are all in this economy together. Until we have a better system with more 'sunlight on the playing field' we need to work together however we can toward fairness.
It's hard to believe we have both nuclear contamination and natural gas fracking in the same area and some geologist imagines the radioactive gas is 'contained' locally. Hoot is: we are supposed to believe Japan's leeching of toxins into our shared bathwater is no big deal. Yes stuff happens; but we have a choice whether we condone or fund the chain of conditions (supply and demand) that eventually slits our own ecological throats by claiming it's no big deal. To whom? The unborn may have a different opinion of our legacy.
As one concerned about the contamination for thousands of years, its effects on the delicate ecosystems and plant and animal life we ultimately consume in our own bodies, and the halflives of this stuff in our dead cancer riddled carcasses rotting in soil - is anyone bothering to factor that expense into the real price of nuclear power?
Pulse,
Some context for you: I live in swimming distance to your fair border and enjoy your own foreign national/US residents buying up our devalued housing in droves.
Why is that?
Perhaps one viewing of HGTV home and garden evening tellie featuring exhorbidant home prices and living standards in Oh-Can-a-da is a hint. What country can say their gubermint is NOT benefitting the banks and corporate investors? Speak to your leadership, not down to me.
Pulse, reply to my post: 102476
Apologies for the late reply to my post last Friday suggesting homeowners in America benefit personally from the bailouts. I have been so busy refinancing hapless homeowners and saving them $300 per month on their mortgage payments I fogot to tell that a 'strong person of honest measure' would rather die than accept this help to their families given by the godfathers as you so kindly refer to our banks. Tell corporate investors who are making wads on rigged gain from their hedge funds and treasuries to suck up and walk the other way and maybe the housing market will take your preferred permanent nosedive and bring down the banks (what a lovely thought). Not the out of power (and power bill money) homeowner. Their home is likely their only investment and they are counting on having a roof over their heads.
I could swear I heard Sharkie's old mean streak harping away at my posting last week, Ilya. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are owned (managed) by the tax payer. Of course they should be lowering our interest rates if it means staying in our homes. That's one good (imagine) benefit of the bailouts. Cheaper money for lenders to keep them afloat means more low interest rate money available to lend. While you say "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" you forget that Fannie and Freddie hold the lion's share of investor portfolios upon which many a straight laced investor counts for their daily crust.
For underwater homeowners (one in five homes in America is deemed underwater): would you prefer they walk and force the swift decline of the enitre housing industry so you can buy up the street? We are talking about people who have been just fine with the 6.00% they originally signed up for on their home mortgages being offered a break down to 4.00% and saving wads of cash every month. Cash they might reinvest or just ease their lives. What's not to like? Did they gamble and buy at the top? Maybe, but these are homes - you know - where people live at the center of their communites; not stocks you can dump when the mood strikes you. If you put yourself in 'mortgage prison' that's your own doing.
Take advantage of the offer if you can as HARP loans set to expire at the end of 2012. Stability is not such a bad thing if it means keeping more lights on in your street at night. Think about it.
I could swear I heard Sharkie's old mean streak in there, Ilya. We are talking about people who have been just fine with the 6.00% they originally signed up for getting a break down to 4.00% and saving wads of cash every month. What's not to like? Did they gamble and buy at the top? Maybe, but these are homes where people live at the center of their communites; not stocks you can dump when the mood strikes you. If you put yourself in 'mortgage prison' that's your own doing. Your GSE's are charged with helping you out. Nothing more. Take advantage of the offer if you can as there is a limited window of opportunity on HARP loans set to expire at the end of 2012. Stability is not such a bad thing if it means keeping more lights on in your street at night. Think about it.
GSE (government sponsored enterprise lenders, including loans in the portfolio of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) servicing home mortgage lenders have been merrily refinancing for a few years now for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Loan holders with great results. These Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) loans are part of the Stimulus Bill designed to help people stay in their homes despite equity losses. To date, they have been limited to 125% Loan to Value. That means for underwater loans originated before May 2009 even if your home is worth 25% less than your loan, you are likely to get a terrific refinance rate of the day. The hitch: in many areas, home values have dropped so drastically that their LTV is over 125%.
As of February 6th, 2012 the 125% LTV limit will 'go away'. Literally no Loan to Value limit for 30 year fixed rate refinance terms for home owners who have been paying their mortgages faithfully and for whom these terms would benefit.
For many, this may mean between 1 - 2% drop of interest rate. 15 year refinance loans become effective in June, 2012. How long will this last is dependent upon the GSE bond auctions holding up and 'the creek don't rise'.
https://www.efanniemae.com/sf/mha/mharefi/index.jsp
Anyone with a Fannie or Freddie home loan that was funded prior to May 2009 should run not walk to their lender and prepare your application. Eligibility crucial questions: Has your income dropped since you originated your mortgage (income test)? (NO) Has there been more than one late mortgage payment in the last 12 months? (NO) Are all original borrowers still on title? (YES) Is the occupancy the same as when you closed your loan? (investment or owner occupied)(YES), etc.
Nice to deliver a bit of good news for a change.
..."Confidence to take on debt points to confidence in the jobs market and is a significant plus for the outlook on consumer spending."
Bill, I am doubtful of the source of this so called confidence in the jobs market pointing to willingness to take on debts. Rolls nicely off the tounge. Locally I see a lot of people forced to take on debt while waiting for help to arrive and managing with their unemployment checks or deferred home maintenance or delayed propety taxes to keep one step ahead of the grim reaper. If we have learned anything since this crisis began it's to question our need to spend.
A little (very) cultural perspective from my travels in Greece and living among Greeks in Australia (guy on my sailing team). Their cultural practices support men drinking coffee all day while women birth babies and take the olives to market by donkey. Women run things but they let men think they do. My hostess had the priest bless her stock portfolio when he came to christen the new baby on the kitchen table. I think they will be fine without the EU.
So, Ilya and davefairtex,
Which Greek investments will get the most bank for buck after your proposed 3 year Hell? What are the chances they pull out of the Euro - really?
For history buffs of the European Central Bank:
http://www.ecb.int/pub/pdf/other/ecbhistoryrolefun...
Oh I don't know about that, Grym. From where I sit, perhaps an inside corporation with serious resouces and friends - or at least begrudging respect - deserves a crack at solving economic issues from which it will - hint hint also benefit. Nothing like good old Yankee ingenuity and opportunistic entrepreneurial spirit!
And don't forget the royalties that his ego needs to grow on.
On another front, Cramer of all people, suggests putting HB&B's top home lender in charge of housing. Ironic to say the least.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11357577/1/cramer-p...
I am not in disagreement with you, Grym. Beneficiaries of publicly mouthed policies abound.
Actually I posted this for the lively debate that might ensue. Given my role in the debt generation engine; any view I might offer is highly suspect! However, I am not in particular agreement with Krugman's therory and wonder how much he supposedly knows about such things - as a Wall Street editorialist. And who pays for THAT?
According to Krugman, the problem with our debt is the powers that be do not understand it and are therefore, pepetuating it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-...
Kaimu,
RE: Your assertion:
"Its a sad day when the 10yr and 30yr bonds are in the top ten performers for the year when those investments do nothing but indebt us and our kids further and further and produce nothing but the funds necessary for a corrupt government to malinvest into more corruption..."
Certainly indebtedness is the bain of the overly indebted. Who put our kids there? Who believed they could afford $100,000 in college loans or buy a $300,000 home on a $2,000 per month income? Who signed the promissory note they didn't even read that stated the terms of the mortgage? Denial by choice is not victimization. It is not the easy money or the banks that provide the funds that put them into debt. The choices were theirs: to be responsible and informed or not.
You could make that statment above about Big Oil, Big Insurance or Big Pharma - but it's only half true. The other half is that we bring these calamities upon ourselves.
Insurance companies responded to market demand for extending life and easing pain. If you have bought into an insurance based system to pay for your drugs or therapies - you are now funding Big Pharma. Are they pushing their expensive chemistry upon a populace in denial of other choices? Are those same companies creating unhealthy processed GMO foods that contribute to the cycle of ill health? Are we propping up depressed people with chemicals that destroy their livers - so they can consume more 'health care'?
We always have a choice. We may choose healthy diets or therapy or what the heck - dying a natural death if we are not fit for survival. To blame the institution that provides a means of extending credit or ease from pain is pointing in the wrong directon.
Only by our own choices - in this moment - we may become happier, healthier and more prosperous. Able to contribute to communities like these. And for that I am very grateful.
Lies can only be weighed for their effect in the light of truth. For without one the other cannot exist. In our dualistic concepts of right and wrong we are forever attempting to determine what exactly is THE right thing. Dropping bombs on Japanese citizens or creating hedge funds are acts committed by those sure they doing God's work.
Frustration is one particular reaction to what is. Often, we are reacting to what we have wrought. What we really 'have' in life is this moment in which we take action. On a daily basis we have the choice to make better decisions. Based on our intellect, training, sense of morality and the desired outcome. There are no absolutes. There are no ultimate villains or perfect heroes. Humanity is frail and full of conflicts. Einstein's therory of relativity was quite the comment on action and reaction. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The goal might be to have less opposition and more equality. Less making the other guys wrong and looking into our own hearts perhaps.
Your intent determines whether an act results in karmic debt. If your father intended to do good, and truly felt that his action of murdering Japanese by bombs was the better choice for humanity, despite his own misgivings, then his action has less karmic weight than if he intended to kill those same people with anger toward them.
Are our bad choices based on greed? Ignorance? Innocence? Peer pressure? Understanding of the debt cycle is just not taught in schools and I suspect this is by design to keep our populace a nation of enslaved consumers. I blog for cathartic relief about all the grief I see. Perhaps we should both be writing books for parents and teens on the truth of money and debt. Speaking to the converted is a start.
And to all a good year!
Kaimu,
You know I have the ultimate respect for your perspective and information. I read with interest your recent post where you asked:
"What was TARP other than a free pinball for the bankers?"
As you know, I have worked in the home mortgage industry for the last near decade and observed from the broker and banker perspective the entire fiasco. From my current 'inside' view, I happen to have a fondness for helping people refinance their homes so they can stay put until the market or their situation improves and they can pay off their debt faster. TARP funds subsidizes underwater loans through various initiatives. Intiatives that come with the privildege of banks continuing to borrow money.
Some of these home mortgage refinance options pay for principal write downs and modifications for the truly financially stressed. Others for the less stressed borrower who still have their income, although their home mortgage is underwater. TARP funds allow a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac client that is up to 125% Loan to Value (i.e., their current loan balance is 25% more than the home is worth today) to refinance, often saving 2% or more in rate and tens of thousands over the life of the loan. One program takes about 20 minutes on the phone and the papers are mailed to your home to be notarized after underwriting does their thing. An example of who would qualify for such a loan is a person who funded their home loan prior to May 2009 and for whom the rate is 5% or more. This program has been extended another year. It is very likely the borrower (if they qualify) will be offered better terms for little to no cost.
As you might suspect - while you follow the money dealings with the Fed and Congress (thank you for posting here) - there are many good people on the inside of banks, large and small, and no doubt the Fed, who are working hard for borrowers. I just got off the phone with a minority elder Vietnam Veteran who was lured into an exploding ARM that is now over 8% and he qualifies for a VA fixed loan at 4%. I just spent a week helping clarify a contractual matter for a client that saved him $40,000. Banks and bankers are not all bad.
Please give up the greedy bastard tar and feathers gig for something a bit more informed and respectful. We are all in this economy together. Until we have a better system with more 'sunlight on the playing field' we need to work together however we can toward fairness.
And to all a good day.
Luggie,
It's hard to believe we have both nuclear contamination and natural gas fracking in the same area and some geologist imagines the radioactive gas is 'contained' locally. Hoot is: we are supposed to believe Japan's leeching of toxins into our shared bathwater is no big deal. Yes stuff happens; but we have a choice whether we condone or fund the chain of conditions (supply and demand) that eventually slits our own ecological throats by claiming it's no big deal. To whom? The unborn may have a different opinion of our legacy.
davefairtex,
As one concerned about the contamination for thousands of years, its effects on the delicate ecosystems and plant and animal life we ultimately consume in our own bodies, and the halflives of this stuff in our dead cancer riddled carcasses rotting in soil - is anyone bothering to factor that expense into the real price of nuclear power?