CBS 60 Minutes: Mortgages: Walking Away

[PatColo]

Tons of "walking away" stories on patrick.net (http://patrick.net) these days. But 60 Minutes reaches a vast audience of TEEE VEEE PEOPLE. :o

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6470184n&tag=related;photovideo

When an illuminati "news" mouthpiece like 60 Minutes does a piece basically "selling" viewers on the merits of walking away (and giving a free ad to youwalkaway.com (http://youwalkaway.com) while they're at it), it's fodder for the case I've made for some time that the end goal is to crash the property market so bad, with values "going to zero", that the "solution" of ending the institution of private property is agreeable to most all (remaining mortgage-free owners will be slammed by non-viable prop tax, insurance, and an economy so broken they can't get sustained income from the property- rendering it a pure liability they're eager to dump). The banksters created the mortgage fiat from nothing, loaned it out at interest, engineered a "catastrophic crash", and got all the property for free!

Everything you own are belong to us!

[optionT]

I see this trend continuing as more homes become "underwater."

http://www.youwalkaway.com/

I bet their business is booming!!!

[k-os]

Yep, PatColo, you may be right. It does seem that the media is taking the shame out of walking away from responsibilities.

[Quantum]

Yep, PatColo, you may be right. It does seem that the media is taking the shame out of walking away from responsibilities.


Responsibilities to what? To whom? Mystery Babylon?

Biblical Debt Jubilee NOW. Implement it yourself via "strategic default."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_default

[Quantum]

The '80s retro anthem for mortgages and credit card debt:

http://www.myvideo.de/watch/5001523/Information_Society_Walking_Away

[MAGNES]

60 minutes should post the ARMS charts created by
different banks, ROFL, scare the hell out of everyone
watching. Hump two is coming, roughly a year away.

GS is poised to make money on commercial real estate
collapse the way they did with hump one on the ARMS
charts, can't let AIG go bankrupt. LOL

60 minutes is quiet. They too are shysters and in on it.

[DualCarbon]

Of course, nothing whatsoever mentioned about how the Fed caused the asset bubble in the first place.

[mick silver]

why would they trash the gov they all love ... the news is half of what wrong with this country

[PatColo]

Yep, PatColo, you may be right. It does seem that the media is taking the shame out of walking away from responsibilities.


What "responsibility" (or perhaps "obligation") are you referring to?

Borrower ceases mortgage service payments, and duly gives full possession of the property to the lender-- a contract-satisfying course of action agreed to by both parties upon entering the mortgage contract.



The banksters created the mortgage fiat from nothing, loaned it out at interest, engineered a "catastrophic crash", and got all the property for free!

Everything you own are belong to us!


^^^ that's what you should be scrutinizing, if you're looking for a situation to cast moral judgments upon.

There's only one major world religion which doesn't frown upon the practice of usury.

And no, it aint Scary-Moozlemism (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/09/MN2D15J4HD.DTL&tsp=1)... ;)

[nunaem]

it's fodder for the case I've made for some time that the end goal is to crash the property market so bad, with values "going to zero", that the "solution" of ending the institution of private property is agreeable to most all (remaining mortgage-free owners will be slammed by non-viable prop tax, insurance, and an economy so broken they can't get sustained income from the property- rendering it a pure liability they're eager to dump). The banksters created the mortgage fiat from nothing, loaned it out at interest, engineered a "catastrophic crash", and got all the property for free!

Everything you own are belong to us!


Why would the banksters want to end the institution of private property when they own or finance most private property?

[PatColo]

Why would the banksters want to end the institution of private property when they own or finance most private property?


Global neo-FEUDALISM (http://www.google.com/search?q=neo+feudalism) is good stuff, just so long as you're a LORD. ;)

[bonaparte]

Yep, PatColo, you may be right. It does seem that the media is taking the shame out of walking away from responsibilities.


What "responsibility" (or perhaps "obligation") are you referring to?

Borrower ceases mortgage service payments, and duly gives full possession of the property to the lender-- a contract-satisfying course of action agreed to by both parties upon entering the mortgage contract.



I couldn't agree more. Bankers, church, tradition shame us into what is "ethical and moral, you know pay your bills, ect...."

What we forget is that the banks that give us our mortgages always make the best financial decision for themselves, no morals or ethics taken into account. I don't see why a person wouldn't treat them the exact same way.

And yes, you fulfill the obligation of the mortgage through forclosure, which is what was agreed upon when the contract was signed. Nowhere in any mortgage papers I have held did it say I must pay if I can.

[Libertytree]

The entire system is FRAUDULENT!!! Monetary and banking practices are a vile curse on the people and any contracts within the banking realm dealing with money/land/property should be considered null and void. The entirety of it all is unconstitutional and unlawful. Even if your contract is paid in full you still do not own it, because anytime it can be taken by force via tax code and ultimately force you DO NOT own it, you are a tenant. Then the county, state takes it from you and makes a deal with a bank to acquire it, I call bullshit!

My only responsibility is to myself, not to fraudulent contracts etc. Land/property should be like gold and silver, if you don't hold it, you don't own it...and as long as there are property taxes it's one big friggin' joke because you will never truly own it.

I walked away from my house, signed it back over to the penny of the remaining balance. I never walked away from any responsibility, they got the property back in better condition than how I received it plus the 30K I put up as a down payment plus the payments I made for 7 years.

FVCK the American dream! I should have sunk my 30K in gold and rented!!!

[Gknowmx]

For the longest time I couldn't get my head around this issue. I recall the threads on this on GIM and all of Ruthless Defaulter's posts. I had a moral problem with defaulting. My moral blindness was preventing me from realizing exactly what PatColo has pointed out: if the path to default is in the mortgage contract, then there is no contract violation. In fact, I must now admit, that it now seems morally proper to do the rational analysis and use the best contract terms to complete the contract. If that means using the default clauses, so be it.

The arguement hasn't changed. I have. Another case where 'I am not here to convince you, I am here to convince myself'. Thanks folks. I am not sure I would have arrived at this perspective without GSUS.

[philo beddoe]

Yep, PatColo, you may be right. It does seem that the media is taking the shame out of walking away from responsibilities.


What "responsibility" (or perhaps "obligation") are you referring to?

Borrower ceases mortgage service payments, and duly gives full possession of the property to the lender-- a contract-satisfying course of action agreed to by both parties upon entering the mortgage contract.



I couldn't agree more. Bankers, church, tradition shame us into what is "ethical and moral, you know pay your bills, ect...."

What we forget is that the banks that give us our mortgages always make the best financial decision for themselves, no morals or ethics taken into account. I don't see why a person wouldn't treat them the exact same way.

And yes, you fulfill the obligation of the mortgage through forclosure, which is what was agreed upon when the contract was signed. Nowhere in any mortgage papers I have held did it say I must pay if I can.

The church does not shame us into this with Jesus, they use Paul.

[Twisted Titan]

This is why you own physical Gold and Silver

Because the game was rigged before you were born

The trick is to keep you playing becuase eventually they will own it all.

T

[Desolation LineTrimmer]

Yep, PatColo, you may be right. It does seem that the media is taking the shame out of walking away from responsibilities.


There is nothing morally or contractually wrong with walking away.

[Quantum]

The church does not shame us into this with Jesus, they use Paul.
[/quote]

No, they use lies. They twist scripture and make it mean something other than it does. Example: Romans 13 endorses support for Godly government, not Satanic government like we have now.

[k-os]

Yep, PatColo, you may be right. It does seem that the media is taking the shame out of walking away from responsibilities.


There is nothing morally or contractually wrong with walking away.


Yes, I understand that now (recent enlightenment - past few months). I should have said "obligations". But you are right, walking away is built into the contract. It's why I had to pay PMI for the first few years (payment insurance). In case I decided to walk away the lending corporation was covered, doubly by my down payment plus the "mortgage insurance" that I was paying monthly.

[LuckyStrike]

Something I've never heard discussed is this.

When the first few rounds of bailouts were headed towards wall st. why did nobody suggest that instead of just handing over billions to "shore up" the balance sheets of the bankers, why didn't they take this money and pay down everyone's principal on their home loans?

This would've still shored up the balance sheets of wall st. and also helped working joe who may have gotten his hours cut back at work.

But as it stands, Wall St. gets trillions for free, AND they get the principal AND they get the usurious interest. So they win no matter what angle you look at it, meanwhile the responsible people (as always) get stuck with 100% of the tab.

Of course I am against any kind of bailouts because they are immoral but if you are gonna do it this sure makes a helluva lot more sense than just handing them trillions.

[Steal]

Have a family member looking at purchasing property instead of gold, to get out of cash. Was wondering if anyone has any links or actual facts in regard to a property not being yours if is paid for BUT still have property tax to pay. Where does it say they can take property away from you? Trying to make a point and have limited amo on this subject.

[Book]

Was wondering if anyone has any links or actual facts in regard to a property not being yours if is paid for BUT still have property tax to pay. Where does it say they can take property away from you?


http://www.foreclosure.com/tax_sales.html

:oo-->

[LuckyStrike]

Have a family member looking at purchasing property instead of gold, to get out of cash. Was wondering if anyone has any links or actual facts in regard to a property not being yours if is paid for BUT still have property tax to pay. Where does it say they can take property away from you? Trying to make a point and have limited amo on this subject.


It varies state by state but I know in FL, they will auction the house off then once someone else has bought it that cops will force you from the premises. I looked into it about a year ago.

[chud]

Tons of "walking away" stories on patrick.net (http://patrick.net) these days. But 60 Minutes reaches a vast audience of TEEE VEEE PEOPLE. :o

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6470184n&tag=related;photovideo



I love when Morley Safer is interviewing that one guy who says he hasn't defaulted yet because he loves his house; Morley says "that's an expensive love affair", and the guy says "Aren't they all?". LOL!
I was like, damn, that's one cat who has some experience under his belt. ;D

[Awoke]

i hope all this waits and does not crash i have a deal to sell a house with 2 ac for what i gave for the 125 plus house and i will make 10 t plus still own 123 ac


Just so you know, Mick, I had to read that 5 times to make any sense out of it, and even know I'm still not sure if I understand you completely.

Try punctuation. It's great!

[Desolation LineTrimmer]

When the first few rounds of bailouts were headed towards wall st. why did nobody suggest that instead of just handing over billions to "shore up" the balance sheets of the bankers, why didn't they take this money and pay down everyone's principal on their home loans?




The problem with this is that people living in apartments would have been forced to contribute money to help pay down the principle of people living in mortgaged homes. Plus, many of the people who went upside down started off with no down payment. They shouldn't have been in mortgaged homes to begin with.

[Silver Rocket Bitches!]

It's the derivatives!

The more people that walk away from their mortgages, the more contracts TPTB can collect on!

[PatColo]

On the topic of bellwether MSM (TPTB) mouthpieces taking the "shame" out of walking away, this NYTimes article should be noted in this thread,

NY Times 5/31/10: Owners Stop Paying Mortgages, and Stop Fretting (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/business/01nopay.html?_r=1&source=patrick.net)

There've been many other articles published in papers of more regional prominence, giving the same message. Scan headlines @ patrick.net (http://patrick.net) (also their much more exhaustive archive page (http://patrick.net/housing/2010links.html)) for many recent examples, too numerous (read: laborious!) to list here.

TPTB's Mighty Wurlitzer helping to take the shame out of strategic-default/walkaways, reporting on how sensible it is, portraying strategic defaulters benevolently... hmmm, what's the ultimate agenda here?? :conf:

CNBC: Bankster-Gummit doesn't report number of houses held on banksters' books (http://www.cnbc.com/id/38680807?source=patrick.net)

[PatColo]

Not sure who produces this "yahoo tech ticker" (Yahoo!?), I don't think they're on the TeeeeVeeee anywhere so you know, they're not really bonafide... but another news piece de-shaming the act of walking away...

video auto-plays inside:


It's Okay To Walk Away: Let's End The "Morality" Double-Standard On Mortgage Defaults (http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/it%27s-okay-to-walk-away-let%27s-end-the-%22morality%22-double-standard-on-mortgage-defaults-535365.html?source=patrick.net#yfi_tt_main)

Posted Aug 25, 2010 10:36am EDT by Henry Blodget in Recession, Housing
Related: mac, vno, spg, xhb, vnq, tol, len

More and more commercial real-estate companies are doing what many indebted homeowners would like to do: Walk away from mortgages on properties that are now worth a lot less than they paid for them.

Today's Wall Street Journal highlights three major developers - Macerich, Vornado Realty Trust and Simon Property Group - that have recently decided to default on mortgages.

When companies do this, no one bats an eye--it's just "smart business."

When ordinary homeowners think about doing it, meanwhile, the mortgage industry and government begin moaning that a mortgage is more than a business contract. It's a social contract, in which homeowners have a "moral obligation" to pay.

That's bunk. An individual mortgage is no different than a corporate mortgage. If corporations are allowed to walk away from mortgage obligations without feeling shame and guilt, then individuals should be able to do so, too.

The contract homeowners sign when they take out a mortgage spells out exactly what happens if the homeowner stops making payments on the loan. The lender has the right to foreclose on the house, taking the homeowner's downpayment with it. In addition, the borrower's credit rating will usually get destroyed, and, in some states, the lender can come after his or her other assets to recoup the capital the lender has lost.

Those are big penalties. They provide a major incentive for the borrower to continue making his or payments. And that's why the lender, a corporation, put them in the contract.

Importantly, the lender voluntarily entered into the contract--and it did so because it thought doing so was a smart business decision. That it actually turned out to be a lousy business decision is not the homeowner's fault. It's the lender's fault. And the borrower, who is already feeling plenty of pain his or herself, should not have to bear the burden of guilt and shame on top of everything else.

Thinking about walking away from your mortgage? Here's what you should consider > (http://http%3A//www.businessinsider.com/how-to-walk-away-from-your-mortgage-2010-1)

[PatColo]

When an illuminati "news" mouthpiece like 60 Minutes does a piece basically "selling" viewers on the merits of walking away (and giving a free ad to youwalkaway.com (http://youwalkaway.com) while they're at it), it's fodder for the case I've made for some time that the end goal is to crash the property market so bad, with values "going to zero", that the "solution" of ending the institution of private property is agreeable to most all (remaining mortgage-free owners will be slammed by non-viable prop tax, insurance, and an economy so broken they can't get sustained income from the property- rendering it a pure liability they're eager to dump). The banksters created the mortgage fiat from nothing, loaned it out at interest, engineered a "catastrophic crash", and got all the property for free!

Everything you own are belong to us!



Agenda 21 For Dummies (incl: abolition of private property) (http://gold-silver.us/forum/general-discussion/agenda-21-for-dummies-(incl-abolition-of-private-property)/msg107446/#msg107446)

10 mins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzEEgtOFFlM&feature=player_embedded

@ 2:10, "The focus of Agenda 21 is the abolition of private property, [...]"

[dysgenic]

I agree with the theory that this whole crisis was designed to abolish private ownerhship of property. Or more accurately, abolish the pretense of private property ownerhship (even though people don't actually have private property rights, most people still believe that they do). Remember when the prevailing sentiment was that in the event of a real estate banking crisis, the banks would sell foreclosures as quickly as possible in order to move non performing assets off their books? How LOL is that notion now? Also, I see very few people focusing on the MERS/show me the note scandal nowadays. There are few things more outrageous than judges allowing banks to repossess property that they don't even fake own. By that logic I should put a few of Bill Gates' mansions on the MERS system and then liberate them.

dys

[Twisted Titan]

For those of us who are behind the 8 ball:

Do what you can to stay in the house,even being made a fool of and scoffed at by the courts Officers

Yet while they laugh you're busy stuffing your pockets with Gold, Silver, Tangible and bullets.

So When the next leg down hits ( sooner rather than later)

We shall see who will be laughing then

[PatColo]

kiplinger: Walking Away From a Mortgage (http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/walking-away-from-a-mortgage.html?source=patrick.net#bd)

more corpguv media mockingbirds making noises about "maybe it would be best to let prices keep falling",

CS Monitor: NY Times contemplates letting the housing market correct itself (http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Mises-Economics-Blog/2010/0908/NY-Times-contemplates-letting-the-housing-market-correct-itself?source=patrick.net#mainColumn)

SF Chron: Time to stop propping up the housing market? (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ontheblock/detail?source=patrick.net&entry_id=71810&tsp=1)

CNBC: Housing Woes Bring New Cry: Let Market Crash (http://www.cnbc.com/id/39024784?source=patrick.net)

moneycentral.msn: A nation of renters: Houseownership not worth the cost? (http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/HomebuyingGuide/renting-gets-a-new-lease-on-life.aspx?source=patrick.net#title)

money.usnews: Economists See More House Price Declines Ahead (http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/real-estate/articles/2010/08/31/economists-see-more-home-price-declines-ahead.html?source=patrick.net#main)


More on the theory that TPTB's master plan is the end of the institution of private property (UN Agenda 21):

"U N Agenda 21 quote There Will Be No Private Housing Peter Schiff John Stossel Judge Napolitano"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ee6S9_H1Vk




@ 2:00 Napolitano: Is it true the government has come up with some new program whereby you give the deed of your house to the government, the government owns it, and you rent from the government?

Stossel: You bet. Fannie and Freddie are going to be in the rental business. They don't want to foreclose on so many people and dump the houses on the market, as they should to try to shrink these monsters, so they're going to rent. And what kind of record does government have of running public housing? [...more]



I think as they let the banksters' controlled demolition of real estate values progress, this "gummit holds the deed & rents to former/insolvent owners" program will be a calculated transitional step towards the eventual abolition of private property.

Don't you just love NWO "incompetence", ;)

34 secs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CWBTL33MpA

[PatColo]

Walking away from a mortgage might make sense (http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_16166487?source=patrick.net) (mercurynews.com)

Walking away with less (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/25/AR2010092503767.html?referrer=patrick.net#article) (washingtonpost.com)

Walking away from mortgage gets easier when neighbors do it (http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/sep/20/201059/walking-away-from-mortgage-gets-easier-when-neighb/news-realestate/?source=patrick.net#text) (tbo.com)


Too many recent "Real estate prices should be allowed to fall" type articles @ patrick.net (http://patrick.net) to list, browse there for a sampling

[PatColo]

Philly Fed getting in on the "re-calibrating attitudes towards RE ownership" act,

Benefits of homeownership challenged (http://=http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-home-ownership-20101003,0,878533.story)
A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia suggests that the arguments for homeownership have been overstated, leading many into financial peril.


and another recent walk-away-friendly article from USN&WR,

When Foreclosure is a Good Option (http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/my-money/2010/09/29/when-foreclosure-is-a-good-option)

[PatColo]

Strategic Defaults Threaten All Major U.S. Housing Markets (http://www.realestatechannel.com/us-markets/residential-real-estate-1/real-estate-news-strategic-defaults-real-estate-bubble-morgan-stanley-loan-default-rates-home-foreclosures-bank-reo-sales-keith-jurow-wikipedia-housing-bubble-liar-loans-3258.php?source=patrick.net)

"... It seems clear from these two reports that as home values continue to decline and LTV ratios rise, the number of homeowners choosing to strategically default and walk away from their mortgage obligation will relentlessly grow. That means real trouble for all major housing markets around the country." [exactly the master plan... -PC)

[PatColo]

WSJ:
The great mortgage mystery: why do they keep paying? (http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/110961/the-great-mortgage-mystery?source=patrick.net#yfi_pf_main)

"The big question from the mortgage meltdown isn't why so many distressed homeowners are defaulting on their loans.

It's why any of them are still making payments.

In the worst-hit areas millions have no equity left, and little hope of seeing any anytime soon. The market value of their homes is far below the size of the mortgage.

If they just stop paying, what is going to happen to them? In many cases they may get to live in the home rent-free for months, even years, until the bank gets around to seizing it."


Daily Show- true story though,
Mortgage Bankers Association Strategic Default (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-7-2010/mortgage-bankers-association-strategic-default?xrs=patrick.net#video_player)


Chicago Tribune
Ethics of strategic default are really hitting home (http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/sc-cons-1007-marksjarvis-20101007,0,3046875.column?source=patrick.net#bread crumb)

[PatColo]

LA Times suggests: These underwater folks too dumb to walk away are a drag on the economy!


Millions of homeowners keep paying on underwater mortgages (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-economy-mortgages-20101101,0,7338975.story)

The payments absorb billions of dollars that might be used for other forms of consumer spending, creating a drag on the overall economy.

[Twisted Titan]

Even when you are underwater on a unsustainable debt

You should still consume because its good for the economy.

Que up the twilight zone music.


T

[PatColo]

Even when you are underwater on a unsustainable debt

You should still consume because its good for the economy.

Que up the twilight zone music.


T


TT: I cite the LA Times article above in making the case as I have through this thread, that TPTB (as expressed through their MSM propaganda apparatus) want to (tacitly, without being explicit about it) encourage underwater home-borrowers to walk away-- to move towards their ultimate goal: crash RE so bad that the "solution" is abolishing the institution of private property (see "Agenda 21 For Dummies" vid above). Also see that Napolitano/Schiff clip where they note that Fannie/Freddie (gummit) have gone into the landlording biz... baby steps...

[PatColo]

Mike Ruppert @ collapsenet.com is touting this exclusive article, but you gotta pay to read it. The premise rings true; I have no doubt that the banksters wish to take homes & leave as many homeless as possible.


COLLAPSENET EXCLUSIVE!

BIG BANK MORTGAGE MODIFICATION PROGRAMS ARE INTENDED TO INCREASE FORCLOSURE NUMBERS – THE RAPE OF THE AMERCIAN HOMEOWNER CONTINUES

AN INSIDER AT ONE OF AMERICA’S BIG 5 BANKS BLOWS THE WHISTLE ON WHAT BANKS REALLY DO WHEN YOU ASK FOR A LOAN MODIFICATION

IF YOU HAVE EQUITY THE BANK’S JOB IS TO SNATCH YOUR HOME AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE

by Michael C. Ruppert


"When through the process of the law, the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of the government applied to a central power of imperial wealth under the control of the leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders.

History repeats itself in regular cycles. This truth is well known among our principal men who are engaged in forming an imperialism of the world. While they are doing this, the people must be kept in a state of political antagonism. "

-The Bankers Manifesto of 1892 (http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/407380-jeff-nielson/3678-the-bankers-manifesto-of-1892)


Mish: Why Pay the Mortgage or Rent when you can have 16 Months of Free Shelter? How to Deal with this Important Question (http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-pay-mortgage-or-rent-when-you-can.html?utm_source=patrick.net)

"Those deeply underwater on their homes have a nice option that renters and those with equity in their homes don't. That option is to stop making home payments, effectively living in their home or condo scotfree, for as long as they can.

Millions have take the option, and with each person doing so, the longer the delays. Thus, the more who take that option, the greater the reward for all who do.

The Wall Street Journal reports that it takes 492 Days From Default to Foreclosure, up from 244 days in August 2007. " [more]

[PatColo]

Strategic Default & Living For Free: Josh Bartlett Hasn't Made A Mortgage Payment In 32 Months And He Hasn't Been Kicked Out Yet (PBS VIDEO) (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june10/mortgage_04-20.html)

^^^ 9 min PBS News Hour video inside, story is from 4/20/10, a few weeks before the 60 Minutes segment in the OP which aired 5/9/10. The gist of the stories are exactly the same.

[PatColo]

Walk Away: The Rise and Fall of the Home-Ownership Myth (http://mises.org/daily/4854#ctl00_ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_ContentPlaceH older1_lnkPreviousPage)
-by Douglas French, president of the Mises Institute, which touts itself as "Advancing the scholarship of liberty in the tradition of the Austrian School" So I get some cognitive dissonance reading this one, the spin he tries to give "people's choosing to downsize", "the new mobility" (not mentioning that these newly downsized/mobile's finances have generally collapsed), and then this line was over the top IMHO, "The collapse of the housing market — which has occurred despite every effort by the government to prevent it —[...] " :o ...is that merely naive, or is it downright shilly?! Gummit & banksters have been like a single moving part in the engineered housing crash & conspiracy to destroy the Middle Class!

"When through the process of the law, the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of the government applied to a central power of imperial wealth under the control of the leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. " - The Banksters' Manifesto of 1892 (http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/407380-jeff-nielson/3678-the-bankers-manifesto-of-1892)


separately, we have this new book out, why didn't I think of such a biz opportunity as authoring such a book?!

Underwater Home: What Should You Do if You Owe More on Your Home than It's Worth?
(http://www.amazon.com/Underwater-Home-What-Should-Worth/dp/1456365703/ref=sr_1_11)

[PatColo]

Couple more recent walk-away links, and an Ed Griffin article philosophizing about private property,


Walking Away from Your House for Dummies (http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2010/12/07/walking-away-from-your-home-for-dummies) (blogs.wsj.com)

Walking away from your mortgage - Military Financial Advice (http://www.armytimes.com/money/financial_advice/offduty-walking-away-from-your-mortgage-120610w) (armytimes.com)

Should land be privately owned or public property? (http://freedomforceinternational.org/freedomcontent.cfm?fuseaction=land&refpage=creed) Added to Creed section. Aug 6

[PatColo]

Strategic defaulters opt to continue paying on second liens (http://www.housingwire.com/2010/12/14/strategic-defaulters-opt-to-continue-paying-on-second-liens)


Fed Research Paper Concludes Loan Modifications "May Increase Strategic Defaults" (http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/12/philly-fed-research-paper-concludes.html?source=patrick.net)


Strategic Foreclosures are Increasing (http://www.africanaonline.com/2010/12/strategic-foreclosures-are-increasing/?source=patrick.net#post-4396)

[PatColo]

More see walking on mortgage as viable plan (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40704053/ns/business-real_estate/) (msnbc.msn.com)
'Strategic default' losing stigma as homes go deeper underwater


then there's this new trend, which I'd guess will be picking up steam,

Imminent foreclosure home owners leasing to eachother to stop foreclosure (http://gold-silver.us/forum/general-discussion/imminent-foreclosure-home-owners-leasing-to-eachother-to-stop-foreclosure/msg156806/#msg156806)

[EE_]

Tons of "walking away" stories on patrick.net (http://patrick.net) these days. But 60 Minutes reaches a vast audience of TEEE VEEE PEOPLE. :o

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6470184n&tag=related;photovideo

When an illuminati "news" mouthpiece like 60 Minutes does a piece basically "selling" viewers on the merits of walking away (and giving a free ad to youwalkaway.com (http://youwalkaway.com) while they're at it), it's fodder for the case I've made for some time that the end goal is to crash the property market so bad, with values "going to zero", that the "solution" of ending the institution of private property is agreeable to most all (remaining mortgage-free owners will be slammed by non-viable prop tax, insurance, and an economy so broken they can't get sustained income from the property- rendering it a pure liability they're eager to dump). The banksters created the mortgage fiat from nothing, loaned it out at interest, engineered a "catastrophic crash", and got all the property for free!

Everything you own are belong to us!

I'm not so sure they want to crash the market, when all that they have been doing is to prop-up asset values.
Falling property values is fine by me as long as property taxes go down with them.
Insurance should too.
Why do people want their home price to rise for anyway?...unless nobody elses does?

[PatColo]

I'm not so sure they want to crash the market, when all that they have been doing is to prop-up asset values.
Falling property values is fine by me as long as property taxes go down with them.
Insurance should too.
Why do people want their home price to rise for anyway?...unless nobody elses does?


My working hypothesis is, they want pretty much everyone who's not in their lucie club, rendered poor. So to the extent there's been propped up markets, IE stocks & real estate, with TPTB's MSM blathering on about "bottoms" in RE and "the economic recovery" yada yada, they're trying to lure those still solvent into said assets (great time to buy RE, on sale & at low rates! stocks keep going higher! you'll be so savvy to deploy your dry powder now!), then soon they'll pull the plug on said assets and soak a new wave of suckers. all IMHO. Seen insider selling? (http://gold-silver.us/forum/general-discussion/recap-of-pastor-lindsey-williams%27-interview-on-aj-show-102110/msg132561/#msg132561)

On taxes falling with RE values, hardy har,

Property Taxes Keep Rising as House Values Keep Falling (http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/real-estate/property-taxes-keep-rising-as-home-values-keep-falling/19766378/)

[PatColo]

what's good for the goose...


Banks walk away from foreclosures. No consequences for them. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/foreclosure/ct-biz-0113-walkaway--20110113,0,7716930.story?source=patrick.net#breadc rumb)

A new type of property is adding to neighborhood blight: the bank walkaway.

[Horn]

A new type of property is adding to neighborhood blight: the bank walkaway.

Research to be released Thursday, the first of its kind locally, identifies 1,896 "red flag" homes in Chicago — most of them are in distressed African-American neighborhoods — that appear to have been abandoned by mortgage servicers during the foreclosure process, the Woodstock Institute found.

Abandoned foreclosures are increasing as mortgage investors determine that, at sale, they can't recoup the costs of foreclosing, securing, maintaining and marketing a home, and they sometimes aren't completing foreclosure actions. The property, by then usually vacant, becomes another eyesore in limbo along blocks where faded signs still announce block clubs.

"The steward relationship between the servicer and the property is broken, particularly in these hard-hit communities," said Geoff Smith, senior vice president of Woodstock, a Chicago-based research and advocacy group. "The role of the servicer is to be the person in charge of that property's disposition. You're seeing situations where servicers are not living up to that standard."

Chicago Shopping Overwhelming Offers: Always 50% off or more from your favorite brands >>

City neighborhoods where 80 percent of the population is African-American account for 71.1 percent of red-flag properties, according to Woodstock.

In some cases, lenders might be skirting city rules for property upkeep even after they repossessed properties.

Woodstock found that as of the end of September, 57.1 percent of the estimated 4,468 single-family, likely vacant homes that became bank-owned from Jan. 1, 2006, to June 30, 2010, were not registered with the city as vacant, as they are supposed to be.

"The whole concept of charging off creates this limbo land," said Dan Lindsey, an attorney at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. "There's still a lien that can follow the borrower."

In November, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report on the frequency and impact of abandoned foreclosures noted that Midwestern industrial cities, including Chicago, seem to bear the brunt of bank walkaways, leaving neighborhoods in deeper distress and cities left to shoulder the associated costs of dealing with unsafe, often unsecured homes.

The GAO report, derived from information provided by six loan servicers, found that servicers nationally charged off loans on 46,000 properties from January 2008 to March 2010, with 60 percent of the charge-offs occurring before an initial foreclosure filing was made. That report listed Chicago as having the second-highest number of servicer-abandoned foreclosures nationally, behind Detroit, with 499 properties charged off during the foreclosure process. An additional 361 properties were charged off without a foreclosure filing.

For its report, Woodstock culled data from the city's vacant properties registry, as well as buildings identified to the city as vacant by municipal departments, foreclosure court filings made from 2006 to the first half of 2010, foreclosure auctions and property transfers. Some of the 1,896 properties flagged by Woodstock as likely walkaways could, in fact, still work toward a resolution in the foreclosure process, but 40 percent of those homes had been in the foreclosure process for more than 18 months.

Woodstock believes its projections are conservative because lenders also decide to write off their investments in properties before filing initial foreclosure actions. For only those 1,896 homes, Woodstock pegs the cost to the city, if it needed to seize, secure and demolish them, at $36 million.

"The problem that is being caused here is costing the taxpayer a lot of money," said Richard Monocchio, commissioner of the city's Department of Buildings. "Until the industry does much better and is more creative, leasing back the property for a few years so people can get back on their feet, then we're going to see more vacant buildings."

In 2010, the city demolished 535 homes, the most annually in more than a decade and far more than the 283 residences torn down in 2009, according to Monocchio. The city also doubled, to 891 residences, the number of buildings it secured, sometimes more than once, he said. For building code violations, the city tries to fine anyone associated with the property's title, whether it is a lender or a former homeowner. A bank walkaway can also impede a borrower's ability to take out a loan, because his or her name is still on the home's title and any unpaid debts will follow them.

Privately, lenders say their liability might be limited because they have already written the loan off the books and the homeowner also left them in a lurch. City officials say they meet regularly with top servicers to share lists of troubled properties and to work toward resolutions.

In Chicago, the mortgage servicers and trustees most often associated with the properties flagged by Woodstock are Bank of America, with 314 properties; Wells Fargo (234); U.S. Bank (185); Deutsche Bank (178); and JPMorgan Chase (165).

When asked to comment generally on bank walkaways, several banks either declined to comment or did not return phone calls. Two lenders, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, said they are working with the city on strategies to deal with these abandoned properties.

Neighborhoods on the city's West and South sides seem to be most at risk of bank walkaways.

The city's Roseland neighborhood, on the city's far South Side, is one example. In 2007, some of the pictures of the homes taken by the Cook County assessor's office showed properties that were reasonably well cared for by homeowners.

There, I did my good deed for the day, now its off to the racetrack.

[PatColo]

Remember, every say, 1% which the average home falls in value, that causes another ~5% of home borrowers who go under water, due to the leverage of their mortgages (purely guessing on that 5% number here, depends on how much equity the "average mortgaged home borrower" has in their home, and I don't know what that number is-- but with the recent sharp declines in prices, off hand I'd guess the "average equity %" nationally is perhaps 20% ??)* . IOW, say average home values fall another 10% this year, that would be a full 50% of mortgaged home borrowers whose equity is wiped out. These numbers are guesses but you get the idea. It then becomes in most of these people's best interest to walk away. Vicious cycle, all of it engineered me thinks, as evidenced in this thread with all the MSM stories preaching what perfect sense it makes to walk away from an underwater property. The controlled media wouldn't be running such stories if their bankster-bosses didn't wish it so. If sellers decide to list with a realtor, they're looking at paying 4-6% commish, so really they're at the water line when they've nominally got 6% equity... walk-away/foreclosures beget lower prices, beget more people incentivised to walk-away, begets... Check the latest crash news at patrick.net (http://patrick.net) to get a feel for the general direction of real estate...

*edit to add: the "average (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average)" vs the "median (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median)" equity percentage numbers would also be critical here- as I'm certain that the "median home equity %" presently would be much lower than 20%; my SWAG (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=scientific-wild-ass+guess) would be maybe 10% median equity? That is, today, of every home borrower whose above water but still mortgaged, ~50% of them have between 0-10% equity, and the other ~50% are spread out between 10-99.9% equity. This lopsided distribution will obviously affect the raw numbers of home borrowers whose remaining equity gets wiped out with each percentage-point drop in home values from today. Again, SWAG-numbers but you get the idea. Don't forget to figure in that 6% realtor commish when calculating "recoverable" equity percentage!

Underwater mortgages rise as home prices fall (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Underwater-mortgages-rise-as-apf-1329138840.html)

[woodman]

Remember, every say, 1% which the average home falls in value, that causes another ~5% of home borrowers who go under water, due to the leverage of their mortgages (purely guessing on that 5% number here, depends on how much equity the "average mortgaged home borrower" has in their home, and I don't know what that number is-- but with the recent sharp declines in prices, off hand I'd guess the "average equity %" nationally is perhaps 20% ??) . IOW, say average home values fall another 10% this year, that would be a full 50% of mortgaged home borrowers whose equity is wiped out. These numbers are guesses but you get the idea. It then becomes in most of these people's best interest to walk away. Vicious cycle, all of it engineered me thinks, as evidenced in this thread with all the MSM stories preaching what perfect sense it makes to walk away from an underwater property. The controlled media wouldn't be running such stories if their bankster-bosses didn't wish it so. If sellers decide to list with a realtor, they're looking at paying 4-6% commish, so really they're at the water line when they've nominally got 6% equity... walk-away/foreclosures beget lower prices, beget more people incentivised to walk-away, begets... Check the latest crash news at patrick.net (http://patrick.net) to get a feel for the general direction of real estate...

Underwater mortgages rise as home prices fall (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Underwater-mortgages-rise-as-apf-1329138840.html)





Great link Pat.

[Jazkal]

IMO, the reason there is a shift in the media portrayal of "walk aways", is because more and more people are finding out that the bankers got so greedy, they royally screwed themselves. As it turns out, the majority of people with a mortgage could probably fight using the system and get their house free and clear.

However if the homeowner just walks away and doesn't fight for it, then the banks have it easy. That is the sole reason the media is now making it morally "Okay" now to walk away from your mortgage.

[mick silver]

i seen some were the other day a guy telling everyone home value would drop 25% more this year . i wish i could find the link . if this happen there will be alot more people walking away from there loans .

[PatColo]

IMO, the reason there is a shift in the media portrayal of "walk aways", is because more and more people are finding out that the bankers got so greedy, they royally screwed themselves. As it turns out, the majority of people with a mortgage could probably fight using the system and get their house free and clear.

However if the homeowner just walks away and doesn't fight for it, then the banks have it easy. That is the sole reason the media is now making it morally "Okay" now to walk away from your mortgage.




Interesting theory, and I don't doubt there could be some truth to it! Banksters seeing their legal/title standing hides in jeopardy with the MERS & CDO scandals, & coldly calculating, at least with a walkaway/foreclosure WE get the house, rather than the lowly mortgagee getting it free & clear, should they wise up and take us to court protesting the fraudulent aspects of the mortgage, and WIN, heaven forbid!

However, while I've heard of a few mortgage cases in the lower courts where the judgment in favor of the home borrower surprised me, I suspect that if borrowers beating banksters in the lower courts were to start to gain traction en masse, the banksters would escalate a carefully selected case to our Talmudic/Masonic US Supreme Court, which would shoe-horn whatever warped, nonsensical legal logic were necessary [IE Gore v Bush] into making a bankster-friendly judgment, which would put a decisive end to the trend of lowly working-slave home borrowers stealing houses from the banksters! >:( [Houses which the banksters didn't build & never owned a piece of, prior to printing the mortgage money out of thin air, and loaning it out at compounding interest to the lowly home borrower.]

[dys]

Fiat currency is just a proxy for labor, in and of itself it is worthless. Of course the bank would rather have land and houses NOW as opposed to waiting 30 years for worthless slips of paper. In fact, by the time the mortgages gets paid off the slips of paper won't even have a perceived value (or at the very best they will be worth much less). One thing that I disagree with is that banks try to crash the values of homes in order to get bargains. They never had any skin in the game in the first place, there is no better bargain than free. The crashing of markets is done as a cover for their theft.

About PMs- I keep saying this and I know I'm in the minority here, but I believe the value of gold and silver is much less than what most on this forum believe. First of all, the rich people own the overwhelming majority of them so unless you can somehow convince them to hand all of it over voluntarily, they can control the price in perpetuity. Second of all, outside of certain mechanical uses and aesthetic value, I don't see how PM are actual wealth in the same way as things like infrastructure, land, food, farms, heavy equipment, etc.

dys

[woodman]

In reply to your post Dys, I think you are missing the point with pm's. They cannot be printed into existence and they are very usefull; Silver more than gold. If gold was cheaper, it would no doubt find many industrial uses.

As to the mortgage debacle, I don't understand why the banks want to hold these properties for so long. You'd think they'd be happy to let these houses sell for a lot less just to get rid of them. My sister-in-law runs a property care business. She deals almost exclusively in repossessed homes. She has been making money hand-over-fist for years now. She has crews that just clean out properties, winterize homes and mow lawns in addition to other upkeep chores. Just mowing these lawns month after month and paying the taxes has got to be draining a lot of money. What the hell is their plan?

[mick silver]

you made a good point woodman . with all the money to upkeep the homes going out maybe china will be getting there pay back sooner then later ... just a thought land an homes for china

[PatColo]

One thing that I disagree with is that banks try to crash the values of homes in order to get bargains.


This is where we get into my own conspiratorial subtext in this thread- namely that the engineered RE bubble inflation and current crash underway, are NWO-related (I consider Agenda 21 a component of the NWO plan, along with regional trade agreements etc).

In the 1930s engineered depression, the game was surely as you describe: banksters pop a bubble they created and then grab all the hard assets at pennies on the dollar, wash-rinse-repeat. But this time, I speculate, the game afoot is rolling out "global communism" so to speak, at least the no-more-private-property aspect of textbook-communism... the NWO will plainly have a textbook-fascism element as well. TPTB have conspired hard for decades to make current events, like the elimination (controlled demolition) of the Middle Class, all look like a big accident. But of course it's not; it's the biggest Order-Out-Of-Chaos play in history. The current "housing value crash" & "foreclosure crisis" & "economic crisis" (chaos) are just a big transitional step.

woodman- re "As to the mortgage debacle, I don't understand why the banks want to hold these properties for so long", I'd speculate an answer with the same theme: the banksters aren't moving their REOs (look up "shadow inventory") because of the larger NWO game afoot- namely bankster.gov (I see them as interchangeable, as .gov are servants of TPTB/banksters) will soon "own it all" anyways as the master plan progresses. Yes they're selling some REOs, but such a huge percentage aren't even listed for sale anywhere, which would seem to defy logic (they should want them off their books, right?). I could speculate they're just "moderating the pace of the crash" this way (it's gotta look like an accident, remember). I can't read their minds beyond that and they're surely not being transparent as to what they're thinking... so us tin foil hatters are just left to connect dots & speculate.


The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. - Edgar J Hoover

[Horn]

the banksters would escalate a carefully selected case to our Talmudic/Masonic US Supreme Court, which would shoe-horn whatever warped, nonsensical legal logic were necessary

In the end the smart fish will be set free, of course the choice of being sent to prison for remaining will be the only other option.

[VX1]

Just about 10% down the past thirty days. I believe it's all coming down faster than it went up. We had already hit 1999 prices, so I guess we'll be winding this all the way back to 1971. Thanks Nixon, et al.

[PatColo]

Just about 10% down the past thirty days. I believe it's all coming down faster than it went up. We had already hit 1999 prices, so I guess we'll be winding this all the way back to 1971. Thanks Nixon, et al.


I use zillow all the time, there's a lot of good hard data there, but their "zestimates" are to be taken with a grain of salt. I've seen them jerk around pretty erratically. Their price model pretty much sees neighborhood and (price per) square feet based on recent sales activity. It's blind to anything else about the properties, IE improvements, view etc. But I still look at their zestimates, as imperfect as they are on house A vs house B, the general direction the zestimate moves is probably a decent aggregate index of the direction of the neighborhood. Check redfin.com too, they give some different data, also useful.

I'd guess there were a couple of recent distress-sales or foreclosure sales in your neighborhood which closed at fire sale prices, and thus suddenly jerked down the zestimate numbers for the whole neighborhood. Check your neighbors' addresses to see if they lost similar zestimate amounts in the past 30 days. These distress sales are legitimate comparables though, part of the equation like it or not, they're one of the leading factors dragging down everyone's values. You could say, your zestimate number was simply too high a month ago, based on lack of recent activity to adjust their model with... closed, recorded sales prices are necessary to make accurate price estimates, not "asking prices" or "2006 prices" etc. You'd be surprised how many sellers don't get this- I see listings all the time which are asking pie in the sky too high; I just think, poor deluded seller, they're gonna chase the market down, and meanwhile they've got an "alligator house", IE they feed it, or it eats them.

[PatColo]

few interesting ones,

‘Strategic defaulters’ pay bills on time and plan ahead, study finds (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/strategic-defaulters-pay-bills-on-time-and-plan-ahead-study-finds/2011/04/21/AFcGQSLE_story.html)


FICO Can Read Underwater Homeowners Minds (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/fico-can-read-underwater-homeowners-minds/237693/)


Even bail bonds are being affected by the housing market (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ontheblock/detail?source=patrick.net&entry_id=87701)

[Horn]

FICO Can Read Underwater Homeowners Minds (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/fico-can-read-underwater-homeowners-minds/237693/)


Banks and servicers must be pretty excited to get their hands on this sort of predictive power. Why is this information so valuable? In many cases, banks can take preemptive action to prevent strategic default before it happens.

For example, let's say your home is worth $100,000 less than your mortgage balance. You know that walking away will ding your otherwise relatively strong credit record, but you determine it probably won't do $100,000 in damage. It makes sense for you to walk away. That is, unless the bank gets to you first to convince you otherwise. Perhaps it encourage you to do a short sale before you ever go delinquent on your mortgage. The bank will likely incur a smaller loss due to foreclosure-related costs it escapes.

The borrower's credit score will be better off as well.

http://teknoise.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Sanctum-2011-movie.jpg

[PatColo]

Strategic defaults could get very ugly (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/strategic-defaults-could-get-very-ugly-2011-05-04) (marketwatch.com)


Can't pay the mortgage? Maybe the bank will pay you to leave (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ontheblock/detail?source=patrick.net&entry_id=88207) (sfgate.com)


Walk away..and lose $116k to boot! (http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2011/04/29/walking-away-loses-couple-116-000-in-cash/?source=patrick.net&icid=main%7Cnetscape%7Cdl8%7Csec3_lnk2%7C211647#Po st) (realestate.aol.com)

[Ponce]

"They only tell you what they want you to know, or what they cannot longer hide"... Ponce

That's the only reason as to why 60 minutes decided to come out with the "news" but not give you the reason for the "happening", is one of the 10,00 lbs elephant in the room that no one can ignored.

I know for danm sure that that those like me will be next, my home is paid for and I have low tax on it... $560.00 a year.......if they were to keep it at 3% per year I could then live with that but I know that they will come up with some kind of a new reason for increasing the tax, even if the house is now worth less.

[Horn]

60 minutes should post the ARMS charts created by
different banks, ROFL, scare the hell out of everyone
watching. Hump two is coming, roughly a year away.

GS is poised to make money on commercial real estate
collapse the way they did with hump one on the ARMS
charts, can't let AIG go bankrupt. LOL

60 minutes is quiet. They too are shysters and in on it.
Hump two is all over in a year, the 2nd hump is 2011.

http://gold-silver.us/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=21870.0;attach=640 0;image


Amazing how many indicators end up dropping off a cliff in late 2012, isn't it?

[mick silver]

what get me if i am reading this chart right is that it fall off more in the coming years

[Son-of-Liberty]

Something I've never heard discussed is this.

When the first few rounds of bailouts were headed towards wall st. why did nobody suggest that instead of just handing over billions to "shore up" the balance sheets of the bankers, why didn't they take this money and pay down everyone's principal on their home loans?

This would've still shored up the balance sheets of wall st. and also helped working joe who may have gotten his hours cut back at work.

But as it stands, Wall St. gets trillions for free, AND they get the principal AND they get the usurious interest. So they win no matter what angle you look at it, meanwhile the responsible people (as always) get stuck with 100% of the tab.

Of course I am against any kind of bailouts because they are immoral but if you are gonna do it this sure makes a helluva lot more sense than just handing them trillions.


I was saying this the entire time. Wasn't hard to see that if delinquent mortgages caused the problem that bringing them current would solve the problem. The home owner gets bailed out and the banker gets their money. No way they were going to do that though because their goal is the destruction of the middle class.

[Cobalt]

Something I've never heard discussed is this.

When the first few rounds of bailouts were headed towards wall st. why did nobody suggest that instead of just handing over billions to "shore up" the balance sheets of the bankers, why didn't they take this money and pay down everyone's principal on their home loans?

This would've still shored up the balance sheets of wall st. and also helped working joe who may have gotten his hours cut back at work.

But as it stands, Wall St. gets trillions for free, AND they get the principal AND they get the usurious interest. So they win no matter what angle you look at it, meanwhile the responsible people (as always) get stuck with 100% of the tab.

Of course I am against any kind of bailouts because they are immoral but if you are gonna do it this sure makes a helluva lot more sense than just handing them trillions.


I was saying this the entire time. Wasn't hard to see that if delinquent mortgages caused the problem that bringing them current would solve the problem. The home owner gets bailed out and the banker gets their money. No way they were going to do that though because their goal is the destruction of the middle class.



I was against any bailout from the very beginning.

Wall St and the bankers made bad business decisions and should have paid the price any other business would have and that is lose the business, I don't buy "the too big to fail" crap.
For institutions that were supposedly on the brink of failure they still managed to cash in on record bonuses.

As far as bailing out homeowners, my feelings are the same, many people took out mortgages that put them way above a responsible debt to income ratio and I don't feel I as a responsible homeowner should be expected to pay for their bad decisions.
They are the ones that felt they needed or deserved the large house with two brand new vehicles sitting in the driveway and big screen TV's in every room, even when they realized they were in over their heads they continued to spend money they didn't have on items they could not afford.

I don't care if you are a Wall St investor or a homeowner, if you live beyond your means and or make bad decisions then at the end of the day you need to pay the piper.

I'm am sorry that it didn't work out like they expected, but the high expectations they had were beyond reasonable to begin with.

[Horn]

I'm am sorry that it didn't work out like they expected, but the high expectations they had were beyond reasonable to begin with.


Bankers don't give reasonable loans, the smaller & more manageable the loan is, the more unreasonable it will be made.

[Book]

https://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/homes-under-water.jpg?w=500&h=703

Housing Crash Is Getting Worse, Not Better (https://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/housing-crash-is-getting-worse-not-better/)

[Cobalt]

I'm am sorry that it didn't work out like they expected, but the high expectations they had were beyond reasonable to begin with.


Bankers don't give reasonable loans, the smaller & more manageable the loan is, the more unreasonable it will be made.


What's not reasonable about the loans they have been tossing out these last few years?
0% down, less then 5% interest, debt too income level sky high and the opportunity to refi the loan anytime you want.

When I took my mortgage out I had to have 10% cash down (had to prove that I actually had the money in the bank for 6 months prior), 8% interest, no more then a 25% debt too income level, I wasn't able to refi or change anything on the loan for 2 years including primary residence status.

Even at 8% interest I was able to pay off a 30 year loan in 14 years all by myself.


People now a days even with two incomes manage to string out a 30 year loan to 50 years because they refi refi refi and take the equity out of the house every time so they can buy useless crap they can neither afford or need.

[PatColo]

https://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/homes-under-water.jpg?w=500&h=703

Housing Crash Is Getting Worse, Not Better (https://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/housing-crash-is-getting-worse-not-better/)


Great artwork in that one!


Report: 85 percent of Las Vegas homeowners with mortgage are underwater (http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2011/may/09/report-85-percent-las-vegas-homeowners-mortgage-ar/)


Underwater Houseowners Rise to 28 Percent (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-09/u-s-underwater-homeowners-increase-to-28-percent-zillow-says.html)


Bankrupt SF Bay Area homeowners shed second mortgages (http://www.mercurynews.com/real-estate/ci_18011666?source=patrick.net)
"... Bankruptcy laws prevent homeowners from eliminating the debt of a first mortgage if they plan to stay in their home. But second mortgages are treated differently. They can be declared unsecured debt when there is no equity to cover them, as is the case for millions of houses that are now worth far less than a few years ago.

When that happens in a personal bankruptcy proceeding, the second mortgage is put on hold and no payments are required while the homeowner completes a repayment plan for other debts -- which typically takes three to five years. At that point, the second mortgage is eliminated. [...]"

[Still Barbaro]

https://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/homes-under-water.jpg?w=500&h=703

Thanks for the article, Pat Colo

The part where it states (to paraphrase) that 'housing will decline further as much as 9%' is where the rubber hits the road.

Where the bottom is I don't know. But it's not even important where the bottom is at this point.

I'm one of the few Americans who never looked favorably on "buying a house" or considering "home ownership" (Translation --> 30 mortgage loan with interest) as an "investment" or vehicle for retirement.

For some people, in certain areas, that bought at a certain time, yes, their house could be an investment vehicle, and also help them in their latter years.

Now, a mortgage loan is a mortgage loan, and for the most part, people are paying for a place to live.

[ximmy]

https://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/homes-under-water.jpg?w=500&h=703

Thanks for the article, Pat Colo

The part where it states (to paraphrase) that 'housing will decline further as much as 9%' is where the rubber hits the road.

Where the bottom is I don't know. But it's not even important where the bottom is at this point.

I'm one of the few Americans who never looked favorably on "buying a house" or considering "home ownership" (Translation --> 30 mortgage loan with interest) as an "investment" or vehicle for retirement.

For some people, in certain areas, that bought at a certain time, yes, their house could be an investment vehicle, and also help them in their latter years.

Now, a mortgage loan is a mortgage loan, and for the most part, people are paying for a place to live.


Housing costs $$$ no matter if you purchase or rent... I don't try to see it as a investment bonanza... For me, ownership means avoiding rent payments in the future

[PatColo]

Bankrupt SF Bay Area homeowners shed second mortgages (http://www.mercurynews.com/real-estate/ci_18011666?source=patrick.net)
"... Bankruptcy laws prevent homeowners from eliminating the debt of a first mortgage if they plan to stay in their home. But second mortgages are treated differently. They can be declared unsecured debt when there is no equity to cover them, as is the case for millions of houses that are now worth far less than a few years ago.

When that happens in a personal bankruptcy proceeding, the second mortgage is put on hold and no payments are required while the homeowner completes a repayment plan for other debts -- which typically takes three to five years. At that point, the second mortgage is eliminated. [...]"


I started a thread on this specific topic, if you wish to discuss separately,

Underwater home-debtors eliminate 2nd's in bankruptcy: declared "unsecured debt" (http://gold-silver.us/forum/general-discussion/underwater-home-debtors-eliminate-2nd%27s-in-bankruptcy-declared-%27unsecured-debt%27/msg225895/#msg225895)

In the OP, I also note:

Strategic Defaulters Be Aware : Lenders Will Go After Borrowers Personally For Unpaid 2nd Mortgages aka Junior Liens (http://www.strategicdefault.org/2010/04/strategic-defaulters-be-aware-lenders.html)

[PatColo]

Walk away from your mortgage? Time to get 'ruthless' (money.cnn.com)
http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/07/real_estate/walk_away_mortgage/index.htm


More Homeowners With Second Mortgages Are Underwater (online.wsj.com)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304906004576369844062260756.html


House clearance sale coming from 'desperate' sellers (money.cnn.com)
http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/01/real_estate/summer_clearance_sale


Leaving North Las Vegas no option for many 'underwater' houseowners (latimes.com)
http://www.latimes.com/la-na-underwater-homeowners-20110531,0,4759989.story


Foreclosed houses now 28 percent of all house sales (centralvalleybusinesstimes.com)
http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?source=patrick.net&ID=18508


Strategic default consequences minor and likely to decrease (irvinehousingblog.com)
http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/blog/comments/strategic-default-consequences-minor-and-likely-to-decrease/


Strategic defaults on mortgages (chicagotribune.com)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0522-strategic-defaults--20110522,0,5810932,full.story


Almost half of Miami-Dade's mortgage holders still underwater (miamiherald.com)
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/07/2255464/report-almost-half-of-miami-dades.html


Large swaths of Central Valley under water -- mortgage-wise (centralvalleybusinesstimes.com)
http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?source=patrick.net&ID=18611

[Cebu_4_2]

Need sources for help.

[Barbaro]

I read the article 2 days by ago by Shiller. We're looking at another 10-25% in declines, perhaps.

BTW,

I had to create this new username because "Still Barbaro" wouldn't work on the new setup. Anyway, hello again.

[PatColo]

a few recent stories taken from patrick.net (http://patrick.net/housing/market.html),

Squatter Nation: 5 years with no mortgage payment (http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/09/real_estate/foreclosure_squatter/index.htm?source=patrick.net#storycontent) (money.cnn.com)

Delinquent mortgage squatters: the legacy of the housing bubble (http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/blog/comments/delinquent-mortgage-squatters-the-legacy-of-the-housing-bubble/#comments?source=patrick.net#blogtitle) (irvinehousingblog.com)

Housing prices will fall another 20 percent (http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new-economy/2011/0616/Housing-prices-will-fall-another-20-percent?source=patrick.net#mainColumn) (csmonitor.com)

Foreclosures might swamp isle courts (http://www.staradvertiser.com/business/20110615_foreclosures_might_swamp_isle_courts.html ?source=patrick.net) (staradvertiser.com)

House clearance sale expected to begin in earnest this summer (http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/blog/comments/home-clearance-sale-expected-to-begin-in-earnest-this-summer/?source=patrick.net#blogtitle) (irvinehousingblog.com)

Americans' equity in their houses near a record low (http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-06-09-US-Home-Equity/id-25828d5b788d4c249be6be6aa3227abb?source=patrick.ne t) (hosted2.ap.org)

[PatColo]

ETA: I also made a separate GSUS thread on this one, got a few good replies now:
Thread: which entity loses money when I foreclose on my house? (http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?51285-which-entity-loses-money-when-I-foreclose-on-my-house)



This is the OP to a discussion thread @ patrick.net forum - you'll want to check it out there for the replies.


which entity loses money when I foreclose on my house? (http://patrick.net/forum/?p=843902)


By twd000 (http://patrick.net/forum/?author=17446) Wed, 22 Jun 2011, 8:57pm 512 views 23 comments (http://patrick.net/forum/?p=843902#comments) http://patrick.net/forum/wp-content/themes/default/closedeye.png Watch (http://patrick.net/forum/?p=843902&want_email=1) Quote (http://patrick.net/forum/?p=843902#commentform) Email Link (http://patrick.net/forum/?p=843902)

I am trying to figure out why banks are not more willing to do serious loan modifications for homeowners who are strategically defaulting.


I understand all the previous govt interventions have been failures, in that they focus on people who are way overextended on credit, or have recent economic hardship, etc. So the few modifications that were done just delayed the inevitable, the people never had a realistic probability of paying the mortgage, and the money was wasted.


But none of the programs have focused on people who are the most underwater, the group I think is most likely to strategically default.



I bought a very modest ($200k) affordable house in 2007. I can still make the payments comfortably, but the house value is down something like 40% from what I paid. We are looking to move in the next couple years anyway, so just for kicks I went down to Chase and applied for another mortgage. They approved me for another loan roughly equal to my current loan, at 4.5%, FHA-backed, only 3.5% downpayment required.


So to me, this is a no-brainer. Wait till there is some significant stabilization in the local market, then jump ship. Get the new mortgage written, then call up Bank #1 and see if they’re “willing to talk”. I fully expect them to extend and pretend and eventually foreclose on the place, taking something like a 20-30% hit in the process.


A couple homes down the street have gone for $76k and $99k after foreclosures. The banks know that they will have to pay HOA fees, property taxes and insurance, and eventually accept a below-market value for my house if they foreclose. It is obvious to me that the banks don’t want to be in the home-ownership business. Why aren’t they willing to write down principal to near-market value for people threatening to default?



My loan was sold twice after securitizing and mergers, so I’m not really sure who takes the haircut when I bail out? Are the MBS held in bond funds that lose value when I default? Does BofA have to take the full brunt of the loss? Does the government take some part of the loss (mine is not an FHA loan)?


Please try to refrain on commenting of the morality of strategic default; I’m not interested in what you think of me personally and I promise not to tell you what I think of you! Just trying to figure out where the buck stops and why banks are slow-playing the default crisis instead of writing down principal.

see replies (evolving) @ http://patrick.net/forum/?p=843902

[PatColo]

This Is What A Collapsing Ponzi Scheme Looks Like: Housing Market Headed Off A Cliff As A Shocking 10.8 Million Mortgages At Risk Of Default (http://daviddegraw.org/2011/07/this-is-what-a-collasping-ponzi-scheme-looks-like-housing-market-headed-off-a-cliff-as-a-shocking-10-8-million-mortgages-at-risk-of-default/)

July 27th, 2011 · · Economy (http://daviddegraw.org/category/economy/), Hotlist (http://daviddegraw.org/category/hotlist/)

http://ampedstatus.org/images/housing-ponzi.jpg
You might want to sit down for this one. As bad as the housing crisis has been over the past three years, it has only been a warm up to what we have headed our way. Laurie Goodman, from Amherst Securities, has been tracking the housing market as well as anyone. She just presented her latest findings at the American Enterprise Institute and it is a horrific forecast, to say the least. As she puts it, “10.81 million homes are at risk of default over the next 6 years. Even if we try to be extremely conservative we can’t get the number below 8.7 million units.”

With defaults already piling up, the shadow inventory of homes has been growing rapidly, and given this new data (http://www.aei.org/docLib/AEI%2007-21-2011%20Goodman.pdf) the number is going to skyrocket. As this chart shows, the total has gone up from 2 million homes in 2009 to 3.35 million as of April, a 67.5% increase already.

http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4e2e9a77eab8ea197c000034/chart.jpg

The Atlantic explains this shadow inventory chart: “What’s happening to the homes of all those defaulted borrowers that we hear about? Many of those properties are a part of so-called shadow inventory. This is the sort of limbo between when a home’s loan defaults and when the property is put on the market for purchase. The increase shown above is staggering. The shaded area shows mortgages more than 12 months delinquent or in foreclosure (darker blue) and those seized by the bank (lighter blue).”

Laurie Goodman’s full presentation is available in pdf format here (http://www.aei.org/docLib/AEI%2007-21-2011%20Goodman.pdf).

Obviously this is going to significantly drive home prices further down, as I reported a few weeks ago, 28% of US homeowners already owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. A recent survey by Fannie Mae found that 27% of American homeowners are considering walking away from their mortgage.

A perfect storm is brewing. As prices continue to drop, with 10 million now at risk of default, a strategic default movement (http://ampedstatus.org/a-mass-strategic-default-movement-begins-time-to-rebel-against-economic-tyranny-by-walking-away-from-your-mortgage-payments-opesr/) could devastate the “too big to fail” banks that caused this mess in the first place.

With all this trouble headed their way, no wonder they are fighting hard to, as Reuters put it (http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2011/07/21/207328.htm), get “immunity over irregularities in handling foreclosures, even as evidence has emerged that banks are continuing to file questionable documents (http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2011/07/21/207328.htm).” They can attempt to fraudulently paper over reality, play accounting games, “extend and pretend (http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl3/extend-and-pretend.html)” and buy off all the state attorneys and regulators they want, even have the Fed, Treasury, Congress and the president in their pocket; they can buy all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, but they can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

This is what a collapsing Ponzi scheme looks like.

We must break up the “too big to fail” banks and end this RICO racket now. As the data proves, the longer we wait, the uglier this is going to get.

[PatColo]

A Mass ‘Strategic Default’ Movement Begins – Time to Rebel Against Economic Tyranny By Walking Away From Your Mortgage Payments (OpESR) (http://ampedstatus.org/a-mass-strategic-default-movement-begins-time-to-rebel-against-economic-tyranny-by-walking-away-from-your-mortgage-payments-opesr/)

June 17th, 2011

As a result of fraudulent actions by the “Too Big to Fail” banks, 28% of US homeowners now owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. A new survey by Fannie Mae found that 27% of American homeowners are considering walking away from their mortgage. Why should we be forced to pay an overvalued mortgage when it was the big banks who wrecked the housing market? After getting bailed out with trillions of our tax dollars, the big banks are reaping record profits and their executives are giving themselves record bonuses. Meanwhile, as they continue to push home values off a cliff, we are forced to pay for their crimes with outrageous mortgage payments and increased property taxes.

This scandalous exploitation of the American public has to stop. The time is now to strategically default on mortgage payments en masse. A National Mortgage Default Action (https://www.facebook.com/OpESR#%21/event.php?eid=234088363273978) will begin on the 4th of July. Celebrate your financial Independence by joining this movement here (https://www.facebook.com/OpESR#%21/event.php?eid=234088363273978).

Full Call to Action:
“Here we stand on the precipice of financial and spiritual collapse. An economic virus has been allowed to infiltrate the homes of decent and upstanding people which deters us from living the way we would like.

There comes a time in all of our lives where we must stand up for ourselves and our livelihoods – not only because of the crisis we are currently facing and the oppression we have been dealt; but for the livelihoods of our children, and the betterment of society as a whole.

Banks have foreclosed on millions of homes throughout the United States. These homes – now empty – were once lived in by everyday people like you and me. These American families have now been cast aside into a crumbling economy.

With long-term unemployment at an all-time high; with an all-time record number of American families now living paycheck-to-paycheck struggling to make ends meet, We The People of this great nation must unite and take our lives back; take back our self-esteem, and take back the glory that has been stolen from us via unethical means from these malicious banking magnates.

As the “Too Big to Fail” banks are bailed out with our hard-earned taxpayer dollars, we are made homeless and to suffer at the hands of tyrants.

We ask you, as the people of America: what will it take to get you to stand up and be the empowered citizen you are?

The time is now! We can be the proud Americans we should be by rising up in spirit, by making a stand and taking action. The action we propose is a mass default on mortgage payments to show these degenerate bankers that they are here to serve the public interest – not to fleece the nation and line their own pockets, while we struggle for bread and milk. In doing so, you will not be alone: there are millions of families who have questions unanswered, and mouths that go unfed.

A stunning 50 percent of US children will use a food stamp during their childhood. Millions of children go hungry in America every night because they are forced to pay an overvalued mortgage. Millions of American children go without health care and medicine because they are forced to pay an overvalued mortgage.

These tyrannical practices can not continue.

We must UNITE and take our money and power back from those that systematically and routinely run us into the gutter. We are reaching out to you in hopes that your own lives have not been tread upon to the point where you no longer have the will to fight for what is good, wholesome, and right. Please consider joining this movement by not paying your mortgage. Show the banks that they do not own us.
We do not need the banks, they need us.

Thank You People of The United States of America for your time and consideration.

Be well and happy!”

- Operation Empire State Rebellion
Join this National Mortgage Default Action here (https://www.facebook.com/OpESR#%21/event.php?eid=234088363273978).

[LastResort]

Don't own property thats just silly renting makes more sense...:'( Most people will probably believe this idiot.

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/Rental-complex-canadianbiz-2184097582.html

Joanna Pachner, On Tuesday July 26, 2011, 11:03 am EDT

Home ownership, the Canadian Dream—Barry Bradey lived it with gusto. Over the past decade, the health and finance entrepreneur owned three houses in the affluent Toronto suburb of Oakville, and watched each soar in value. But after a divorce and a business failure, he needed cash on hand. So last fall Bradey (who asked that we use a pseudonym) did some back-of-a-napkin math. The 3,500-square-foot house he wanted would cost about $850,000. Even with $400,000 down, the mortgage would cost him roughly $3,000 a month. Add property tax and maintenance and "that's $5,000 a month before you turn on the lights." Utilities, insurance and various amenities would be another grand. He also figured the downpayment came at an opportunity cost of about six per cent, equivalent to another $2,000 or so a month. He bounced these numbers off a local realtor friend; she thought the carrying cost should be closer to $12,000. Nevertheless, she insisted the house was worth the money because it was "an investment."

Bradey didn't buy that. To rent that same house would cost him—all in, and worry-free—about $3,500 a month. A 53-year-old father of two with a startup venture underway, Bradey did the financially prudent thing. He now rents a large townhouse in the same neighbourhood for $2,200 a month. "With a house, its market value might go up or down, but it would cost me $8,000 to live there," he says. "My logic is, renting gives me flexibility. I won't have to pay five per cent [commission] if I want to leave."

This is not yet another story about the real estate bubble. It's a story about why more of us don't do what Bradey did. The belief that we're not responsible adults until we own our home, whether or not we can afford it, has distorted and stigmatized the cheaper and safer alternative: renting. And we're literally paying the price.

Over the past decade, as the value of the average Canadian home doubled, and tripled in some areas, rents remained stable or even declined. As a result, it now costs more than twice as much to own that average home as it does to rent it. In May, Ben Rabidoux, an Ontario financial adviser (and an unapologetic renter) who runs the Economic Analyst blog, illustrated the unprecedented gap that's opened between the cost of renting and owning with a series of fever graphs charting rents and housing prices in seven cities across the country. The lines track more or less in sync until a decade ago, when they diverge as home prices shoot toward the stratosphere, the gap growing wider with each year, like huge jaws swallowing homeowners' retirement savings and vacation budgets and pushing them further into debt.

Even before the recent run-up, renting suffered under the perception it's money thrown away that could be put toward building equity—a myth the surging home values have transformed into a near religion. Fed by this belief, Canada's home ownership rate rose to eclipse most other rich nations', up almost 10 per cent since 2000. Today, two-thirds of households live in privately owned homes, rising to 70 per cent in Vancouver and 74 per cent in Calgary. In New York, Paris or San Francisco, that proportion is closer to a third. In fact, in much of Europe, lifelong renting is the socially respectable norm, backed by rent controls and tenant protection laws.

With widespread warnings that we're approaching the peak of the housing boom, with Canadians more indebted than ever, largely due to their outsize home investments, and with cities like Toronto boasting some of the lowest rents among major world centres, why aren't more of us re-examining the math? The reasons are cultural and emotional, backed by ill-conceived public policy. This Canadian Dream is an expensive delusion. There's never been a better time to rent.

Every asset class has standard ways to measure value. For stocks, there's the price-to-earnings ratio; for bonds, there are different yields. For real estate, the typical valuation ratios are price to income (what you can afford to buy) and price or buy to rent (what you could make in cash flow). According to Ed Sollbach, a Desjardins Securities strategist, the buy-rent ratio for the four biggest Canadian cities is currently above 2:1 —meaning it costs twice as much to buy as to rent the average home—and 3.1:1 in Vancouver. That ratio, it bears noting, only compares rent to mortgage costs; it doesn't include the various expenses entailed in home ownership—taxes, maintenance, insurance—that can more than double the monthly outlay.

It's long been established that, over the long term and after adjusting for inflation, housing produces almost no return on investment. The calculus looks even bleaker for people who don't hold on to their properties for long. And that's most of us. In Vancouver, for example, a recent survey found that half of new condo buyers expected to live in their units less than six years. When commission and closing costs, maintenance, moving and other expenses are added up, the sum can easily eclipse any equity amassed in that short time—even in a city with a skyrocketing condo market. What's more, in the first years of ownership, your mortgage payments are going primarily to paying interest on the loan. Renters and owners both "throw money away"; the former just toss it to landlords and the latter to bankers. Or as Rabidoux, who's writing a book about our housing obsession, puts it, "the majority of new homeowners are still renters; they've just gone from renting space to renting money."

While financial gains from home ownership are iffy at best, the opportunity cost is significant. When Alexandre Pestov, a strategic consultant and research associate at York University's Schulich School of Business, compared buying a two-bedroom Toronto condominium to renting it over the past 25 years, he found that the renter ended up $600,000 richer than the owner if he invested the spare cash in low-risk bonds. Several other studies have reached similar conclusions: renting while you conservatively invest your savings is financially smarter than buying a home.

"We have a very distorted picture right now," says Pestov, "because of the very low interest rates and the influx of speculative capital." While these factors have propelled the buying spree, they've also been great boons to renters. The condo boom, for example, owes a lot to "specuvestors" who rent their units before flipping them. Since they're looking to cash in on the price appreciation, as long as the rent covers their mortgage payments, they figure they're ahead. Cheap mortgages, combined with rent control laws in most large provinces (except Alberta), have meant that this new stockpile of condos has suppressed rental prices. "In Toronto, it's a big factor," says Vince Brescia, president of the Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario (FRPO). "This is brand new product, so it's very competitive."

Rents were also hit by a drop in demand as most people who could scrape together a downpayment rushed to buy. For example, in Ontario between 1996 and 2006, and especially in the last decade, tenant households dropped by 84,000. "It's unprecedented," says Brescia. "You have to go back to the 1940s to find the last time tenant numbers declined." Facing sliding demand and a surging supply, landlords refrained from jacking up rents. As a result, the growth in rents in Ontario has not even kept pace with increases allowed by rent control laws.

This confluence of trends has made renting uncommonly affordable. In fact, recent studies by both the International Monetary Fund and the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development concluded that Canadian renters get a better deal compared to their owner counterparts than renters in almost every other wealthy country.

Still, many people factor in an ownership premium—the amount they'd pay over and above the cost of renting for the freedom, stability and simple bragging rights of having their own place. But it doesn't take a new homeowner long to discover just how large that premium can be in money and time: the constant outlays on maintenance and repairs (at least one per cent of the purchase price per year, experts estimate, and as much as four per cent), the chores and DIY projects that eat up weekends, the pressure to keep up with the ever-gentrifying Joneses. In fact, studies find that homeowners are no happier than renters and have higher levels of stress, largely due to the financial burden and greater time constraints.

Your lifestyle suffers, your worries mount—and yet, no matter how much data you throw at people, there's an ingrained belief that being a homeowner signifies maturity and that renting connotes instability and transience. Moshe Milevsky, a finance professor at Schulich and one of Canada's best-known home-ownership skeptics, has long argued that for young people with limited means and unrealized career potential, stowing most of their wealth in a single illiquid asset is foolhardy. Today, he thinks just about anyone would be better off renting. "I really wish I could sell my house and rent. Immediately!" he says. "The market is so overvalued. I'd sell to the biggest sucker. But my wife and kids would kill me." That's because, for most of us, financial considerations are only part of the equation. "The decision to purchase a house goes well beyond the practical," says Milevsky. "It's part of people's identity."

This feeling is particularly pronounced in the cities that have seen the biggest migration to ownership. Take Vancouver: "There's always been a high home-ownerships rate here, but through this recent mania, the stigma on renting has grown more extreme," explains the Vancouver Real Estate Anecdote Archivist (VREAA), a blogger who's tracked the housing run-up since early 2008 (and whose unpopular opinions have led to a carefully guarded anonymity). "It's very [common] for renters to go to a barbecue and feel sheepish when they speak to the brother-in-law or colleagues. And if you claim online that you can afford to buy but choose not to, you're jeered as clearly lying."

While the average price of a Vancouver home is now more than 11 times the average family's income, the rental market has stayed earthbound. But VREAA notes that the bubble has raised the "social cost" of renting. "[It's] become broadly socially synonymous with being relatively impoverished and disenfranchised," he wrote in a post that drew passionate debate. One respondent noted that people are renting luxury units in new buildings they can barely afford to give the illusion they own. Another said that even though renting saves him and his wife $4,000 per month, in social terms, "we've never felt poorer."

Vancouver may be extreme, but the stigma is just as real elsewhere. Bradey, the new convert to renting in Oakville, knows that his friends, who are largely well-to-do and own their homes, see his move as a regression. "Even in my own mind, I probably downgraded [my social status] from an A+ to a B+," he says. Still, he believes that, were most people who may pity him now forced to go without income for three months, they'd be in trouble.

Canadians' attitudes about housing have long been shaped by government policies and the tax system. There is a large discrepancy in taxpayer subsidies for owners and tenants, according to a study released last fall by the FRPO and the Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations (CFAA). The average homeowner receives $1,823 a year through programs such as tax-free capital gains on the sale of principal residences and the Home Buyers Plan that lets first-time buyers withdraw money from their RRSPs for downpayment. Renters, meanwhile, get $308—even though, on average, they have half the income of owners. CFAA president John Dickie argues that this situations benefits neither taxpayers nor the economy. "The government should get out of the business of encouraging people to own," he says.

There's a broader economic case for encouraging more people to rent. Aside from consumers' dangerously high levels of debt, having so much money concentrated in housing makes the whole economy less efficient. In his 2010 manifesto Renting the Dream: Housing in America after the Great Reset, University of Toronto professor Richard Florida goes so far as to paint home ownership as a relic of a different time. "Owning your home made sense when people could hope to hold a job for most or all of their lives," he writes. "But in an economy that revolves around mobility and flexibility, a house that can't be sold becomes an economic trap," preventing people from moving to where the jobs are. Studies in both Europe and the U.S. corroborate this argument, showing linkages between high home ownership rates and unemployment.

In the glow of our pride of ownership, we tend to forget that owning your residence is hardly the global norm. Quebec, where home ownership rates have been rising, remains a renting-friendly society, at least in the urban centres, and Montrealers who move to Toronto are often shocked by the pressure they feel to buy. In Switzerland, Sweden and other parts of Europe, particularly where rental markets are highly regulated, the majority rents. In fact, Germany, Europe's economic engine, has the European Union's highest proportion of renters, according to London-based property research firm RICS. In Berlin, 90 per cent of residents rent; in Hamburg, the share is 80 per cent. And renters aren't the lower-income contingent: professionals who spend half their earnings on rent are not uncommon. While Germans do want to own, they don't feel pressed to buy when they can't afford to, the way Americans, Canadians and Britons do. The difference can be traced to real estate market trajectories: Over the past decade, while housing bubbles percolated through much of Europe and in North America, home values rose less than three per cent in Germany. Renting has no stigma because Germans don't think of home ownership as an investment opportunity of a lifetime.

European governments are also less in-clined toward home ownership boosterism. In parts of Europe where renters dominate, tax regulations don't favour owners, rents are tightly controlled, unlimited-length leases are common, and supply of attractive apartments is plentiful. As a result, notes Dickie of the CFAA, European renters don't move as often as North Americans.

The European attitude is in line with the broader social trend of consumers focusing more on services rather than assets. Ten years ago, American economist Jeremy Rifkin predicted the onset of "the age of access," where we'd pay to use things, not own them. We already see this in other sectors, from the rapid growth of car-sharing to tech tools being rented off the Internet cloud. Richard Florida, for one, advocates what he calls "plug-and-play" housing, where flexible rental arrangements of furnished and unfurnished residences with hotel-style amenities will serve the increasingly mobile workforce.

In the U.S., after the fiasco of George W. Bush's "ownership society," a shift in mentality has already started. Home ownership has experienced the biggest decline in two decades, and the number of renting households has been growing by about 700,000 a year since 2006. In New York, San Francisco and other thriving cities, brokers are reporting sharply rising demand for luxury rentals, as affluent people who could afford to own decide there's no cachet anymore in being a homeowner, and lots of risk. Indeed, in a recent poll, 71 per cent of Americans conceded that renting has advantages over buying.

"Renting has become culturally accepted in the U.S.," says Desjardins strategist Sollbach, who's tracking the market correction. Ironically, this shift is happening at a time when the plunging prices in some regions make buying advantageous. "But Americans have had such dramatic losses that the whole idea of owning has been drummed out of people's minds," he says. "They've gone through a life-death experience." The equity markets have taken notice: the values of American apartment REITs have risen 72 per cent since early 2010.

Even in Canada, real estate dropouts seem to be on the rise. In the past year, major cities have occasionally seen bidding wars—not for homes but for prime rentals, with choice units renting for higher than asking price. But a broader shift likely won't happen until some economic factors—most notably mortgage rates—change. We prefer owning—even though, at $366,000, the average Canadian home today costs more than twice as much as its U.S. equivalent; even though a small increase in the lending rates will push scores of over-leveraged homeowners into crisis; even though Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney is practically guaranteeing that those higher rates are coming. We're still buying; in May, house prices rose 8.6 per cent nationally, and a stunning 25.7 per cent in Vancouver.

No one argues that owning a home is, in principle, a bad idea. But today, in this market, renting is a better one. After 12 years of rising real estate, a renter goes against a powerful cultural tide. But even if the housing bubble continues to inflate for months or years to come, it's high time to recalculate the ownership premium we are willing to pay.

[PatColo]

George4Title gives a good spiel here- at one point asserting that the "real shadow inventory" is everyone who's currently upside down on their mortgage, but still has a good job so they keep paying-- G4T suggests they will all eventually be walking away. Then he rants against the banksters.

Gravitational Collapse in Real Estate: "The Waterfall Effect" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCQiVSRGlT4)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCQiVSRGlT4


otherwise, here's a few recent walk-away & general RE-doom stories posted recently @ patrick.net,

Attorneys criticized for advertisement to induce strategic default (http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/blog/comments/attorneys-criticized-for-advertisement-to-induce-strategic-default/?source=patrick.net) (irvinehousingblog.com)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgGMTd9s90Y


Almost half of mortgages in Arizona are underwater (http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/07/25/20110725arizona-underwater-mortgages.html?source=patrick.net#fbLike) (azcentral.com)

Strategic default is moral imperative to prevent future housing bubbles (http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/blog/comments/strategic-default-is-moral-imperative-to-prevent-future-housing-bubbles/) (irvinehousingblog.com)

A couple more reasons to walk away (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ontheblock/detail?source=patrick.net&entry_id=91725&tsp=1) (sfgate.com)

Strategic default is moral imperative to prevent future housing bubbles (http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/blog/comments/strategic-default-is-moral-imperative-to-prevent-future-housing-bubbles/) (irvinehousingblog.com)

Conforming Loan Limit Decrease Will Increase Strategic Default (http://www.businessinsider.com/conforming-loan-limit-decrease-will-increase-strategic-default-2011-6?source=patrick.net#yui-main) (businessinsider.com)

Banks can predict strategic defaulters (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2011-06-23/business/os-kassab-strategic-default-20110623_1_strategic-defaulters-fico-high-credit-scores?source=patrick.net#mod-article-header) (articles.orlandosentinel.com)

[mick silver]

a freind of mine just bought a house in fl for 35 t nice looking home . at the time it was build it was 150.000.00 . there deals out there if you have the cash

[PatColo]

handful of stories @ patrick.net,

45% of mortgaged single-family houses underwater in Chicago (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/opinion/tough-times-in-the-second-city.html?source=patrick.net) (nytimes.com)

Some cities have trouble selling fixed-up foreclosures (http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-muni-selling-foreclosed-homes-20110904,0,7202114.story?source=patrick.net) (www.sun-sentinel.com (http://www.sun-sentinel.com))

Shadow inventory - should potential first-time buyers be very worried? (http://patrick.net/forum/?p=930061) (patrick.net)

No housing bottom in sight (http://www.businessinsider.com/no-housing-bottom-in-sight-2011-9?source=patrick.net) (businessinsider.com)

Shadow inventory Armageddon (http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/shadow-inventory-armageddon-foreclosure-timeline-up-to-an-average-of-599-days-foreclosures-reos/?source=patrick.net) (doctorhousingbubble.com) "...Foreclosure timeline up to an average of 599 days with 798,000 mortgages having no payment made in over 1 year and no foreclosure process initiated. Shadow inventory grows to over 6,540,000 properties. "
(http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/shadow-inventory-armageddon-foreclosure-timeline-up-to-an-average-of-599-days-foreclosures-reos/)

It’s Time to Bring Our Mortgages Home – Your Municipality and Community Venture Fund is the Ideal Investor for Fannie, Freddie & FHA Defaulted Mortgages (http://solari.com/blog/bring-your-mortgages-home/) - from CAFitts, "...Such a transfer is not economic — other than for the large investors and to serve a wider agenda of social control and engineering, including gentrification of numerous areas whose former residents were fraudulently induced and evicted with the use of these mortgages. ..."

[beefsteak]

PatColo,
Have to love that CAFitts...she has such a "diplomatic mouth," eh?

She's spot on, as usual. Oh, I see that her sub-section in your post is a link. I'm off to read/hear the rest of whatever she has to say.

Thanks.


EDIT: wow, a lady before her time. What a read! Thanks again, PatColo

[Son-of-Liberty]

Don't own property thats just silly renting makes more sense...:'( Most people will probably believe this idiot.

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/Rental-complex-canadianbiz-2184097582.html

Joanna Pachner, On Tuesday July 26, 2011, 11:03 am EDT

Home ownership, the Canadian Dream—Barry Bradey lived it with gusto. Over the past decade, the health and finance entrepreneur owned three houses in the affluent Toronto suburb of Oakville, and watched each soar in value. But after a divorce and a business failure, he needed cash on hand. So last fall Bradey (who asked that we use a pseudonym) did some back-of-a-napkin math. The 3,500-square-foot house he wanted would cost about $850,000. Even with $400,000 down, the mortgage would cost him roughly $3,000 a month. Add property tax and maintenance and "that's $5,000 a month before you turn on the lights." Utilities, insurance and various amenities would be another grand. He also figured the downpayment came at an opportunity cost of about six per cent, equivalent to another $2,000 or so a month. He bounced these numbers off a local realtor friend; she thought the carrying cost should be closer to $12,000. Nevertheless, she insisted the house was worth the money because it was "an investment."


Seems to make a lot of sense to me. Real estate in Canada never corrected the way it did in the US and is still massively overpriced. A decent house in Edmonton is about $400k and is only somewhat affordable right now because of the historically low interest rates. If rates go up 2-3% mortgage rates will almost double. Buying now when you can rent for less doesn't make sense with the big downside risk.

[DMac]

PatColo,
Have to love that CAFitts...she has such a "diplomatic mouth," eh?

She's spot on, as usual. Oh, I see that her sub-section in your post is a link. I'm off to read/hear the rest of whatever she has to say.

Thanks.


EDIT: wow, a lady before her time. What a read! Thanks again, PatColo


Beef, in case you haven't seen this one, this was the first article I ever read by CAF. Excellent.

http://dunwalke.com/introduction.htm

[PatColo]

Thanks beefsteak. CAF is good people. Did you manage to finish that 3.5 hour audio interview with her? (http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?53093-catherine-austin-fitts-%28usually-very-good%29&p=452570&viewfull=1#post452570)
Here's CAF's recent 8/30 appearance on rense,

Catherine Austin Fitts - Economic collapse (30-Aug-11)(NWO ECONOMICS series)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE6a3yZz2mg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE6a3yZz2mg



Beef, in case you haven't seen this one, this was the first article I ever read by CAF. Excellent.

http://dunwalke.com/introduction.htm

That's actually a like an online book!

I posted this recent FSN roundtable at the
Thread: Agenda 21 For Dummies (incl: abolition of private property) (http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?35061-Agenda-21-For-Dummies-%28incl-abolition-of-private-property%29)

but it fits well here too, since my thesis all along has been that the housing crash and ZSM encouragement to walk away has all been deliberately orchestrated by the NWO/zio-banksters, laying the groundwork for the eventual abolition of the institution of private property. Great show:

Sep/03/2011

The Conspiracy Roundtable: Global Governance and Agenda 21 (http://www.financialsense.com/financial-sense-newshour/guest-expert/2011/09/03/m-coffman-t-deweese-m-shaw-h-lamb/global-governance-and-agenda-21)

A roundtable discussion on the threat to property rights and economic freedom


http://imagesize.financialsense.com/http://www.financialsense.com/sites/default/files/images/fsn/extras/round-table-icon.jpg

Newshour, Guest Expert RealPlayer (http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2011-0903-1.ram) WinAmp (http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2011-0903-1.m3u) Windows Media (http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2011-0903-1.asx) MP3 (http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2011-0903-1.mp3)

Michael Coffman Phd, Tom DeWeese, Michael Shaw and Henry Lamb join Jim in a roundtable discussion on "21st Century Feudalism and the Threat to our Property Rights."
James J Puplava CFP (http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/james-j-puplava) With
Michael Coffman PhD (http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/michael-coffman-phd)
Tom DeWeese (http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/tom-deweese)
Michael Shaw (http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/michael-shaw)
Henry Lamb (http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/henry-lamb)

[LastResort]

Seems to make a lot of sense to me. Real estate in Canada never corrected the way it did in the US and is still massively overpriced. A decent house in Edmonton is about $400k and is only somewhat affordable right now because of the historically low interest rates. If rates go up 2-3% mortgage rates will almost double. Buying now when you can rent for less doesn't make sense with the big downside risk.

I agree with what you've just said, and the article does make a few good points but in all doesn't make alot of sense to me.

So last fall Bradey (who asked that we use a pseudonym) did some back-of-a-napkin math. The 3,500-square-foot house he wanted would cost about $850,000. Even with $400,000 down, the mortgage would cost him roughly $3,000 a month.

To rent that same house would cost him—all in, and worry-free—about $3,500 a month. A 53-year-old father of two with a startup venture underway, Bradey did the financially prudent thing. He now rents a large townhouse in the same neighbourhood for $2,200 a month.

The financially prudent thing would be for him to move 45 minutes north take his 400,000 dollar down payment and buy a townhouse outright and not have a mortgage payment or rental payment.

I bought a place a year ago now. My mortgage is 100 bucks a month more than I was paying for rent. Are housing prices in this country going to go down? Almost certainly. In my area I don't think it will be as hard hit as other areas. I got tired of waiting and bought. I don't see my home as an investment though. I see it as somewhere to live. That will always have value with me nomatter what the dollar amount you slap on it is.

[optionT]

This article will bring even more people to the idea of strategic default and walking away.
It's accelerating.


The New Face of Foreclosure: Strategic Defaults

By Laura Rowley
Published September 19, 2011

http://a57.foxnews.com/static/managed/img/324/182/Foreclosure-Sign-Outside-Home-03.jpg


Gene Kessler, 67, may be the new face of mortgage default. The tech industry retiree is in the process of walking away from the home he purchased for $166,000 in 2004 in a small town 75 miles southwest of Minneapolis.

Its value has plummeted to $111,000, wiping out Kessler's $45,000 down payment and leaving him with a mortgage that's more than the home is worth. He stopped paying the loan six months ago, and estimates he'll have to vacate by March 2012.


But Kessler isn't in financial trouble, and he could afford the monthly payments. He has no other debts and two pensions from former employers, as well as Social Security. He also has a woodworking hobby, and runs a small business selling the artisan lamps he makes in galleries. He's single now, and his two children are grown and gone.

"I was looking for a way to get back to a larger city, and this was the only way I could get out of this house," says Kessler, who paid $800 to YouWalkAway.com to help guide him through the process known as strategic default. He's anticipating a move to a warmer climate and a more active art and dating scene in Santa Fe, N.M.

First notices of default jumped 33% in August, a nine-month high and the biggest month-over-month increase since August 2007, according to figures by RealtyTrac released Wednesday.

"There are 3 million to 4 million seriously delinquent mortgages that under normal circumstances would be in foreclosure but have been kept out by procedural delays and paperwork problems," says Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac senior vice president. The recent spike in foreclosure starts suggests lenders are "hitting the restart button" on cases that were delayed by documentation problems such as robo-signing, he explains.

There's no data on the demographics or financial histories of the people receiving recent default notices. But among them are some homeowners who have never defaulted on a loan before, at least according to one poll. YouWalkAway.com surveyed several hundred of its clients earlier this year, and just 23% said they had previously shirked a financial obligation.

"The people we are now seeing are nearing retirement age, who never missed a payment on anything in their lives," says Jon Maddux, co-founder and CEO of the Carlsbad, Calif., firm. "They are trapped. They can't sell or get a modification and they need to downsize or move for a job."

Attitudes toward default have also shifted, Maddux says. "Back in 2008 people were very emotional, very scared, in disbelief or denial," he says. "Now they are simply fed up. It's a very calculated, black-and-white business decision. People feel very relieved."

A more widespread understanding of the consequences of default may be a factor, says Brent White, a University of Arizona law professor and author of Underwater Home.

"The conventional wisdom is you are ruined and are not going to recover," says White, who wrote a widely circulated discussion paper on the topic. But in so-called "non-recourse" states such as California, the bank can only foreclose on the property and resell it. If the price is less than the amount owed on the mortgage, the lender can't sue the homeowner to recoup the shortfall, says White. Even in recourse states, the bank is unlikely to go after the homeowner following foreclosure, he argues.

"The vast majority of those who default end up doing a short sale and that discharges the deficiency," he says. "If they are pursued, they can negotiate to pay less than the full amount. A savvy person who retains an attorney or other knowledgeable person to walk them through the process will likely get through default without having to pay a deficiency judgment. Most people will have a good credit score again within a couple years."

But John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education for SmartCredit.com, disagrees, at least for consumers new to default. "If someone who has never missed a payment suddenly puts their home in foreclosure, their credit score is destroyed," says Ulzheimer, who previously worked for a credit bureau.

"If you already have payment problems on the mortgage and defaulted on other accounts, [foreclosure] may not have a material downward impact, but it will lock in a lower score for a long time," Ulzheimer says. People who stop paying the mortgage can minimize the credit score impact by using that free cash flow to pay down other debts, such as credit cards, he adds.

But just because the bank doesn't pursue homeowners today doesn't mean it won't tomorrow, argues Ulzheimer. The statute of limitations to sue on contract debt in recourse states ranges from three to 15 years. "Some people think that's the next shoe to fall," he notes.

That possibility is just one reason other underwater homeowners are stubbornly hanging on. Liana Friend, 67, bought a two-story, 2,300-square-foot home with a pool in a master community in Corona, Calif., in July 2005 as an investment for $540,000. It's now worth $295,000.

Friend owes $389,000 on 30-year mortgage at 6.75% that can't be refinanced. The difference between her costs and the rent she can collect on the property is about $1,300 a month. Even Friend's property manager has suggested she default on the investment.

But she refuses. "It's a big time moral issue," says Friend. "If you make a contract, you agree to the terms. It bothers me that people get up and walk away. I don't want that on my credit report."

Moreover, Friend made a $160,000 down payment using money inherited from her grandparents. Her grandmother was a self-taught investor from a farming community who married her first husband (of five) at age 14 and eventually made a fortune in stocks. "She would grab all the granddaughters in her pink Cadillac and take us shopping," Friend recalls. "We were not allowed to take things in shopping bags -- she insisted we had to have them in boxes. We all adored her."
"I love and believe in real estate," adds Friend, who purchased two other homes in the 1980s that are still worth far more than she paid. She bought the properties for income in retirement, and plans to bequeath them to her three daughters.

Friend should ask her lender how far the mortgage needs to be paid down in order to refinance, advises Keith Gumbinger, vice president at HSH Associates, a mortgage information publisher. He estimates she would need $160,000, possibly more, to do a cash-in refinance on the property. But even if she could refinance, it still wouldn't fully close the shortfall between the rent and her costs, and it may take decades for the house to recover its value.

White says underwater homeowners should figure out if they are paying substantially more to own a house on a monthly basis than they would pay to rent a similar property. "Even if you are thousands of dollars underwater, if you are paying the same as you would to rent, you don't gain that much financially by defaulting," he says. (The survey by YouWalkAway.com found a quarter of respondents saved 50% or more on housing expenses when they rented after their default.)

In addition, someone who will need a good credit score to run a small business or borrow to meet a goal, such as a child's college education, should avoid strategic default. "If you have a particular need for easy credit in the future, then it doesn't make financial sense," White notes.

As for Kessler, he is looking forward to biking, tennis and skiing in the Southwest next year. "I don't feel guilty at all about walking away from the place," he says. "The banks really did it to themselves. They made a ton of money with me over the years. I owned four or five houses. But I don't think I'll ever buy another house. I'll probably just rent until they put me in a nursing home."




http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/09/19/new-face-foreclosure-strategic-defaults/

[dys]

I was over my mother's house and out of curiosity I picked up the Time magazine on her coffee table and started reading the September 26th issue. From the article After Three Years and Trillions of Dollars, Our Banks Still Don't Work, by Stephen Gandel:


"The Obama Administration is starting to think about truly radical solutions there, including bulldozing delinquent properties."

dys

[DMac]

I was over my mother's house and out of curiosity I picked up the Time magazine on her coffee table and started reading the September 26th issue. From the article After Three Years and Trillions of Dollars, Our Banks Still Don't Work, by Stephen Gandel:



dys

Ain't Keynesianism great?