patrick.net

What wants to be a millionaire?

Not any Zimbabwean.

I know what species did those horrible things...

You may have read recently that the OCC announced that the re-default rate on mortgage mods after 6 months is greater than 50%.

I said this wasn't going to work. There is simply no way you can keep someone in a house they can't afford short of paying them to keep it. Sadly, I would not be surprised if the Fed tried this at some point.

Anyways, here's my solution.

Foreclose on the property, kick the deadbeats out *immediately* and then cut the price by 10% a month until it sells.

Anything else is just going to prolong the agony.

There are lots of potential buyers out there with cash and good credit (I'm one of them!) that still priced out of the market.

The many foreclosures in cities like Antioch are already being snapped up by investors. Likely to be rental property until the new owners die and their kids decide to sell.

People like to forget that Toyota in the very beginning made crappy cars, and they got bailed out by Japanese government aka taxpayers, and now look at them. lol

Bap33,

What I would like to see is instead of bailing out the next big lender, like Citibank, the Fed just nationalizes it.

They then create a special lending program for first-time buyers through that bank based on the requirements you have provided.

Beyond that I think its fine for those that played and game (and won) to be rewarded for their prudence. Just let them compete on a fair playing field against worthy buyers.

Slumlord,

I *wish* I could go on TV next to Peter Schiff and point out that he almost exclusively invests in government managed enterprises and socialist/communist countries.

"What wants to be a millionaire?

Not any Zimbabwean."

Billionaire is the new millionaire and Zillionare is the new Billionaire.

By the way as for the USA debt, Quadrillion is the new Trillion.

PS: Repeal the 17th Amendment NOW!!

"Banks should be foreclosing as fast as humanly possible, looking at time-on-market statistics (about 90 days in the Bay Area) then discounting to that value up front."
Unfortunately banks, like the rest of society, are populated by idiots. They wouldn't recognize their own self-interest if it hit them in the face.
Enough, nationalize them.

By the way as for the USA debt, Quadrillion is the new Trillion.

Nothing in the universe grows faster than hyperinflation. Men's ability to bring chaos is intringing.

Octillion is the new quadrillion.

OH YES I FORGOT!

In the USSA it is a bailout for all connected so we now have:

AMINSURE - AIG insurance
AMMORTGAGE - FREDDIE/FANNIE mortgages
AMBANK - Citi for banking
AMCAR - Cerebus (Chrysler) Ford and GM

Not a connected entity but where we get inspiration:
AMTRAK - Passenger rail
Created from a disinvestment in this mode of transportation and a subsidy of air and roads. By the way, GM and others conspired and were convicted and the directors paid confirmed fine in 1951 of $1 for taking away our street cars.

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

USSA is the United Socialist State of America in case any had a doubt.

The original AMCAR!

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

kewp Says:

> Anyways, here’s my solution.
> Foreclose on the property, kick the deadbeats out
> *immediately* and then cut the price by 10%
> a month until it sells.

Then Bap33 Says:

> kewp, I agree with your plan of foreclosure and sale
> for SFH, but would add that the buyer MUST occupy
> and can not own any other SFH, and the property
> MUST be owner occupied for 50 years. And any
> new buyer within 50 years MUST occupy and not
> own any other SFH. That would keep those that played
> the game and won from cornering the rental market.

With Bap33’s restrictions the prices of REOs would drop even lower since homes with rental restrictions sell for less than similar homes (as we have seen with “Ellis Act” properties that can not be rented) and it would eliminate buyers with even a modest little 600 sf A Frame cabin in the mountains (since they are technically SFHs). Why would anyone want to buy a home that they could not even rent for a summer or rent for a year while working on a project overseas unless they got a deep discount?

Then Eliza Says:

> The many foreclosures in cities like Antioch are already
> being snapped up by investors. Likely to be rental property
> until the new owners die and their kids decide to sell.

Even with most property in Antioch (aka the East Bay’s “Suburban Ghetto”) down at least 50% from the peak it does not make any sense to “invest” there. There are a small numbers of REO homes being sold to speculators/dreamers who even after making six figure down payments will still need to come out of pocket tens of thousands a year if they want to keep speculating and dreaming that someone will pay $600K to own a home in a horrible city full of gang members and cars with huge rims and thumping stereos. In the early 90’s many speculators/dreamers bought homes in North Hollywood, Van Nuys and Panorama City since the prices were down 50% from the peak and they were speculating and dreaming that the prices would soon bounce back. In 8 or 9 years the prices did come back, but 99% of the speculators/dreamers had already given up…

As predicted, good Republicans are mounting a stand against the automaker bailout. Taxpayers should not have to subsidize artificially high labor costs.

kewp,

I understand and agree with you. I am not for the bailouts per say, but I am just saying that Lexus would not be around if the Japanese had not bailed out Toyota in the beginning.

As far as established companies like the big 3, I say let them fail. The gov should help new car companies that may rise in from the ashes.

HAIKU: RELIEVED, '70s-STYLE BOOMER REALIZES IT WAS ALL JUST A BAD DREAM!

Crank the Led Z. and
pass the V. Take a big hit,
it's all about me...

I understand and agree with you. I am not for the bailouts per say, but I am just saying that Lexus would not be around if the Japanese had not bailed out Toyota in the beginning.

If Hitler did not invade Poland, the Baby Boomer generation would not be around.

I say give all the bailout money to Tesla, at least you can get something out of it.

Let the big 3 die, ok, on second thought, keep Ford around, they still build good trucks, I won't ever buy anything from GM or Chrysler anyway, let them die.

Why Tesla? Why any bailout at all?

I like Ford and I am a fan of Alan Mulally. Let him drive his Lexus!

Hah ...

Don't celebrate the Auto bailout stalling. All that is happening is political posturing. The Detroit bailout will happen. Which politician wants to be blamed for an economic collapse ? They don't care if the economy collapses or not. They simply don't want to be blamed for it.

Gemini (cars, transportation) Full Moon in Mutable Grand Cross tomorrow. Fasten your seat belts.

The Fed bottom line grew by $123Billion this past week. The bulk of that, $85B, was in "other assets", which I am assuming is where the Freddie, Fannie and FHLB bonds are hiding out. TAF also grew by $40B+, although the latest auction was not fully subscribed.
The Fed continued to pay down the Treasury supplemental account again this week by $36+B. Funding for the pay down and increasing the balance sheet came from deposits by member banks -- up by $143B.

Peter P,
If Columbus had not discovered the new world then we would not be having all these problems....

If Columbus had not discovered the new world then we would not be having all these problems….

If Adam was man enough to kill the snake...

For those who wanted (in a previous thread) to blame Barney Frank and democrats for subprime mortgages, have a look at his letter to the Editors of Wall St Journal.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-barney-frank/wall-street-journal edito_b_150350.html

I am totally fine with subprime mortgages if the defaulting homeowners get kicked out promptly and the lenders get no bailout from the taxpayers.

Justme,

Very interesting link you had, very convincing. (Plus, a nice picture of Jennifer Aniston wearing only a tie in a side ad).

Now consider $175 million in lobbying by Fannie/Freddie and thier acquisition of junk (whether called sub-prime or not). Why do you think Fannie/Freddie needed a bailout, if thier exposure to "sub-prime" was minimal? Didn't F&F's willingness to take so many loans off originators hands contribute to easy credit for lower quality borrowers and thus the housing bubble? Didn't Barney Frank strongly resist efforts to regulate Fannie/Freddie, even if he pats himself on the back for promoting affordable rental houses?

New York Times Sep 03
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.'

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

As predicted, good Republicans are mounting a stand against the automaker bailout.

I am way beyond caring. It is the equivilent of fighting over the deck chairs on the Titanic. I am looking out for my own little butt now. Bailout fataigue.

Stock drops excite. Gas prices excite. Now if Santa wants to drop real estate prices, that would be really exciting.

None of this stuff is going away any time soon, as long as real estate prices refuse to go down the bowl.

None of this stuff is going away any time soon, as long as real estate prices refuse to go down the bowl.

You will see real estate prices drop when your peers start losing their jobs left and right.

They were playing violins on the Titanic when it was sinking, right? I want my deck chair!

One of the things I find humurous about the TARP and the Financial system bailout was that part of it was predicated on 'the jobs it would save'. There was a lt of hoo-haa about 'do you know just how many people are IN that industry?' and 'do you want them all out on the street?'

Well.

Those banks TOOK the tarp money and they are laying off all of those people like crazy ANYWAY! That just sickens me.

Headset,

>>Didn’t F&F’s willingness to take so many loans off originators hands contribute to easy credit for lower quality borrowers and thus the housing bubble?

The reasonable thing to do here is to put the cart before the horse, and not vice versa.

F&F did _NOT_ CAUSE the subprime meltdown. They were collateral damage of the subprime meltdown, because they were to weak to resist the rising default levels

Why were they too weak? In big part because Bush and the Republicans pressured them into making more "affordable" loans than they should have.

Read the Barney Frank letter again, note that it was the Bush White House and the Republicans that wanted more "easy credit". I quite from Frank's letter:

For example, on February 18, 2002, at a hearing on the budget I said "I am in favor of trying to help lower-income people get the advantages of homeownership...but almost by definition, the large majority of poor people are going to need rental housing." On March 6, 2004, the National Journal reported that "When the FHA's plan to insure subprime loans was included in a Senate-passed appropriations bill, Frank...a staunch supporter of low-income housing, wrote a highly critical letter urging that the measure not be included ... Not only had the House committee not examined ...the proposal he said then, but the measure also offered no protection against lenders inappropriately steering people towards these high-cost loans. Nor did it offer safeguards to ensure that participants 'were fully suitable for homeownership.'"

That same year, when the Bush administration insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac raise the percentage of below-median income homeowner mortgages they bought, I was correctly quoted in a Bloomberg article on June 17th as saying that this would "do some harm," and the writer noted that "Frank's comments echo concerns...that the new goals will undermine profits and put new homeowners into dwellings they can't afford."

In other words, Frank worked for exactly the OPPOSITE of what the right-wingers are trying to blame him for. Surprosed? Not me.

Re: Auto Bailout.

Bush strangely enough is not going to trash what little is left of his legacy by being the president that killed the auto industry. He will give in and take the money from TARP if need be.

It amazes me how Republicans can spend 600B (or is it higher now?) on war and blodshed but get their panties all in a big-time principled twist if Detroit needs 14B to save itself. They have no sense of scale or proportion OR consequence.

By the way, if GM and Chrysler fail, I think we can fully expect martial law coming to at least one midwestern state, and not very long from now.

All this because the Republicans are all so hor*y to break the union, they cannot think straight anymore.

Uh, I did mean of course. "put the horse, before the cart".

Headset, you must have gotten a good laugh out of that one. :-)

I have a question for those in the search biz:

What does it really mean for Microsoft to "buy Yahoo's search business", as is being pushed by some shareholders?

I have to say, I cannot quite figure it out. Does it mean Yahoo does not have a search box on their home page anymore? Or that the search box will lead you to a Microsoft-operated server? Or that Microsoft will handle the business of selling the search advertising? Or what?

I'm just quite sure it is not quite what it sounds like. And that usually there is some ugly detail that is being left out.

Someone please enlighten me!

...usually MEANS...

If Adam was man enough to kill the snake…

Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel!

Bush is a LIBERAL. I cannot image a true Republican being capable of calling for such a bailout.

That's a nice strategy.

If a Republican President does something wrong, one can just re-define him as being Liberal and keep going. No blame for the party as a whole for choosing him as their candidate, or anything like that.

Should have thought of that earlier....wait...uh.... why didn't the war make him a Liberal, too?

why didn’t the war make him a Liberal, too?

The president who got us into the last world war was also a liberal.

Besides, who started the Vietnam War again? Liberal or conservative?

Sorry for being late. Now I really despise GWB.

I am extremely disappointed with Thad McCotter. He made a beautiful speech against the Wall Street bailout but now he is on the side of the automakers.

I would rather agree to helping the financial system instead of the defunct auto industry.

Of course, given a choice, I would never bailout anything.