KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Sunday January 30 Housing and Economic stories

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Fannie Mae is jacking up mortgage fees - (www.latimes.com) Potential home buyers who have high credit scores and hefty down payments may be surprised that even they are being targeted for higher 'risk-based' fees. Here's mortgage giant Fannie Mae's sobering New Year's greeting for home buyers and refinancers in 2011: Give me more money! If you want a loan this year, you're going to have to pay more — thousands of dollars more in some cases — even if you've got stellar credit scores and bundles of cash handy for a down payment. Things could get much worse if your scores have been sagging with the economy and you don't have much money upfront. In a Dec. 23 memo to lenders in its network, Fannie announced that it had decided to impose a new schedule of higher add-on fees, similar to what Freddie Mac — the other huge congressionally chartered mortgage investor — rolled out to jeers from the real estate industry just before Thanksgiving. Both corporations have required massive federal financial infusions — estimated at close to $150 billion — since the housing market began deteriorating, and they now operate under a federal conservatorship arrangement. The Obama administration plans to submit long-promised proposals to Congress this month on what to do with the two — phase them out, restructure them, privatize one or both of them, or other solutions.

Bank may go after your other assets if you're in foreclosure - (www.sun-sentinel.com) Worried that your bank might go after your other assets if you're late on the mortgage or lose your home to foreclosure? It can happen in Florida, especially if a bank sells your foreclosed house and doesn't recoup the full loan amount and if you're a big-dollar borrower. With nearly half of all mortgages under water in South Florida, plenty of residents may wonder if their home lender can garnish their wages or suddenly lock down their deposit accounts. Rules on tapping assets vary by state and depend on the terms of specific loans and accounts. Problems on typical home loans usually don't crop up before foreclosure. They tend to come after the bank sells the home and ends up short. In Florida, banks can go to court for a "deficiency judgment" to collect the rest of the money owed on a mortgage after foreclosure, said Anthony di Marco, vice president of the Florida Bankers Association. Banks can pursue other assets with that judgment. They can file a lien on your boat or car. But "they can't jump priority on a loan," so the lender for that boat or car has first dibs to collect, di Marco said.

How Foreclosure Crisis Hits Jewish Community - (www.jewishtimes.com) Norman Silverstein describes himself as your average, run-of-the-mill, middle-class working stiff. Makes a decent living wage, works hard, has a few kids and a nice house in the Northwest Baltimore suburbs. His slice of the American dream. But a couple of years ago, Mr. Silverstein’s wife lost her job, a victim of the downsizing, cutback climate. Initially, the Silversteins didn’t become alarmed. Just a blip on the screen, they figured. “We had a loss of income, but figured things would turn around for us quickly,” he said. “But then my wife couldn’t find another job. Things didn’t change as quickly as I had thought or hoped.” Desperation started to set in. The Silversteins began missing their monthly mortgage payments. It was a matter of necessity, Mr. Silverstein insisted, and not something he’s particularly proud of. “We needed money for food and health insurance and stuff,” he said. “You’ve gotta keep the lights on, you know, so something had to give.” Soon, the Silversteins received a terse letter from an attorney for their lending bank about the start of foreclosure proceedings on their house. Mr. Silverstein needed to catch his breath at times when recalling the experience of receiving that letter and others like it in the subsequent months.

The little red book that swept France - (www.independent.co.uk) Take a book of just 13 pages, written by a relatively obscure 93-year-old man, which contains no sex, no jokes, no fine writing and no startlingly original message. A publishing disaster? No, a publishing phenomenon. Indignez vous! (Cry out!), a slim pamphlet by a wartime French resistance hero, Stéphane Hessel, is smashing all publishing records inFrance. The book urges the French, and everyone else, to recapture the wartime spirit of resistance to the Nazis by rejecting the "insolent, selfish" power of money and markets and by defending the social "values of modern democracy". The book, which costs €3, has sold 600,000 copies in three months and another 200,000 have just been printed. Its original print run was 8,000. In the run-up to Christmas, Mr Hessel's call for a "peaceful insurrection" not only topped the French bestsellers list, it sold eight times more copies than the second most popular book, a Goncourt prize-winning novel by Michel Houellebecq. The extraordinary success of the book can be interpreted in several ways. Its low price and slender size – 29 pages including blurbs and notes but just 13 pages of text – has made it a popular stocking-filler among left-wing members of the French chattering classes. Bookshops report many instances of people buying a dozen copies for family and friends.

The Conservative Constitution of the United States - (www.washingtonpost.com) House members opened the 112th Congress on Thursday by reading aloud the Constitution, presumably as a first step toward fulfilling the tea party's goal of "restoring" our nation's founding document. However, an alternative text, obtained by this author, David Cole, via WikiLeaks, has reportedly begun circulating in secret among incoming GOP lawmakers, representing the Constitution they hope to read aloud when the 113th Congress begins. Here, revealed in public for the first time, is the Conservative Constitution of the United States of Real America: We, the Real Americans, in order to form a more God-Fearing Union, establish Justice as we see it, Defeat Health-Care Reform, and Preserve and Protect our Property, our Guns and our Right Not to Pay Taxes, do ordain and establish this Conservative Constitution for the United States of Real America.