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STORIES:
Half
of U.S. Lives in Household Getting Benefits - (www.blogs.wsj.com) 49.1%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at
least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter
of 2011. Cutting government spending is no easy task, and it’s made more
complicated by recentCensus Bureau data showing that nearly half of the
people in the U.S. live in a household that receives at least one government
benefit, and many likely received more than one. The 49.1% of the population in
a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as
recently as the third quarter of 2008. The increase in recent years is likely
due in large part to the lingering effects of the recession. As of early 2011,
15% of people lived in a household that received food stamps, 26% had someone
enrolled in Medicaid and 2% had a member receiving unemployment benefits.
Families doubling up to save money or pool expenses also is likely leading to
more multigenerational households. But even without the effects of the
recession, there would be a larger reliance on government.
California
Poised to Require 'solar Ready Roofs' on New Homes and Buildings - (www.thestreet.com) State regulators with the California Energy Commission are expected to
approve stringent energy efficiency standards for new residential and
commercial buildings Thursday. The new standards, which would take effect Jan.
1, 2014, include a host of common-sense standards designed to save energy, from
insulating hot-water pipes to making sure that air conditioner installations
are inspected for sufficient air flow. But the proposed standards also require
new homes and commercial buildings to have "solarready roofs" -- a
mandatory requirement that will be a boon for the state's growing rooftop solar
industry. Rooftop solar systems use photovoltaic solar panels to generate
electricity. But their performance is affected by many factors, from the age of
the roof to how it is situated -- ideally, it should face south.
"Shading" is also an issue: Roofs should have clear, unobstructed
access to the sun for most of the day. Attic vents, fans, skylights and chimneys
can also influence how many solar panels a roof can hold.
Student
loans soar 275% over past decade - (www.money.cnn.com)
Student loans have more than tripled over the past decade, according to
new data from the Federal Reserve. Student loan debt hit $904 billion in the
first quarter of 2012, up from $241 billion a decade ago, according to the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York quarterly household debt report. That's up
275% since the same period in 2003. Students continued heaping on debt
throughout the economic downturn, even as Americans cut back on other forms of
credit, such as mortgages and credit cards. "It remains the only form of
consumer debt to substantially increase since the peak of household debt in
late 2008," said Donghoon Lee, senior economist at the NY Fed.
Woman
Who Couldn’t Be Intimidated by Citigroup Wins $31 Million - (www.bloomberg.com) Sherry Hunt never expected to be a senior manager at a Wall Street bank.
She was a country girl, raised in rural Michigan by a dad who taught her to fish
and a mom who showed her how to find wild mushrooms. She listened to Marty
Robbins and Buck Owens on the radio and came to believe that God has a bigger plan,
that everything happens for a reason. She got married at 16 and didn’t go to
college. After she had her first child at 17, she needed a job. A friend helped
her find one in 1975, processing home loans at a small bank in Alaska. Over the
next 30 years, Hunt moved up the ladder to mortgage-banking positions in
Indiana, Minnesota and Missouri, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its July
issue. On her days off, when she wasn’t fishing with her husband, Jonathan, she
rode her horse, Cody, in Wild West shows. She sometimes dressed up as the
legendary cowgirl Annie Oakley, firing blanks from a vintage rifle to entertain
an audience. She liked the mortgage business, liked that she was helping people
buy houses.
Occupy
Bernal To Stop House Auction Tomorrow At City Hall - (www.sfist.com) On Friday,
June 1, Occupy Bernal (the tiny Occupy group that, despite its size, somehow
gets shit done) plans to stop the auction of Alberto Del Rio's house by making
noise to drown out the auctioneer at City Hall, among other ideas. Why all the
fuss? Occupy
Bernal explains: "Alberto Del Rio is a Bernal Heights
resident who grew up in his family home. He lives there with his wife and 3
kids. To help his mother have a decent retirement, the Del Rio family took
equity out of the home and refinanced. But their loan from World Savings was a
Pick-a-Payment loan. Lawsuits have found these sorts of loans to be predatory.
World Savings sold the loan to Wachovia, which was then acquired by Wells
Fargo. “Wells took advantage of me. Like they did so many other people. They
promised us the moon,” says Alberto, who has been trying to get a loan
modification since 2000. The bank has continually lost his paperwork, and
refused to negotiate in good faith. The bank even advised him to stop making
payments in order to qualify for a loan modification, which triggered the
foreclosure process. Now, Wells Fargo is scheduled to auction his home on June
1. But we won’t let them."
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