Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Wednesday May 8 Housing and Economic stories


TOP STORIES:

Did stopping HELOC abuse kill the economy? - (www.ochousingnews.com) This affirms the basic hypothesis that people were borrowing from their homes to buy cars. This study erroneously implies that people were cutting back on discretionary spending by choice. That’s not what happened. These people were cut off from the housing ATM by lenders who didn’t want to lose any more money on Ponzis. There is a huge difference between the two reasons, and these guys, like most other economists, completely missed it. In an e-mail interview, Sufi says he and his co-authors believe the paper is the first to show that borrowers with very high leverage – which would include people who are underwater – are likely to cut back significantly on spending in a housing decline. “This shows that a decline in household wealth will have larger consequences for housing spending if losses are concentrated on high leverage, low net worth borrowers,” he says. “The distribution of losses matters, not just the level.” Sufi says the findings underscore the notion that principal reductions – reducing the overhang of mortgage debt left by the financial crisis – should have been more widely embraced as part of the policy response to the housing bust.

Why Is The Obama Administration Provoking A Political War With Latino Homeowners? - (www.mfi-miami.com)  Latino Homeowners Growing Angry As Taxpayer Owned Fannie Mae Plays “Three-Card Monty” With Modification Offers And Threatens Confiscation. Life was good until they had the misfortune of meeting Tashia Winstanley, a scam artist who convinced them she could get their mortgage payments lowered.  However, there was a catch. She convinced them that in order for their servicer Select Portfolio, a subsidiary of Swiss bank, Credit Suissse to take them serious, they had to make their mortgage payments directly to her while she negotiated a loan modification with Select Portfolio. In total the Bocardos paid Winstanley $13,000 before they discovered that she never made the payments and the house went into foreclosure.  The Bocardos had no idea what had happened until a process servicer knocked on the front door from Orlans Associates, a Michigan foreclosure mill informing them that their client, Fannie Mae was evicting them. They then hired attorney Jason Jenkinson who successfully beat back Fannie Mae’s motion for summary judgment in federal court.  The judge allowed the case to move forward and gave both sides a six-month discovery period.  Jenkinson immediately filed a motion for discovery.

Dreams of new homes abandoned in Greece - (www.cnn.com)   While traveling in Greece, Dutch photographer Patrick van Dam noticed unfinished buildings and homes spotting the countryside. They looked spectacular, he said, but they didn’t look like they’d be finished anytime soon. Plants were creeping in on the structure sides. Stray dogs and squatters, not the owners, were calling them “home.” He had seen the photographs of people in despair due to the financial crisis in Greece, but he hadn’t seen this kind of structural beauty that had been born in the country’s troubles. “We have a big tragedy, a crisis, and still I can see the beauty of it in these unfinished houses,” he said. With the Greek economy in a long and painful lull, hopeful homeowners have had to abandon their dreams and watch time wear down the frameworks of their future homes.

Student Debtors Under 30 Are Shying Away From Buying Homes, Cars Consumerist - (www.consumerist.com)   If life were a 1950s sitcom, college graduates would zoom out of school, get a job, buy a house, buy a car and get married. But these days, student loans are just one of many reason debtors under 30 are staying far away from the housing and auto markets. That, and lifeisn’t a sitcom. A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that this age group could be a drag on the economy by the very fact that they aren’t participating in it. Because younger people aren’t able to join in the fun of buying homes and cars, and instead are stuck with low credit scores, reports the bank’s Liberty Street Economics blog. A third of borrowers are in repayment delinquency as of the end of 2012, making those people a lot less likely to spend big and boots the economy. “Now, for the first time in at least 10 years, 30-year-olds with no history of student loans are more likely to have home-secured debt than those with a history of student loans,” wrote the authors of the data analysis.

Massive Worldwide Run On Precious Metals - (www.libertygoldandsilver.com) We are in the midst of experiencing two of the most radical weeks in the history of the precious metals markets.  Paper prices for gold and silver, those prices determined by the fraudulently managed commodities exchanges (namely the COMEX and the London Bullion Marketing Association – LBMA) and regulated by the equally corrupt and complicit Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), have been driven into the basement. Simultaneously, the available physical supplies of precious metals, especially silver, have suddenly nearly disappeared.  Some of the most extreme shortages for silver in memory have caused premiums for all types of bullion and coins to skyrocket.  Nearly all major wholesalers in the United States, and for that matter the world, are completely out of stock for smaller denominated silver rounds and bars, with no projected delivery dates in sight.  This phenomenon is a worldwide event.





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