The news just keeps getting better and better, who would of thought they would be offering more free handouts. More propping for housing, tomorrow new announcements being made for those unemployed who can't afford to make payments along with a few more free handouts. This is creating such a false bottom in housing, prices continue to be propped up, when does it fucking end? Enough is enough, stop with the handouts. Housing prices are still inflated by at least 25%. Funny how they didn't do anything when housing prices surged year over year, now that there is continued trouble in real estate they will do anything and everything to keep it from collapsing. White House to Announce Housing Aid Friday CNBC.com | March 25, 2010 | 10:05 PM EDT The Obama administration plans to implement new measures to slow the pace of home foreclosures, even as concern grows about the effectiveness of the federal governmentâs expensive intervention program. CNBC.com has learned that the White House on Friday will announce changes to its Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which include financial aid for unemployed homeowners, a new emphasis on writing down the principal of troubled loans, incentives for the holders of second mortgages and greater opportunity to refinance under the Federal Housing Administration. Once again, funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, will be used to help borrowers and lenders in the program. Itâs unclear how much, although some $50 billion in TARP funds were previously committed to the $85-billion program when first outlined by the White House early last year. Treasury officials will outline the changes â a summary of which was described to CNBC.com âon Friday morning. The new measures come one day after administration officials received a tough grilling at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee. In addition, a report earlier this week by the General Accountability Officeâs Special Inspector General for TARP, Sigtarp Neil Barofsky, questioned the near year-old programâs effectiveness. Barofsky, who testified at the Congressional hearing, said not only is the HAMP unlikely to help many homeowners, it would also prolong the foreclosure crisis and cost taxpayers a lot of money. The program, which was launched with the expectation of averting 3-4 million foreclosures over four years, has fallen well short of that goal. Thus far, according to the Treasury Department, some 1.4 million borrowers have received a modification offer, with 1.1 million of them entering into a trial modification. As of February, 822,000 had been in the program three or more months, making them eligible for conversion to a permanent status. About one-third have qualified, which is well below whatâs considered an acceptable success rate. Herbert Allison, assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability, admitted as much to the House panel, saying âthe process of converting trial modifications to permanent has been much more challenging than officials originally anticipated.â He cited a variety of reasons, including difficulties with both servicers and borrowers, as well as the program itself, which was âmore complex administratively than originally conceived.â (Click here for Allison's full testimony) The changes to be announced tomorrow donât appear aimed at reducing complexity, but they do address the changing dynamic of the foreclosure crisis. With the jobless rate still near 10 percent, more people are falling behind on payments and heading into delinquency, unlike the earlier stage of the crisis when many foreclosures were the result of bad lending in the subprime mortgage market. A new measure would attack that problem by giving unemployed homeowners three months of forbearance; essentially buying time. A write-down in the principal of the loan, as opposed to a simple reduction in the mortgage rate, will now be given serious consideration; loan servicers will receive additional incentives the longer the loan stays current. More incentives will also be provided to second-mortgage holders to write down the value of those loans. The FHA will be utilized to refinance mortgages otherwise ineligible in the past and consider lower FICO scores.
There is going to be a Housing recovery tax as well. If a bank cuts the principal of a home the Government will cover 48% of the cut as a cash kickback to the bank. The HR Tax will only affect families making 250K or more, this tax will cover the expense of the cash kickbacks.
DISCLAIMER: If you don't won't to read an "out there" post - please move on to the next post! OK, that said...and while I am NOT a big fan of Glenn Beck...I do have to admit that on a point or two I partially agree with him. Beck thinks that Obama, et. al. are actively trying to collapse the gov't. I, for my part, have come to see it as more sinister. I think "the cabal" aka "the power elite" are trying to collapse the whole world system...to replace it with "the power elites' " own FAR MORE DIABOLICAL system. I am NOT smart enough to see beyond that it will be some sort of either monarch or oligarch type system. Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama have been but the bitches elected (not by the public) by the "power elite" to set up the system for this monarch/oligarch system. That said about the monarch/oligarch system....this bullshit about "saving" houses is COMPLETELY CONTRARY TO MOST HISTORICAL ECONOMIC VIEWS! I may be mistaken in my understanding, but my understanding is that malinvestment would be corrected by reversion to the mean. In other words - the distortion in house prices that went deviations above the historical (read that - mortgages 2 - 2.5 times income) would be reverted back to deviations below the mean. This fucking prop job is an attempt to halt and destroy the reversion back to NORMAL (aka historical) home prices. The cynical part of me does NOT see this fucking fake ass home price prop up as some sort of "caring for the poor," but I see it as the straw that breaks the camel's back. This is the "cabal's" attempt to push the world into first chaos and then the "power elites' " version of "salvation from chaos" - the solution that the "power elite" have desired to impose upon the people of the world. While some will say that "these people are not smart enough to pull off such a charade," I would say that they are dumb enough to try to pull such crap off! OK, the "short" of what I am saying: The prop up of house prices is a pretense by false motherfuckers to gain control of the world. The "they" doing the "propping up" are smart enough to know that the "prop job" will not work. Heed the warning and CYA - cover your ass - because the fall from this prop job will be chaos...I am not smart enough to tell you what to expect after the chaos (I have my own ideas, but I will leave it up to the reader to decide for him/her self). -gastropod
Cash-starved California just came up with $200 million more to throw at the housing market. On Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger enthusiastically signed a bill that will award an estimated $200 million in state income tax credits to people who buy a home starting May 1. The credit is worth up to $10,000, spread evenly over three years. The credit is available to anyone who buys a newly built home or to first-time home buyers who buy a newly built or existing home. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/27/BU1U1CLQBH.DTL
Does anyone else aside from me get pissed off at the way these morons are treating the housing markets like stocks? If you look at the way the BBC react in the UK to prices rising it's like "This is really good news that the prices are rising like this" then they go and fucking despair when the prices go down which would make it more affordable for first time buyers and low income families! Ugh, sometimes I just wish the next recession would come and smack us in the face without warning again like last time, that way these morons would end up getting sunk because they're just going to keep throwing money away and as long as nothing major happens they'll convince themselves it works.
An interesting thing to remember is how Arnold got elected in the first place. I lived in Cali at the time. Grey Davis had decided not to sign an extension to a temporary lowering of vehicle registrations. It is important to note this was a temporary measure put in place because we were running a surplus when it was passed, and shockingly, the legislature decided to give the people a break. Californians own a lot of cars. Too many. I lived in a house of 3 people, we had 7 cars between us. Every single house on our block either had 2 cars in the garage, 2 in the driveway and 2 more on the street, or their garage was full of crap and they had 4 in the driveway and 2 more on the street. This was a middle class neighborhood. Anyways, the state needed some money so Grey decided to not extend this car reg. tax reduction. Now this vehicle reg increase amounted to around only $250 per household. This was sooooooo unpopular he was kicked out of office by recall. And we didn't just vote him out by voting for a new guy at the next election; they put an initiative on a special ballot, we went to the polls, voted to kick Grey out, then we had to hold another special election to figure out who our new governor should be. What the hell, I voted for Arnie. California is indeed a unique place. Small, densely populated cities near the coast that lean so far left is surprising they haven't fallen into the Pacific. And huge swaths through the agricultural and mountain areas that are as Republican and redneck as anywhere else in the country. I'm often disappointed with California politicians, but never surprised.
Yeah it's rampant stupidity. If the cost of groceries or cars or medical care went up, people would complain. But somehow the cost of accommodation rising is a good thing? The solution to a housing bubble is for prices to collapse until they reach affordable levels that people on a normal income can pay without breaking the bank. Cheerleading higher prices is dumb. Taking taxpayer money to artificially prop up prices, thus making housing more unaffordable, is not only insane it's morally repugnant.
The government is trying to prop up housing because they feel they can't stand for prices to "wash out" to honest value where genuine interest would emerge. So instead, they're pouring lots of money down a rat hole in a vain attempt to prevent the inevitable. BTW... I don't know how much you've watched Beck.. but if your opinion was formed by watching him only a small amount, suggest you watch more. He's a truth teller, though I also find some of his antics annoying. The Left and the Dems are like listening to Vladamir Posner when the was the mouthpiece to the West for Pravda.... you knew almost everything he said was a lie and you just wanted to punch him in the face.
I agree completely, the only problem with that is it seems that everything else is going to have to go down with it because people have been mucking around with the economy for far too long. I just want them to hold it together for two or three years maybe so I can get enough money together through trading and then I'll buy a house and then just lol as everyone else loses all their money.
Regardless of what you think of Beck's "style".... 1. Part of Fox is just news.. like other network news. But what Fox DOESN'T do is (1) "slant"... intentionally report news incompletely or out of context in order to create an impression... which the other stations are accused of all the time, at least by Fox. And (2) Fox doesn't avoid reporting stories (censor) which would be unfavorable to Obama or the Leftists. The other networks are BLATANT violators of this "news" principle. 2. The "point of view" (POV) shows... O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity, Greta. The Left is very vocal about these guys, of course. But the MSM and the Left are LYING, BIG TIME! A point of logic.... if the POV shows make an error, the rest of the media and Leftists are all over Fox.. like "white on rice". Therefore, those shows research their facts carefully. And, when they get a fact wrong, they claim to LEAD with the correction as soon as the error is brought to their attention... which I have seen them do. They do not attempt to "bury" the correction at the end of the broadcast. We Freedom lovers, Constitution supporters and Capitalists should all be thankful there IS a Fox News Network... and that O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity, and Rush are American Patriots!! BTW.. I'm not a Right winger... not even a Republican..