“Teaser” Payments: Trick or Treat?

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Neil Garfield

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In the final analysis, I think a reverse amortization loan is a way of hiding the true amount of the debt. —- Neil F Garfield, livinglies.me

As an introduction, let me remind you that the viability and affordability of the loan, the loan to value ratios and all the other facts and ratios and computations are the responsibility of the lender, who must faithfully disclose the results to the borrower. It is a myth that these bad loans were in any way related to the bad intent of borrowers.

I have been examining and analyzing loans that are referred to as “reverse amortization loans”. They are, in every case, “teaser payments” that trap homeowners into a deal that guarantees they will not keep their home — even if it has been in their family for generations. And they are loans, in my opinion, that contain secret balloon payments. Nothing in this article should be construed as abandoning the fact that the “lender” never actually made the loan, nor that the actual lenders (investors) would never have approved the loan. The point of this article is that the borrower would not have approved the deal either if they had been informed of the real nature of the sham loan (even if it was real).

Teaser payments are neither illegal nor unfair (if they don’t involve reverse amortization). They have been used all over the world with great success. The deal is that they pay a lower payment before they get to the real payment. Nothing is owed on the lower interest or even lower escrow that results from such a loan product devised and prepared for signature by the Banks or agents for the Banks.

And remember again that when I refer to the Banks, I am talking about intermediary banks that in the “securitization” era were not making loans but were approving paperwork that nobody in their right might would have have approved under any interpretation of national underwriting standards. These banks diverted money and title from the actual transaction in which money from strangers and title of the homeowners was diverted from the real transaction — giving a problem to both. This left “investors” without an investment and the borrowers with corrupt title.

In my opinion the way the teaser payment option was handled in the era of securitization, the borrower ended up with an unaffordable loan with terms that he or she would not have approved and which no bank was permitted to approve under State and Federal lending laws. The result was a hidden balloon and hidden payments of principal and interest payments far higher than the apparent interest rate on the face of the note. In most cases, the requirement that the documents and good faith estimate were never provided to the borrower, to make sure that the sophisticated borrower would not have an opportunity to think about it.

In one case that is representative of many others I have seen, the interest rate was stated as 8.75%, but that was not true. The principal was fixed at $700,000, but that wasn’t true either. The principal was definitely going higher each month for about 26 months, at which point, the principal would have been 115% of the original principal on the note. THAT is because each teaser payment of a fraction of the amount due for interest alone, was being added to the principal due. That is reverse amortization. But that is only part of the story.

When the principal has risen to 115% of the stated principal due in the closing documents, the loan reverts from a teaser payment — promised for several years — to a full amortized payments. So the original teaser payments was $2300 per month, while the amount added to principal was around $3000 PER MONTH. Thus after her first payment, the borrower owed $703,000. While the note and disclosure documents referred to a teaser payment that would continue for five years, that was impossible — because deep in the riders to the note there was a provision that stated the teaser payment would stop when the accrued payment exceed 115% of the original principal stated on the promissory note.

With the original principal at $700,000, the interest due was around $5100 per month on the original principal. 115% of $700,000 is $805,000, which represents a hidden increase of principal built into the payment schedule. That is an increase of $105,000 for as long as it takes with the hidden accrued interest computed in the background and not disclosed to the borrower before, during or after the “loan closing.” For a loan requiring “20% down payment” this is lost money. The 20% vanishes at the loan closing while the borrower thinks they have equity in their property. They don’t — even if property prices had been maintained.

The hidden increase of $105,000 happens a lot sooner than you think. It is called “reverse amortization” for a reason. But the unsophisticated borrower, this computation is unknown and impossible to run. In the first month the interest rate of 8.875% is now applied against a “principal” due of $703,000. This raises the hidden interest due from around $3000 per month to $3025. Each month the hidden accrued interest being added to “principal” rises by $25 per month. At the end of the first year, the payment due and unpaid principal is rising by $3300 per month. At the end of the second year it is more than $3600 per month. And at the end of the third year, if you get that far the actual computation makes the accrued interest (and therefore the principal due) rise by over $4,000 per month.

Using the above figures which are rounded and “smoothed” for purposes of this article (they are actually higher), principal has gone up by around $20,000 in the first year, $56,000 in the second year, and $76,000 in the third year. So by the end of the third year, the principal due has changed from the original $700,000 to over $850,000. But this passes the threshold of $105,000 beyond which interest will no longer accrue and will be payable in full. And THAT means that during the third year, the payment changes from $2300 to the full interest payment of $5900 per month plus amortized principal plus taxes plus insurance. Hence the payment has changed to over $6500 per month plus taxes and insurance.

For a household that qualified for the $2300 payment, the rise in payment means a guaranteed loss of their home if the loan was real and the documents were enforceable. This is a hidden balloon. The company calling itself the “lender” or “servicer” is obviously not going to get many payments at the new rate. So you call up and they tell you that in order to get a loan modification, which was probably promised to you at your original “loan closing” you must be three months behind in your payments.

Relieved that you don’t need to pay an amount you can’t pay anyway, and afraid you are going to lose everything if you don’t follow the advice of the “customer service representative, you stop paying and find yourself looking at a notice of default. The company tells you don’t worry you are in process for modification when i fact they are preparing to foreclose. There are probably a few million families that have been through this process of “lost paperwork” redoing it several times, “incomplete” etc. only to be told that you don’t “qualify” or the “investor has turned down your offer (which is a lie because the investor has not even seen your file much less considered any offer for modification).

Next comes the notice of acceleration either in a letter or in a lawsuit for foreclosure and suddenly the borrower knows they are screwed but feels it is their own fault. They feel ashamed and they feel like a deadbeat but they really don’t understand how they got to this point. THAT is the hidden balloon — an acceleration in about 26 months that is virtually guaranteed. The entire balance becomes due which of course you cannot pay. If you could have paid the full balance you would not have have taken a loan. You never had a chance. But that is only the first balloon payment that is not revealed to the borrower at his or her “loan closing.”

The second one comes at the end of 36 months. And that is because the computation of the amortized payment has been based upon the original principal and the original interest rate, both of which has changed. So even if you made it to 36 months, you would be told that you will be in foreclosure unless you pay the unpaid principal balance as the “bank” has computed it, which will probably be around $50,000-$70,000.

Florida law requires balloon payments to be disclosed in very prominent fashion. In these cases it not only was not disclosed, it was hidden from the borrower.

It is unfair and illegal to force this idiotic loan upon either the investor whose money was used to fund it without their knowledge or consent, or the borrower who obviously would not have signed a loan that he or she had no chance of paying. This is why forensic reviewers are necessary and expert witnesses are necessary. But for those of you who are entering into trial without benefit of forensic reviews and experts, you can still do this computation yourself and see what happens. Or any accountant can compute the final figures for you.

It is simple and simply wrong. And while you are at it, ask any lender of any kind anywhere if they put THEIR OWN MONEY at risk making a loan like that. Notice that I have not even bothered to mentioned the inflated appraisal.

FYI. Failure to Disclose in capital letters with the statutory language in Florida extends the maturity date indefinitely untinl interest and principal are paid in full. For Florida law see

Florida Balloon Payments

But in addition, the failure to disclose this also violates the Federal Truth in Lending Act. And the failure to provide a good faith estimate three days prior to closing is also a violation — all leading to rescission. The 9th Circuit, which had said that rescission requires tender or ability to tender the money back, reversed itself and said that is no longer necessary. But there is a three day right of rescission and a three year statute of limitations on rescission. In my opinion, both time limits would probably be applied BUT I also think that the legislation can be used defensively as corroboration for your argument that the borrower had no way of knowing what he or she was signing. AND the hidden nature of the balloon payments can arguably be said to be a scheme to trick the borrower, which MIGHT extend the running of the statute.

See Reg Z in full, but here is the part that I think is important:

(e) Prohibition on steering.

Prohibits a loan originator from “steering” a consumer to a lender offering less favorable terms in order to increase the loan originator’s compensation.

Provides a safe harbor to facilitate compliance. The safe harbor is met if the consumer is presented with loan offers for each type of transaction in which the consumer expresses an interest (that is, a fixed rate loan, adjustable rate loan, or a reverse mortgage); and the loan options presented to the consumer include:

  • (A) the loan with the lowest interest rate for which the consumer qualifies;
  • (B) the loan with the lowest total dollar amount for origination points or fees, and discount points, and
  • (C) the loan with the lowest rate for which the consumer qualifies for a loan without negative amortization, a prepayment penalty, interest-only payments, a balloon payment in the first 7 years of the life of the loan, a demand feature, shared equity, or shared appreciation; or, in the case of a reverse mortgage, a loan without a prepayment penalty, or shared equity or shared appreciation.

To be within the safe harbor, the loan originator must obtain loan options from a significant number of the creditors with which the originator regularly does business. The loan originator can present fewer than three loans and satisfy the safe harbor, if the loan(s) presented to the consumer otherwise meet the criteria in the rule.

The loan originator must have a good faith belief that the options presented to the consumer are loans for which the consumer likely qualifies. For each type of transaction, if the originator presents to the consumer more than three loans, the originator must highlight the loans that satisfy the criteria specified in the rule.

< Back to Regulation Z

 

Filed under: AMGAR, CORRUPTION, escrow agent, evidence, expert witness, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, GTC | Honor, investment banking, Investor, MBS TRUSTEE, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, originator, Pleading, securities fraud, Servicer, STATUTES, Title, TRUST BENEFICIARIES, trustee | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 15 Comments »

Truth Coming Home to Roost: JPM Knew the Loans Were Bad

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Neil Garfield

In a statement shortly after he sued JPMorgan Chase, Mr. Schneiderman [Attorney general, New York state] said the lawsuit was a template “for future actions against issuers of residential mortgage-backed securities that defrauded investors and cost millions of Americans their homes.”

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Editor’s Comment and Analysis: It’s been a long pull to get the real information about the misbehavior of the mega banks and their officers. But Schneiderman, Attorney general of the State of New York, is drilling down to where this really needs to go. And others, tired of receiving hollow assurances from the mega banks are suing — with specific knowledge and proof that is largely unavailable to borrowers — a good reason to watch these suits carefully.

Both internal emails and interviews have revealed that they repeatedly were warned by outside analysts of the perils of the mortgage lending process. The officers of JPM chose to change the reports to make them look more appealing to investors who gave up the pension money of their pensioners in exchange for what turns out to be bogus mortgage bonds issued by a non-existent or unfunded entity that never touched a dime of the investors’ money and never received ownership or backing from real loans with real security instruments (mortgages and deeds of trust).

A lawsuit filed by Dexia, a Belgian-French bank is being closely watched with justified trepidation as the onion gets pealed away. The fact that the officers of JPM and other mega banks were getting reports from outside analysts and took the trouble to change the reports and change the make-up of the bogus mortgage bonds leads inevitably to a single conclusion — the acts were intentional, they were not reckless mistakes, they weren’t gambling. They were committing fraud and stealing the pension money of investors and getting ready to become the largest landowners in the country through illegal, fraudulent, wrongful foreclosure actions that should have been fixed when TARP was first proposed.

The Dexia lawsuit focuses on JPM, WAMU and Bear Stearns, acquired by JPM with government help. The failure to provide bailout relief to homeowners at the same time sent the economy into a downward spiral. Had the Federal reserve and US Treasury department even ordered a spot check as to what was really happening, the “difficult” decisions in 2008 would have been averted completely.

Receivership and breakdown of the large banks would have produced a far more beneficial result to the financial system, and is still, in my opinion, inevitable. Ireland is doing it with their major bank as announced yesterday and other countries have done the same thing. Instead of the chaos and trouble that the banks have policy makers afraid of creating, those countries are coming out of the recession with much stronger numbers and a great deal more confidence in the marketplace.

The practice note here is that lawyers should look at the blatant lies the banks told to regulators, law enforcement and even each other. The question is obvious — if the banks were willing to lie to the big boys, what makes you think that ANYTHING at ground level for borrowers was anything but lies?  They went to their biggest customers and lied in their faces. They certainly did the same in creating the illusion of a real estate closing at ground level.

Lawyers should question everything and believe nothing. Normal presumptions and assumptions do not apply. Keep your eye on the money, who paid whom, and when and getting the proof of payment and proof of loss. You will find that no money exchanged hands except when the investors put up money for the bonds that were supposed to be mortgage backed, and the money that was sent down the pipe via wire transfer to the closing agent under circumstances where the “lender” was not even permitted to touch the money, much less use it in their own name for funding.

The diversion of money away from the REMICs and the diversion of title away from the REMICs leaves each DOCUMENTED loan as non-existent, with the note evidence of a transaction in which no value exchanged hands, and the mortgage securing the obligations of the invalid note.

The diversion of the documents away from the flow of money leaves the borrower and lenders with a real loan that, except for the wire transfer receipts, that was undocumented and therefore not secured. Yet nearly all borrowers would grant the mortgage if fair market value and fair terms were used. Millions of foreclosures would have been thwarted by settlements, modifications and agreements had the investors been directly involved.

Instead the subservicers rejected hundreds of thousands of perfectly good proposals for modification that would have saved the home, mitigated the damages to investors, and left the bank liable to investors for the rest of the money they took that never made it into the money chain and never made it into the REMIC.

Add to this mixture the rigging of LIBOR and EuroBOR, the receipt of trillions in mitigating payments kept by the banks that should have been paid and credited to the investors, and it is easy to see, conceptually, how the amount demanded in nearly all foreclosure cases is wrong.

Discovery requests should include, in addition to third party insurance and CDS payments, the method used to compute new interest rates and whether they were using LIBOR ( most of them did) and what adjustments they have made resulting from the revelation that LIBOR was rigged — especially since it was the same mega banks that were rigging the baseline rate of interbank lending.

Once you are in the door, THEN you can do not only your own computations on resetting payments, but you can demand to see all the transactions so that the applied interest rate was used against the alleged principal. At that point you will know if a loan receivable account even exists and if so, who owns it — and a fair guess is that it is not now nor was it ever any of the parties who have “successfully” completed foreclosure, thus creating a corruption of title in the marketplace for real estate that has never happened before.

E-Mails Imply JPMorgan Knew Some Mortgage Deals Were Bad

By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

When an outside analysis uncovered serious flaws with thousands of home loans, JPMorgan Chase executives found an easy fix.

Rather than disclosing the full extent of problems like fraudulent home appraisals and overextended borrowers, the bank adjusted the critical reviews, according to documents filed early Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan. As a result, the mortgages, which JPMorgan bundled into complex securities, appeared healthier, making the deals more appealing to investors.

The trove of internal e-mails and employee interviews, filed as part of a lawsuit by one of the investors in the securities, offers a fresh glimpse into Wall Street’s mortgage machine, which churned out billions of dollars of securities that later imploded. The documents reveal that JPMorgan, as well as two firms the bank acquired during the credit crisis, Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns, flouted quality controls and ignored problems, sometimes hiding them entirely, in a quest for profit.

The lawsuit, which was filed by Dexia, a Belgian-French bank, is being closely watched on Wall Street. After suffering significant losses, Dexia sued JPMorgan and its affiliates in 2012, claiming it had been duped into buying $1.6 billion of troubled mortgage-backed securities. The latest documents could provide a window into a $200 billion case that looms over the entire industry. In that lawsuit, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has accused 17 banks of selling dubious mortgage securities to the two housing giants. At least 20 of the securities are also highlighted in the Dexia case, according to an analysis of court records.

In court filings, JPMorgan has strongly denied wrongdoing and is contesting both cases in federal court. The bank declined to comment.

Dexia’s lawsuit is part of a broad assault on Wall Street for its role in the 2008 financial crisis, as prosecutors, regulators and private investors take aim at mortgage-related securities. New York’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, sued JPMorgan last year over investments created by Bear Stearns between 2005 and 2007.

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, has criticized prosecutors for attacking JPMorgan because of what Bear Stearns did. Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in October, Mr. Dimon said the bank did the federal government “a favor” by rescuing the flailing firm in 2008.

The legal onslaught has been costly. In November, JPMorgan, the nation’s largest bank, agreed to pay $296.9 million to settle claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bear Stearns had misled mortgage investors by hiding some delinquent loans. JPMorgan did not admit or deny wrongdoing.

“The true price tag for the ongoing costs of the litigation is terrifying,” said Christopher Whalen, a senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners.

The Dexia lawsuit centers on complex securities created by JPMorgan, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual during the housing boom. As profits soared, the Wall Street firms scrambled to pump out more investments, even as questions emerged about their quality.

With a seemingly insatiable appetite, JPMorgan scooped up mortgages from lenders with troubled records, according to the court documents. In an internal “due diligence scorecard,” JPMorgan ranked large mortgage originators, assigning Washington Mutual and American Home Mortgage the lowest grade of “poor” for their documentation, the court filings show.

The loans were quickly sold to investors. Describing the investment assembly line, an executive at Bear Stearns told employees “we are a moving company not a storage company,” according to the court documents.

As they raced to produce mortgage-backed securities, Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns also scaled back their quality controls, the documents indicate.

In an initiative called Project Scarlett, Washington Mutual slashed its due diligence staff by 25 percent as part of an effort to bolster profit. Such steps “tore the heart out” of quality controls, according to a November 2007 e-mail from a Washington Mutual executive. Executives who pushed back endured “harassment” when they tried to “keep our discipline and controls in place,” the e-mail said.

Even when flaws were flagged, JPMorgan and the other firms sometimes overlooked the warnings.

JPMorgan routinely hired Clayton Holdings and other third-party firms to examine home loans before they were packed into investments. Combing through the mortgages, the firms searched for problems like borrowers who had vastly overstated their incomes or appraisals that inflated property values.

According to the court documents, an analysis for JPMorgan in September 2006 found that “nearly half of the sample pool” – or 214 loans – were “defective,” meaning they did not meet the underwriting standards. The borrowers’ incomes, the firms found, were dangerously low relative to the size of their mortgages. Another troubling report in 2006 discovered that thousands of borrowers had already fallen behind on their payments.

But JPMorgan at times dismissed the critical assessments or altered them, the documents show. Certain JPMorgan employees, including the bankers who assembled the mortgages and the due diligence managers, had the power to ignore or veto bad reviews.

In some instances, JPMorgan executives reduced the number of loans considered delinquent, the documents show. In others, the executives altered the assessments so that a smaller number of loans were considered “defective.”

In a 2007 e-mail, titled “Banking overrides,” a JPMorgan due diligence manager asks a banker: “How do you want to handle these loans?” At times, they whitewashed the findings, the documents indicate. In 2006, for example, a review of mortgages found that at least 1,154 loans were more than 30 days delinquent. The offering documents sent to investors showed only 25 loans as delinquent.

A person familiar with the bank’s portfolios said JPMorgan had reviewed the loans separately and determined that the number of delinquent loans was far less than the outside analysis had found.

At Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, employees also had the power to sanitize bad assessments. Employees at Bear Stearns were told that they were responsible for “purging all of the older reports” that showed flaws, “leaving only the final reports,” according to the court documents.

Such actions were designed to bolster profit. In a deposition, a Washington Mutual employee said revealing loan defects would undermine the lucrative business, and that the bank would suffer “a couple-point hit in price.”

Ratings agencies also did not necessarily get a complete picture of the investments, according to the court filings. An assessment of the loans in one security revealed that 24 percent of the sample was “materially defective,” the filings show. After exercising override power, a JPMorgan employee sent a report in May 2006 to a ratings agency that showed only 5.3 percent of the mortgages were defective.

Such investments eventually collapsed, spreading losses across the financial system.

Dexia, which has been bailed out twice since the financial crisis, lost $774 million on mortgage-backed securities, according to court records.

Mr. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, said that overall losses from flawed mortgage-backed securities from 2005 and 2007 were $22.5 billion.

In a statement shortly after he sued JPMorgan Chase, Mr. Schneiderman said the lawsuit was a template “for future actions against issuers of residential mortgage-backed securities that defrauded investors and cost millions of Americans their homes.”

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 69 Comments »

WHO BENEFITS FROM AUSTERITY? WALL STREET!

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Neil Garfield

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Editor’s Comment:

You might wonder why people, mostly republicans, are all about “spending cuts.” just for clarification here, spending cuts are what Europe calls “austerity measures.” every policy possibility has been played here and the worst one is clearly austerity or “spending cuts.” everyone calling for austerity is controlled by the banks. Everyone who is not controlled by the banks thinks it isn’t a bad idea to continue government safety nets and sponsor more commerce. Once upon a time Wall Street made its money riding the crest of successful economies, collecting brokerage fees for more and more deals. Not anymore. The Banks are intent on taking the capital — all of it. What then?

People think it makes sense to spend less money to have more. But when the government does that it has less, not more money, thus cutting off vital services. So you might want to think about who benefits as all the major industrialised nations go down the tubes. We know government loses, we know the people lose their services and pay more taxes, so who is it that benefits from the austerity spin?

WALL STREET is the answer. With the level of commerce declining, plummeting they can bet on a sure thing — that interest rates are going to go through the roof, which means that the prices of bonds already issued are going to fall like stones. Only on Wall street can you make bets on interest rates and bets on bonds or groups of bonds or banks or groups of banks. They are pushing the austerity engine and taking us all into a ditch while Wall Street rakes in whatever money is left in our limping economy.

Wall Street has not only turned the lending models on their heads they have succeeded at turning the policy models on their head. The results are unthinkable— Wall Street has created an incentive to kill commerce. And now they are so deep into those bets that the only game in town is putting every economy into crisis. Someone needs to pull the rug out from under these banksters and put them jail where they belong. As society gave them the license to create and grow liquidity for the engine of economic growth so too can society take it away when the banks bite the hands that fed them.

Paul Krugman Debunks Mitt Romney’s Economic Nonsense

By: Jason Easley

On CNN, Paul Krugman called out Mitt Romney today for spouting nonsense about the economy and explained why Romney’s plan to do what Greece did won’t bring prosperity to America.

Here are Krugman’s thoughts on Obama and Romney via CNN:

ZAKARIA: All this said and done, are you enthusiastic about President Obama? You were not for him in the Democratic primary four years ago.

KRUGMAN: Right. I mean, we’re a long way past where I think enthusiasm is the appropriate emotion for anything here.

But he’s learned a lot. And, you know, his heart’s always been in the right place, and I believe his head is now in the right place. And you certainly — of course, I can’t do endorsements, right? It’s a Times rule. So you have no idea who I prefer in this election.

(LAUGHTER)

But he certainly is talking sense about the economy, and Mitt Romney is talking utter nonsense. And you really do worry. In effect…

ZAKARIA: What is the single biggest piece of nonsense that Mitt Romney…

KRUGMAN: Mitt Romney is saying basically that spending cuts are how we’re going to get to prosperity. Mitt Romney is saying, see what’s happening in Greece and in Portugal and in Spain and in Ireland; let’s do that here.

Boy — you know, we’ve just had a massive test, human experimentation on a massive scale, in effect, alternative doctrines of economic management. We’ve just seen which doctrines are disastrous. And the Republican platform is, let’s put that doctrine that has just caused collapse in Europe — let’s put that doctrine into effect right here in America.

Krugman was right on the money. Republicans have been trying to play what they think is a clever game of pretending that what they have proposed isn’t austerity, while at the same time threatening to implement austerity if they don’t get what they want, which is austerity. History shows that economies suffocate under austerity, but Republicans like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan keep pushing the insane idea is that we can do the same thing that Europe did, but expect a different result.

Republicans are using austerity as an economic justification for their policy of feeding the rich while starving everyone else. The Romney and Ryan plans by design don’t force any austerity measures on the wealthy. The austerity is designed for everyone else. The rich would benefit while America’s devolution into a society of haves and have nots would accelerate. The reality is that Spending cuts never bring prosperity, and many of the rank and file Republicans who are championing the cuts fail to understand that those cuts will be coming out of their hides. All of the Republicans over 65 years of age who support Romney haven’t put the pieces together that a vote for Mitt is a vote to slash their Medicare.

Mitt Romney is spewing contradictory economic nonsense, because the Republican platform is becoming little more than historically discredited feel good dreams of trickledown worship and gibberish.

Paul Krugman is right. A majority of his fellow economists know he is right. The American people know he is right, and history proves him correct, but the Republican Party is trapped in a suicidal fantasy economy of their own creation. It is this fantasy that Romney has to pander to in order to keep his base, and it is the same fantasy that Paul Krugman absolutely destroyed.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments »

LIQUIDITY TRAP CONTINUES TO STALL RECOVERY

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Neil Garfield

COMBO Title and Securitization Search, Report, Documents, Analysis & Commentary SEE LIVINGLIES LITIGATION SUPPORT AT LUMINAQ.COM

SEE Liquidity_trap

“This is a call for application of existing law, not for the ideological shifting of wealth. If people get their cars and houses back that were taken illegally, we will have the capacity to invest, to restart commerce, and prosper. If we keep people enslaved in fictitious debt, we will have succeeded in destroying the promise of the American democratic experiment. Our system is based upon the ultimate power being with the people who are governed, not with the people who do the governing. Somehow we lost that and instead of the government being fearful of public reaction, the people are fearful of government reaction. We need to “man-up” or “citizen-up”, take back that power, and apply existing laws without malice or ideological agendas that change our constitution.”

“The liquidity trap, in Keynesian economics, is a situation where monetary policy is unable to stimulate an economy, either through lowering interest rates or increasing the money supply. Liquidity traps typically occur when expectations of adverse events (e.g., deflation, insufficient aggregate demand, or civil or international war) make persons with liquid assets unwilling to invest.” Wikipedia

EDITOR’S COMMENT: In plain language our status quo is that nobody is investing in the economy to the degree necessary to stimulate an economic recovery. Fiscal or monetary policy from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury can’t do anything about it because their control over monetary supply and the financial industry has been all but eliminated. Allowing the fake mortgage bonds and fake mortgages to be treated as though they had real value grants a 10:1 advantage to Wall Street over government. The nominal value and market value, as traded currently, of derivatives based upon the receivables or value derived from loans supposedly backed by mortgages is up to ten times more than the current monetary supply coming from government. Wall Street has issued more currency than the government, so THEY control monetary and fiscal policy.

In short, Wall Street is running the show because we let them create “currency” out of the bogus notes and mortgages, the derivatives, the mortgage bonds, and all the other contracts and hedge products — all based upon a fictitious scheme of “securitization” where there were no actual transfers and where there were no actual binding contracts between the real lenders and the real borrowers.

Yet the myth persists and is nearly universally accepted that if we let those false instruments fall back to earth, the entire financial system will crash. Scare tactics. This is no longer a contest between people with conflicting projections. The reality is upon us. Wall Street has all the investment capital  to rebuild infrastructure, create jobs, educate our workers, stimulate innovation, and put America back on track actually making physical objects you can touch or performing services that people want. Wall Street has it because we let them have it even though they achieved this status by violating every law of, federal and state imaginable, even though they lied, cheated and continue to steal in the “foreclosure” market.

Our system lacks credibility — otherwise those with money would be investing in it. They are not investing and they are not lending for one simple reason — they are doing better trading paper amongst themselves and creating fictitious profits which is increasing the fictitious wealth of the top2,000 people in America. We lack credibility because we are not telling the truth and we are not owning up to the fact that we were captured in a coup d’etat that was quietly achieved by Wall Street, our new government.

We lack credibility because as long as that condition persists, we won’t have a real economy of manufacturing and services. It’s not longer a prediction. It’s now a fact. And the people we call our “government” are merely cogs in a wheel taking orders from a “higher power” than the constitution. They take their orders from Wall Street.

No, this is not a call for socialism. It isn’t socialism or communism to take away a stolen car and return it to its rightful owner — but it it IS redistribution of wealth. That is why government exists — to make sure the bully in the school yard doesn’t grab everyone’s lunch and scream “Mine!”

This is a call for application of existing law, not for the ideological shifting of wealth. If people get their cars and houses back that were taken illegally, we will have the capacity to invest, to restart commerce, and prosper. If we keep people enslaved in fictitious debt, we will have succeeded in destroying the promise of the American democratic experiment. Our system is based upon the ultimate power being with the people who are governed, not with the people who do the governing. Somehow we lost that and instead of the government being fearful of public reaction, the people are fearful of government reaction. We need to “man-up” or “citizen-up”, take back that power, and apply existing laws without malice or ideological agendas that change our constitution.

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Yes, We’re In A Liquidity Trap

Some comments on various blog posts ask what evidence we have that liquidity trap economics is any different from normal economics. Um, the answer is staring us in the face: the failure of interest rates to rise despite very large budget deficits:

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If you had told most people, back in 2007, that the federal government would soon be running budget deficits in the vicinity of 10 percent of GDP, most of them would have predicted soaring interest rates. In fact, quite a few people did predict just that — and in some cases lost a lot of money for their investors.

But it hasn’t happened. Short rates have stayed near zero; long rates have fluctuated with changing views about the prospects for recovery, but stayed consistently below historical norms. That’s exactly what those of us who understood liquidity-trap economics predicted, right from the beginning.

I don’t know what more evidence you could ask for. After all, interest rates are what the liquidity trap is all about.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Bank of America to Pay $108 Million in Countrywide Case

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Neil Garfield

GET LOAN SPECIFIC RECORDS PROPERTY SEARCH AND SECURITIZATION SUMMARY

FTC v Countrywide Home Loans Incand BAC Home Loans ServicingConsent Judgment Order 20100607

Editor’s Comment: This “tip of the iceberg”  is important for a number of reasons. You should be alerted to the fact that this was an industry-wide practice. The fees tacked on illegally during delinquency or foreclosure make the notice of default, notice of sale, foreclosure all predicated upon fatally defective information. It also shows one of the many ways the investors in MBS are being routinely ripped off, penny by penny, so that there “investment” is reduced to zero.
There also were many “feeder” loan originators that were really fronts for Countrywide. I think Quicken Loans for example was one of them. Quicken is very difficult to trace down on securitization information although we have some info on it. In this context, what is important, is that Quicken, like other feeder originators was following the template and methods of procedure given to them by CW.Of course Countrywide was a feeder to many securities underwriters including Merrill Lynch which is also now Bank of America.

Sometimes they got a little creative on their own. Quicken for example adds an appraisal fee to a SECOND APPRAISAL COMPANY which just happens to be owned by them. Besides the probability of a TILA violation, this specifically makes the named lender at closing responsible for the bad appraisal. It’s not a matter for legal argument. It is factual. So if you bought a house for $650,000, the appraisal which you relied upon was $670,000 and the house was really worth under $500,000 they could be liable for not only fraudulent appraisal but also for the “benefit of the bargain” in contract.

Among the excessive fees that were charged were the points and interest rates charged for “no-doc” loans. The premise is that they had a greater risk for a no-doc loan but that they were still using underwriting procedures that conformed to industry standards. In fact, the loans were being automatically set up for approval in accordance with the requirements of the underwriter of Mortgage Backed Securities which had already been sold to investors. So there was no underwriting process and they would have approved the same loan with a full doc loan (the contents of which would have been ignored). Thus thee extra points and higher interest rate paid were exorbitant because you were being charged for something that didn’t exist, to wit: underwriting.
June 7, 2010

Bank of America to Pay $108 Million in Countrywide Case

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bank of America will pay $108 million to settle federal charges that Countrywide Financial Corporation, which it acquired nearly two years ago, collected outsized fees from about 200,000 borrowers facing foreclosure.

The Federal Trade Commission announced the settlement Monday and said the money would be used to reimburse borrowers.

Bank of America purchased Countrywide in July 2008. FTC officials emphasized the actions in the case took place before the acquisition.

The bank said it agreed to the settlement “to avoid the expense and distraction associated with litigating the case,” which also resolves litigation by bankruptcy trustees. “The settlement allows us to put all of these matters behind us,” the company said.

Countrywide hit the borrowers who were behind on their mortgages with fees of several thousand dollars at times, the agency said. The fees were for services like property inspections and landscaping.

Countrywide created subsidiaries to hire vendors, which marked up the price for such services, the agency said. The company “earned substantial profits by funneling default-related services through subsidiaries that it created solely to generate revenue,” the agency said in a news release.

The agency also alleged that Countrywide made false claims to borrowers in bankruptcy about the amount owed or the size of their loans and failed to tell those borrowers about fees or other charges.

Filed under: CASES, CORRUPTION, Eviction, evidence, expert witness, foreclosure, foreclosure mill, Forensic Analysis Workshop, GTC | Honor, HERS, investment banking, Investor, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, Motion Practice and Discovery, securities fraud, Securitization Survey, Servicer, STATUTES, trustee, workshop | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments »

Yield Spread Premiums Revealed as Interest Rates Rise

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Neil Garfield
Editor’s Note: This article might help you understand the workings of a yield spread premium. For every 1% difference in interest rate the “cost” of the loan to you goes up 19%. Now if you look at it from the point of view of the “lender” that means the “value” goes up by 19%. That means, on a $100,000 loan an increase of $19,000.

So if you have a $100,000 loan and you qualified for a 5% loan, then a smooth-talking mortgage broker or mortgage originator might get you confused enough to get into a loan that looks better but ends being worse.

The result might be that you pay a 10% rate when the loan re-sets. This increases the “cost” of the loan (oversimplifying here for the purpose of education) to the borrower and the “value” of the loan to the “lender.” How much? 19% for every 1% increase, so in our example here, to keep it simple, the cost to you on a $100,000 loan is increased by 19%x5=95%. So you will pay $95,000 more for that increase. And the lender will get $95,000 more for their “investment.”

The mortgage broker gets a “share” of that increase as a reward for having talked you into a worse loan product even if it means that the viability of the loan (the likelihood that you will pay it off) has been diminished. This “share” is called a premium and it is caused by the spread between the original 5% that you could have had and the 10% loan they you bought. Hence yield spread premium, and I call that “tier 1.”

Tier 2 occurs because the source of funds is not the bank, it is an investor who is kept in the dark much as you are. They think they are getting 5% on a $200,000 loan. But what Wall Street did was they actually funded your $100,000 loan, valued it at 10%, and then kept the balance of the $200,000 investment for themselves. To the investor the numbers look the same — they expected 5% on their $200,000 purchase of mortgage backed securities which is $10,000 per year. Wall Street gave them what looked like an investment that yielded $10,000 per year simply by creating toxic loans and used it against the borrowers who would have otherwise paid on the loans because they could.

It is the same yield spread between 5% and 10%, but used in reverse against the investor.
In my opinion this gives rise to recovery of the undisclosed tier 2 yield spread premium payable to the borrower. It might also give rise to a cause of action for securities fraud that the investor could claim. At the moment, few people are pursuing this. Eventually as the mystery unravels, there will be competing claims for this money, and the first one to the finish line is probably going to be the winner.
April 10, 2010

Interest Rates Have Nowhere to Go but Up

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Even as prospects for the American economy brighten, consumers are about to face a new financial burden: a sustained period of rising interest rates.

That, economists say, is the inevitable outcome of the nation’s ballooning debt and the renewed prospect of inflation as the economy recovers from the depths of the recent recession.

The shift is sure to come as a shock to consumers whose spending habits were shaped by a historic 30-year decline in the cost of borrowing.

“Americans have assumed the roller coaster goes one way,” said Bill Gross, whose investment firm, Pimco, has taken part in a broad sell-off of government debt, which has pushed up interest rates. “It’s been a great thrill as rates descended, but now we face an extended climb.”

The impact of higher rates is likely to be felt first in the housing market, which has only recently begun to rebound from a deep slump. The rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage has risen half a point since December, hitting 5.31 last week, the highest level since last summer.

Along with the sell-off in bonds, the Federal Reserve has halted its emergency $1.25 trillion program to buy mortgage debt, placing even more upward pressure on rates.

“Mortgage rates are unlikely to go lower than they are now, and if they go higher, we’re likely to see a reversal of the gains in the housing market,” said Christopher J. Mayer, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School. “It’s a really big risk.”

Each increase of 1 percentage point in rates adds as much as 19 percent to the total cost of a home, according to Mr. Mayer.

The Mortgage Bankers Association expects the rise to continue, with the 30-year mortgage rate going to 5.5 percent by late summer and as high as 6 percent by the end of the year.

Another area in which higher rates are likely to affect consumers is credit card use. And last week, the Federal Reserve reported that the average interest rate on credit cards reached 14.26 percent in February, the highest since 2001. That is up from 12.03 percent when rates bottomed in the fourth quarter of 2008 — a jump that amounts to about $200 a year in additional interest payments for the typical American household.

With losses from credit card defaults rising and with capital to back credit cards harder to come by, issuers are likely to increase rates to 16 or 17 percent by the fall, according to Dennis Moroney, a research director at the TowerGroup, a financial research company.

“The banks don’t have a lot of pricing options,” Mr. Moroney said. “They’re targeting people who carry a balance from month to month.”

Similarly, many car loans have already become significantly more expensive, with rates at auto finance companies rising to 4.72 percent in February from 3.26 percent in December, according to the Federal Reserve.

Washington, too, is expecting to have to pay more to borrow the money it needs for programs. The Office of Management and Budget expects the rate on the benchmark 10-year United States Treasury note to remain close to 3.9 percent for the rest of the year, but then rise to 4.5 percent in 2011 and 5 percent in 2012.

The run-up in rates is quickening as investors steer more of their money away from bonds and as Washington unplugs the economic life support programs that kept rates low through the financial crisis. Mortgage rates and car loans are linked to the yield on long-term bonds.

Besides the inflation fears set off by the strengthening economy, Mr. Gross said he was also wary of Treasury bonds because he feared the burgeoning supply of new debt issued to finance the government’s huge budget deficits would overwhelm demand, driving interest rates higher.

Nine months ago, United States government debt accounted for half of the assets in Mr. Gross’s flagship fund, Pimco Total Return. That has shrunk to 30 percent now — the lowest ever in the fund’s 23-year history — as Mr. Gross has sold American bonds in favor of debt from Europe, particularly Germany, as well as from developing countries like Brazil.

Last week, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note briefly crossed the psychologically important threshold of 4 percent, as the Treasury auctioned off $82 billion in new debt. That is nearly twice as much as the government paid in the fall of 2008, when investors sought out ultrasafe assets like Treasury securities after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of the credit crisis.

Though still very low by historical standards, the rise of bond yields since then is reversing a decline that began in 1981, when 10-year note yields reached nearly 16 percent.

From that peak, steadily dropping interest rates have fed a three-decade lending boom, during which American consumers borrowed more and more but managed to hold down the portion of their income devoted to paying off loans.

Indeed, total household debt is now nine times what it was in 1981 — rising twice as fast as disposable income over the same period — yet the portion of disposable income that goes toward covering that debt has budged only slightly, increasing to 12.6 percent from 10.7 percent.

Household debt has been dropping for the last two years as recession-battered consumers cut back on borrowing, but at $13.5 trillion, it still exceeds disposable income by $2.5 trillion.

The long decline in rates also helped prop up the stock market; lower rates for investments like bonds make stocks more attractive.

That tailwind, which prevented even worse economic pain during the recession, has ceased, according to interviews with economists, analysts and money managers.

“We’ve had almost a 30-year rally,” said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor’s. “That’s come to an end.”

Just as significant as the bottom-line impact will be the psychological fallout from not being able to buy more while paying less — an unusual state of affairs that made consumer spending the most important measure of economic health.

“We’ve gotten spoiled by the idea that interest rates will stay in the low single-digits forever,” said Jim Caron, an interest rate strategist with Morgan Stanley. “We’ve also had a generation of consumers and investors get used to low rates.”

For young home buyers today considering 30-year mortgages with a rate of just over 5 percent, it might be hard to conceive of a time like October 1981, when mortgage rates peaked at 18.2 percent. That meant monthly payments of $1,523 then compared with $556 now for a $100,000 loan.

No one expects rates to return to anything resembling 1981 levels. Still, for much of Wall Street, the question is not whether rates will go up, but rather by how much.

Some firms, like Morgan Stanley, are predicting that rates could rise by a percentage point and a half by the end of the year. Others, like JPMorgan Chase are forecasting a more modest half-point jump.

But the consensus is clear, according to Terrence M. Belton, global head of fixed-income strategy for J. P. Morgan Securities. “Everyone knows that rates will eventually go higher,” he said.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments »

Foreclosure Defense: Fraudulent Appraisals, Teaser Rates, and Manufactured Defaults: Boons to Borrowers in Defending Foreclosure

Posted on June 11, 2008 by Neil Garfield
Fraudulent Appraisals, Teaser Rates, and Manufactured Defaults: Boons to Borrowers in Defending Foreclosure
As more and more lender misconduct hits the Internet airwaves and more of us continue our investigation into and scrutiny of the practices of originating lenders and their downline successors, certain themes are developing which give rise to numerous defenses to mortgage foreclosure actions. Three such issues are discussed here which are not mutually exclusive; which are “inextricably intertwined”; and which, when properly presented, may force a foreclosing party to bring additional parties into a foreclosure action, each of which is not only a potential additional “settlement pot” for the borrower’s claims, but also, on playing the “blame game”, can provide the borrower with free information to bolster the borrower’s claim as well.
The first is the fraudulent appraisal, particularly in foreclosure actions involving equity lines of credit (also called home equity lines of credit or “HELOC”s) and refinance transactions where “cash out” is provided to the borrower. It goes without saying that a mortgage loan of any type depends in material part on the outcome of the appraisal of the property, which directly affects the loan-to-value (“LTV”) which percentage is used to calculate the maximum amount of money which can be disbursed as a “cash out” on a refinance, or amount of credit line which is extended on a HELOC. Given the literature concerning the tremendous pressure by the investment bankers to get mortgage loans signed up so that they could be sold to an aggregator and then bundled and used to “back” a “mortgage-backed” security, it was incumbent upon the appraiser to make sure that the appraised value of the property came in at the right number to close the loan, whether the appraisal was accurate or not. What is being learned is that a great many of these appraisals were inaccurate, misleading, or outright false and based not on true “comparable sales” as required for a proper appraisal.
The second is the so-called “teaser rate” in Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) loans. Literally hundreds of thousands of these loans, made to borrowers with unproven, dubious, little, or no income, “teased” or lured the borrower in with a promise from the mortgage broker or “lender” that the interest rate on the loan would be small for the first couple of years before it would go up, but with the attitude that “Hey, don’t worry, your property keeps going up in value, so by the time the new rate kicks in, you will have more equity and you can just do another ARM for a low rate”. What the mortgage broker and lender knew, however (but which was not disclosed to the borrower) was that the loan was only qualified for the borrower, in view of the borrower’s unproven, dubious, little, or no income, on the “teaser” interest rate, with the “lender” knowing that the borrower, once the “new” rate kicked in, DID NOT AND COULD NOT qualify for the loan and would not be able to make the increased mortgage payment based on the borrower’s income. As such, a default was built into the loan from the outset. But hey, no matter, as the originating “lender” had no intention of keeping the loan anyway, that would be someone else’s problem later on and down the line.
Which brings us to the effects of the manufactured default. Teaser rate loans to borrowers with unproven, dubious, little, or no income were doomed from the start. The originating lender knew or had to know that a default upon instance of the new and higher interest rate on the loan was almost inevitable, but hey again (to my friend purchasing these loans), YOU CAN FORECLOSE ON THE PROPERTY, SO YOU ARE PROTECTED!  This line had to have been repeated down the line at least through the first few layers of resale of the loans before bundling and being used as alleged “backing” for a “mortgage backed security”, when it really didn’t matter anymore except to those who now seek to foreclose on something they may not really even legally own or have rights to, and is probably not worth what the lender said it was worth.
So now, as a hypothetical (based on existing facts from certain pending cases), mortgage broker sucks in low-income borrower to take a cash-out refi on his house on a 2-year ARM with a low initial interest rate. Mortgage broker convinces borrower that Bank A has the best deal for borrower and that loan WILL be approved shortly despite no proof of borrower’s income, or on whatever income figure borrower claims (also known in mortgage parlance as “stated” income). Mortgage broker and Bank A make sure that appraiser inputs the “right” value for property on the appraisal so that the proper LTV is met to make the loan work even if true comps are not available. Bank A makes loan and immediately sells off mortgage to aggregator who in turn sells it off to investment banker in bundles for mortgage-backed-securities purposes. Bank A sells off right to “service” the loan to Servicing Agent, which collects payments from borrower, who defaults when teaser rate expires. Although there are numerous legal issues in this process, the focus here is on the interplay of the effect of the fraudulent appraisal, teaser rate, and manufactured default as they relate to assisting the borrower defending a foreclosure.
Servicing Agent now sues borrower for foreclosure claiming default in payment. Borrower defends against the Servicing Agent (as the purported “lender”) and asserts claims against Servicing Agent for lender liability, violation of lending laws, and other remedies. Servicing Agent claims “not me”, then looks to see who it can blame for borrower’s claims, and is thus forced to bring in Bank A, appraiser, and mortgage broker, who are each going to cry “not me” as well and start pointing fingers. The beauty of this is that the Servicing Agent has now provided the borrower with several other parties to seek relief from and has also provided the claims to be asserted against these additional parties. Further, one or more of these new parties may agree to “cooperate” with the borrower by disclosing the truth in exchange for a quick settlement either directly or through their professional liability insurance carriers rather than risk the potential of an adverse Final Court Judgment being entered against them and/or a professional license suspension or revocation, or loss of professional liability insurance coverage.
Given the enormity of the resale/aggregation/bundling/securitizing of mortgage loans and the myriad legal issues involved in the broad scheme of these transactions, a borrower threatened with foreclosure should never be shy to seek an opinion as to their potential defenses from an attorney who has a working knowledge of the pertinent concepts and how they operate in synergy to the benefit of the borrower. The investment in obtaining such an opinion could literally save the roof over the head of you (the borrower) and your family.
Jeff Barnes, Esq.

Filed under: CDO, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Mortgage | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Fed Confused on Policy

Posted on May 13, 2008 by Neil Garfield

Virtually ALL of the the decisions concerning money supply and “regulation” are being made in the private sector which is devoted to one thing by mission and by intent: transfer of wealth to the big dogs in the private sector. This clearly government function, as specifically expressed in the U.S. Constitution has been abandoned by government and usurped by the private sector.

By allowing tainted money into the political system, actions that had been plainly illegal, immoral and unethical have become a way of life, legalized by laws passed to satisfy legislator’s obligations to lobbyists. Obama’s call for reigning back the forces of money from the private sector is a call to arms and a call for alarms — to regulate and disclose the billions of dollars spent by credit/financial industries, oil and gas, coal, drugs, healthcare and crime (yes, crime because close examination shows that some private sectors will ONLY make money if the jails are full).

The purpose of government — to be the referree between capital and labor in a market allowing forces of supply, demand and innovation to determine outcome — has been abandoned and must be re-asserted. If not, we become a third world country where the rich live in electrified bunkers with their own security staff and the rest of the population remains hopeless poor and in debt. The risk of violent revolution, food riots and knee-jerk policies generated from fear or anger will be the rule rather than the exception. This is hardly the result intended by the framers of our constitution.

As the comments indicate, the Fed policy-making apparatus is in tatters.

  • It lowers the Fed overnight rate and interest rates go up — something that was thought impossible by many people. 
  • It confronts hyper-inflation with a mixture of mentioning how serious the issue is and then lowers rates again, which we all know means increasing the money supply and increasing inflation. But then lenders still refuse to give loans to small business, homeowners and other key parts of the credit cycle that spur the economy. 
  • The plain fact is that the Fed is not having much effect at all on anything. 
  • It missed the opportunity to regulate and increase its influence to thwart the bubble in housing because politically it was expedient to do so in a Repiublican administration. 

We all pay the price as the economy and our society commences the wrenching process of remaking itself with a solid foundation of productivity, more even distribution of purchasing power, less impulse purchasing, more saving, and the prospects of slower growth and recession here and abroad.

The FED is diminished, probably permanently. Up until now nobody has addressed the issue head-on that neither the Fed nor the U.. Treasury, nor the Bureau of Engraving and Printing are having much impact on money supply, interest rates, prices or economic growth.

Virtually ALL of the the decisions concerning money supply and “regulation” are being made in the private sector which is devoted to one thing by mission and by intent: transfer of wealth to the big dogs in the private sector. 

Pianalto: Fed’s strategy compatible with low inflation rate
By William L. Watts
Last update: 7:04 a.m. EDT May 13, 2008
LONDON (MarketWatch) — Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Sandra Pianalto said Tuesday that inflation remains a top risk to the economic outlook, but that the Federal Reserve’s rate-cutting strategy likely wouldn’t stoke inflationary pressures. In a speech prepared for delivery in Paris, Pianalto said she finds herself in a “challenging environment” as a policymaker. “While even the core price measures in the United States are rising somewhat faster than I would prefer, and inflation presents a key risk to my outlook, I believe that the Federal Reserve’s policy strategy remains compatible with a low and stable inflation rate,” she said. Pianalto said it was important to distinguish between inflation and relative-price pressures. End of Story

Filed under: bubble, Bush, CDO, community banks, CORRUPTION, credit unions, currency, education, Eviction, foreclosure, foreign relations, GTC | Honor, inflation, interest rates, Mortgage, Obama, politics, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Mortgage Meltdown: A New Bubble: Fraud Redux

Posted on January 10, 2008 by Neil Garfield

Hold everything!!: Second Bubble on the Way!!!????

Interest rates dropping, Fed lowering its rates, and incoming capital from China like it was water. We now see the strategy to prevent the world from marking the Bush administration down as the most foolish, stupidest in history. 

The plan is to create a second bubble. They will say that the pundits were wrong, that economy is strong after all and that this proves Bush and his fellow republicans were right on with their strategy . Sure there might have been “isolated instances of fraud” but basically these were free market forces at play. And it will look just like that until we wake up from the mania revisited and into the nightmare worsened.

What all this means is that there is going to be an interesting dynamic going on. We know we have a burst of the asset bubble and that prices have come tumbling down. Federal officials have been minimizing the damage assessment while scrambling for a plan that will cover up the worst case of economic fraud in human history. 

The Fed and the Bush administration are determined to minimize its appearance. So money is likely to get ridiculously cheap by mid year. Thus despite downward price pressure from the bubble burst, there will be upward price pressure for the same reason as we had the bust in the first place — free money. In short, it looks like instead of correcting the problem they intend to compound it — as long as possible — hoping that something else will happen that will soften the blow or at least make it look like it wasn’t GW’s fault. 

It would therefore seem that a few things are true. By dropping interest rates, a freeze at teaser rates becomes less costly and less offensive— which will diminish the rate of foreclosures — which will diminish the number of houses dumped on the market. We could be looking at the creation of a second bubble to cover up the first. 

The devaluation of the dollar combined with apparently rising prices and diminishing inventories of empty homes, is likely to lure foreign investors into buying US real estate. US Sellers will be getting more for their houses than is currently predicted. This will make the sellers more flexible buyers on the domestic scene. 

Thus around summer time or perhaps a little later, one might get a higher price for a house than anyone is currently predicting. And one might be able to make a deal for those feint-hearted sellers that are not willing to wait for the higher price AND the interest rate on a fixed rate mortgage might just be very low. 

So anyone considering a move in the next 3 years, or who is negotiating with their lenders for better terms to avoid foreclosures, might just want to stretch things out time wise. In fact, in a couple of months, I would suggest that anyone holding a mortgage from 2003-2006 contact their lender and ask for relief whether they need it or not. 

Of course the risk here is that the Fed and Wall Street smoke and mirrors trick won’t work. That would leave things in the same bleak state. But from what we are seeing, the Chinese are going to play a very large part in helping the next bubble along while they buy still more time to overwhelm American economic, political and military superiority. 

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, inflation, interest rates, Mortgage, politics, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

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