Free Republic

A retired agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that five million illegal immigrants nationwide may hold home mortgages. Earlier this week, we posted a story that said figures from the Department of Housing and Urban Development showed that home mortgages were held by 5 million illegal immigrants and that this may have contributed, in part, to the housing crisis that has led to the recent failure in the financial markets. Our source for that story, a retired agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, stands by those numbers. A person from Housing and Urban Development contacted KFYI to tell us...

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander hopes to raise awareness about a program that could help thousands of Tennesseans. He says roughly 67,000 Tennessee homeowners with overdue mortgages could use "Hope for Homeowners" to refinance their loans. “HOPE for Homeowners" is a way for homeowners to refinance delinquent mortgages if their lenders agree to participate. This program is a good step toward boosting confidence in the housing market and helping preserve the American dream for the millions of people facing possible foreclosure,” says Alexander. His office says "HOPE for Homeowners" is a voluntary initiative to help distressed borrowers refinance their mortgages. It...

A single report by KFYI radio of Phoenix, Arizona highlights a shocking claim made by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD says that five million illegal aliens hold illegal mortgages. This is just one more example of the lax lending laws put into place by Democrats like Barney Frank that have contributed to this economic crisis. One would think this would be big news. But, so far we have only this one report to cover it. There have been earlier stories of home flipping schemes that made liberal use of illegal aliens as straw buyers and the...

McCain faces conservative backlash over mortgage plan By Alexander Mooney CNN (CNN) -- John McCain is facing a fresh round of anger from members of his own party deeply opposed to the Arizona senator's proposal for the federal government to purchase troubled mortgage loans. John McCain first mentioned his mortgage relief plan during Tuesday's town-hall debate with Barack Obama. John McCain first mentioned his mortgage relief plan during Tuesday's town-hall debate with Barack Obama. The pointed backlash from several economic conservatives -- many of whom already distrust McCain's commitment to free-market principles -- couldn't come at a worse time for...

The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development says there is no basis to news reports that more than 5 million bad mortgages are held by illegal immigrants. A HUD spokesman said Thursday his agency has no data showing the number of illegal immigrants holding foreclosed or bad mortgages. But news reports, including one aired on KFYI-AM 550 in Phoenix, cite HUD as a source for the illegal immigrant mortgage number. The widely read “Drudge Report” posted a link to the KFYI report, but as of Thursday afternoon the link no longer connected to the story. Anti-immigration groups point to...

John McCain will direct his Treasury Secretary to implement an American Homeownership Resurgence Plan (McCain Resurgence Plan) to keep families in their homes, avoid foreclosures, save failing neighborhoods, stabilize the housing market and attack the roots of our financial crisis. America’s families are bearing a heavy burden from falling housing prices, mortgage delinquencies, foreclosures, and a weak economy. It is important that those families who have worked hard enough to finance homeownership not have that dream crushed under the weight of the wrong mortgage. The existing debts are too large compared to the value of housing. For those that cannot...

Received by email: My Friends, Millions of Americans on Main Street are feeling the effects of our current economic crisis largely brought on by corruption and greed at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Wall Street. Our next president must come into office with a plan to address the very root the failing housing market. Last night, during my debate with Senator Obama, I announced my plan to fix the root of our problem and I'd like to share a little more with you today. If elected president, I will direct my Treasury Secretary to implement an American Homeownership Resurgence Plan...

I can’t underscore enough what a rotten idea John McCain’s ACORN-like government mortgage buy-up is. I said it during my liveblog. And I’ll say it again: “HE WANTS TO EXPAND THE BAILOUT. He wants to do what ACORN wants to do. We’re Screwed ‘08.” This was his supposed “game-changer.” This was the very first thing out of his mouth during the debate tonight — his big pitch right off the bat. The McCain campaign immediately sent out this fact sheet on the proposal, which will cost at least $300 billion. The proposal involves directing the Treasury Secretary to “purchase mortgages...

Just about a year ago, I authored an article "Credit Doors Open Slowly and Slam Shut....The Commercial Mortgage Backed (CMBS) Meltdown of 2007." The article detailed how a special report issued by Moody's in April, 2007 (U.S. CMBS: Conduit Loan Underwriting Continues to Slide - Credit Enhancement Increase Likely) set into motion a spiraling series of events which we can look at as today's commercial real estate credit crunch. These along with other commercial real estate credit related events culminated this past week when on Sunday, Sept. 7th, Henry Paulson and the U.S. treasury department along with the Federal Housing...

[] America needs to realize that not everyone can own a home. The American Dream of home ownership for all is a fraud. Politicians who pimped this dream created an unsustainable mortgage industry whose collapse is only surprising because it didn't happen earlier. America's mortgage industry will not recover, nor deserve to recover, unless it is prepared to challenge this politically unpalatable reality. Why listen to an Australian like me? For starters, as our central banker, Glenn Stephens, said a few weeks back, Australian banks are "light years away from what's happening in other banking systems around the world." Australia's...

Here's a rundown of key provisions of the financial rescue plan. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It took two tumultuous weeks of moral and fiscal debate, but Congress and the Bush administration on Friday finally put a capstone on the $700 billion bailout of the financial system.

...snip... The broad effect of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac takeover is to impose a price control on the entire housing market. What the heck does that mean? It means that the mortgage business has now been almost 100% nationalized. Debt issued by Fannie and Freddie is now explicitly guaranteed by the government, so any conforming mortgage will almost automatically be funded by Fannie and Freddie. This is the reality of the housing market today. People with good credit and good down payments will generally have no trouble buying houses, as long as they are priced below the Fannie/Freddie conformance limit....

The national economy's current woes are less like the Great Depression than the Panic of 1873, according to a new article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. "When commentators invoke 1929, I am dubious," writes Scott Reynolds Nelson, a professor of history at the College of William and Mary. "According to most historians and economists, that depression had more to do with overlarge factory inventories, a stock-market crash, and Germany's inability to pay back war debts, which then led to continuing strain on British gold reserves. None of those factors is really an issue now."Nelson continues: "In fact, the current...

  Assault on the mortgage lenders: in the name of racial justice, the Clintonites want the power to decide who gets a home of his own - efforts to impose regulations on banks to make loans even if applicants are not creditworthy Robert Stowe England QUIETLY, behind the scenes, the Clinton Administration is preparing for the biggest regulatory crackdown of recent years. Attorney General Janet Reno is linking up with banking regulators and with HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros to end the supposed epidemic of discrimination against minorities in making home loans. The implications for society at large are ominous. Here,...

Tuesday, September 30, 2008 Bill Clinton Fibbing on Fannie ... Posted by: Matt Lewis at 8:56 AM Bill Clinton has been getting a lot of press lately for trashing his own party’s handling of the mortgage mess. Last Thursday, he told Good Morning America, “I think that the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by the Republicans in Congress, or by me when I was President, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” Unfortunately, he was fibbing. He actually set the “standards” that forced Fannie and...

In the early 1990s, I attended a conference designed to teach journalists the tools of an emerging field known as computer-assisted investigative reporting. One of the hottest sessions explained how journalists could replicate stories that other papers had done locally using computer tools, including one especially popular project to determine if banks in your community were discriminating against minority borrowers in making mortgages. One newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, had won a Pulitzer Prize for its computer-assisted series on the subject, and others, including the Washington Post and Detroit Free Press, had also weighed in with their own analyses based on...

The unexpected 228-205 defeat of the housing bailout in Congress Monday threw a curveball across Wall Street. It contributed to a large sell-off on Wall Street, where the bailout had already been "priced" into the market. The Dow shed just over 6 percent, the 18th largest drop in its history. But given the dire warnings about financial chaos that would result unless there were a bailout, this seems fairly modest. Let's be clear: This is a Wall Street crisis, not a national economic crisis. The overall economy, while a bit weak, is still growing. Some politicians are comparing the current...

I’ve watched the stock market go up and down lately like a giant yo-yo. I’ve followed the details of how and why the so-called bailout failed in the House early this week, and will probably pass the Senate on Wednesday, and possibly the House a day later. In revised form, of course. But there’s an aspect of this situation which applies to the bad mortgages, whose failures led to the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And applies to the failures of Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, AIG, Wachovia, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the White House, and both...

More details to come, it was settled out of court and involved either CitiCorp or CitiBank.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Tuesday pushed the Bush administration to do more to solve the financial crisis. Speaking in Des Moines, Iowa, McCain blasted the absence of bipartisanship Monday, when the House failed to pass a $700 billion bailout package. However, he said, the administration already has authority to take at least two steps to help shore up the economy. McCain said he spoke with President Bush on Tuesday morning about asking the Treasury Department to “creatively” us the Exchange Stabilization Fund to back money market accounts. The Arizona senator added that he told the president he would...

QUIETLY, behind the scenes, the Clinton Administration is preparing for the biggest regulatory crackdown of recent years. Attorney General Janet Reno is linking up with banking regulators and with HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros to end the supposed epidemic of discrimination against minorities in making home loans. The implications for society at large are ominous.

Spiro Agnew's words of the Nixon era ring true today. The politicians, pundits and, yes, the press, are nattering nabobs of negativism. For example, in recent weeks, the broadcast and the print media have filed stories replete with scare words. You don't even have to look at the tabloids to see what I mean. The front page of the New York Times recently described what it called "chaos" in the financial markets. Not to be outdone, most of the first section of The Wall Street Journal one day last week was devoted to articles describing the "spreading crisis" in our...

Economic Crisis Video

Wall Street Bailout Largely Leaves Out Main Street Foreclosures September 28, 2008 On Sunday, Sept. 28, ACORN National President Maude Hurd released the following statement after Congressional leaders announced a $700 bailout plan for Wall Street: “Members of Congress worked tirelessly over the weekend to rid Wall Street of its toxic assets, which are responsible for the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Unfortunately, families who fell victim to Wall's Street's toxic lending practices and now risk losing their homes were largely left out. ACORN members are extremely disappointed that the bailout package does little to assist these homeowners,...

(Article: May 23, 2005) In an attempt to make itself more attractive to Hispanic consumers, Wachovia Bank is offering some new services, including Spanish language bank statements and a different way to transfer funds to Latin America. A foreign remittance card that can be used at ATM machines across Latin America is one of the services in the bank's "Cuenta con Todo" or "account with everything" package of services. They are, for the most part, the same services offered to other customers, but with the addition of bank statements and information offered in Spanish, a spokeswoman for the bank...

What has really caused the current financial crisis?

“Optimism about housing values also led to a boom in home construction. Eventually, the number of new houses exceeded the number of people willing to buy them. And with supply exceeding demand, housing prices fell, and this created a problem.” -- President George W. Bush, explaining the origins if the housing meltdown in his emergency address of September 24, 2008 The now deflated Housing Bubble had many causes. These include promiscuous lending practices, low interest rates, federal policy aimed at turning human credit hazards into homeowners, the baby boomers entering their prime earning years, and HGTV. The bursting of the...

... Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. ...

Policy Experts Offer Bailout Comments News Releases > September 2008 Insurance > Financial Services Publication date: 09/26/2008 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The national debate over how to address the crisis in the U.S. financial markets has created sharp divisions that cross political and philosophical lines. One thing is clear: What the federal government chooses to do or not do will have serious consequences that will almost certainly be long-lasting. The following is a sampling of some of the thinking and recommendations solicited by The Heartland Institute or sent to us by interested parties. Contact information is provided if you wish further information from...

All mortgages are defined by a document specifing the exact nature of the property and signed by the buyer and lender. We have been told that these mortgages have been packaged in bundles and sold over and over again. How do we know that the funds for this “BailOut” are backed by any real mortgage documents at all? In other words, “Show me the PAPER!!!” If you feel this bailout is wrong, please contact your Congressman immediately. I have put together a statement that I am going to send out to as many Congressman as I can in the next...

Congress is moving rapidly to enact a gigantic taxpayer bailout of the financial sector, with a potential cost of $700 billion or more than $2000 per American citizen. We believe, as Justice Brandeis said, that "Sunlight is the best of disinfectants," and that all legislation ought to be open to public comment and consideration in real-time, not just after the fact. So, as a public service, we're posting the eight-page text of the "Legislative Proposal from Treasury Department for Authority to Buy Mortgage-Related Assets" for public comment. As this bill is amended and further drafts come to light that receive...

We may be victims of greedy investors and inept pols — but not innocent victims When the mortgage bubble burst, Americans were “shocked� at how many Wall Street buccaneers had been gambling in a vast pyramid scheme with someone else’s money. Paper fortunes were made buying and selling questionable sub-prime mortgages on the silly assumption that such gargantuan inside profiting would always expand — even as the number of homebuyers able to buy overpriced properties was shrinking. ...All that remains of this Ponzi scheme is the election-year blame game. Republicans charge that important financial firewalls were dismantled by the Clinton...

Has anyone heard anything about Barney Frank having a 10 year "love connection" with an executive of Fannie Mae? I just caught the end of a blurb on WLW radio wherein the guest, an economist I believe, mentioned this relationship and further stated that the MSM is not reporting anything about this.

AS panicked politicians prepare to fork over $1 trillion in taxpayer funding to rescue Wall Street, they've fingered regulation, deregulation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, both Bushes, greedy banks, greedy borrowers, greedy short-sellers and minority-home-ownership promoters for blame. But there's one villain that has slipped notice: how illegal immigration, crime-enabling banks and open-borders Bush policies fueled the mortgage crisis. It's no coincidence that the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure wave - Loudoun County, Va., California's Inland Empire, Stockton and San Joaquin Valley, and Las Vegas and Phoenix - also happen to...

Excerpt - There is a broad consensus that Congress must act to stave off deeper turmoil on Wall Street. Irrespective of the final agreement yet to be reached, there are several principles that must be part of a broader reform effort that begins this week and continues in the coming months. ~ snip ~ I've proposed a new Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), to launch a national effort to help homeowners refinance their mortgages. The original HOLC, launched in 1933, bought mortgages from failed banks and modified the terms so families could make affordable payments while keeping their homes. The...

My syndicated column today tackles the bailout angle no one wants to talk about: Open borders and the home loan debacle. You’ve heard a lot about Fannie/Freddie and the minority lending shakedowns, but you haven’t heard most commentators/analysts on either the left or the right talk about the massive illegal alien mortgage racket — a topic I’ve reported on for the past five years. That’s because fault lies at the feet of the crime-enabling banking industry and the ethnic lobbyists and the illegal alien-enabling Bush administration. They screwed us. Now, they want us to fork over a trillion dollars. Screw...

My neighbor is a mortgage banker. He is hanging in there, but his cell phone isn't ringing all that much, and he isn't even wearing a beeper. I remember when he wore a beeper. We sat in the driveway the other night as the Harvest Moon came up and I can certainly say that it was a first for me, talking in the moonlight about banking. What happened to bring about the news of last week isn't all that complicated when it gets explained slowly and colloquially. As home prices were going through the roof, more and more buyers were...

Angela Carter's family has lived for 46 years in the same small two-story home in Chicago, perhaps a 15-minute ride from Barack Obama's adopted Hyde Park neighborhood. But today a piece of paper says someone else owns the property, and a judge will soon decide if Carter and her mom get to stay in her home. The reason Carter, 55, is facing eviction, she says, is that she fell for a high-stakes scam that’s sweeping the nation, preying on the 1 in 11 consumers who are either behind on their mortgage payments or already in foreclosure. Interviews with legal aid...

In July 2007, Vijay and Supriti Soni of Corona del Mar paid $440,000 for a home at 2129 W. Civic Center Drive in Santa Ana. Five weeks later, they resold the house to Javier Hernandez – the family gardener and handyman – for $660,000. That's a 50 percent gain in 38 days – at a time when real estate prices in Santa Ana were plunging. But the lender that financed both mortgages – Washington Mutual Bank – took a bath. In March of this year Hernandez's loan went into default and in July the bank foreclosed. On the trustee's deed,...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=ae6b6P1L8E_E&refer=home

House Republican staffers met with roughly 15 lobbyists Friday afternoon, whose message to lawmakers was clear: Don't load the legislation up with provisions not directly related to the crisis, or regulatory measures the industry has long opposed. "We're opposed to adding provisions that will affect [or] undermine the deal substantively," said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable, whose members include the nation's largest banks, securities firms and insurers. A deal killer for the group: a proposal that would grant bankruptcy judges new powers to lower the principal, interest rate or both on a...

This Blog is specifically intended for liberal Democrats Charles Schumer, of New York, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Barney Frank of Massachusetts. I want to know from you three and others like you who share your ideas of what government should be, where in the "Sam Hill" were you gentlemen as the current financial house of cards was starting to show signs of folding? Don't bother trying to answer, your excuses will ring hollow because I know where you were and what you were up to before the stock market crashed on "Black Monday." So pay attention you three twits!...

The Real Culprits In This Meltdown INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY. Posted 9/15/2008 Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it's dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it. Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend. But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market...

Just had a calll from one of my clients. Interest rates falling quickly....currently 5.35% and he expects them to be at 5.25% by this afternoon. Anyone looking to buy or refi - may not be too bad a time right now - if we can afford the home.

Members of Congress are making a last-ditch effort to head off an Oct. 1 ban on the use of seller-assisted down payments on federally insured mortgages with a compromise measure designed to win over skeptical federal housing officials. The proposed bill would resurrect the programs, which Congress, with the backing of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, axed earlier this year. The compromise measure would limit their use to borrowers with higher credit scores. In exchange, HUD would be able to institute risk-based pricing for federally insured mortgages, allowing the agency to charge higher premiums for less-creditworthy borrowers. Supporters...

An African-American real estate magnate sees an opening to profit from the spiraling U.S. housing market.There is no shortage of gloom in the Southern California housing market, as one key indicator recently saw home values in Los Angeles fall 24.5 percent from a year ago. But those spiraling fortunes are helping Barrington Malcolm build a dynasty. Malcolm, 42, runs Dynasty Dynamics, Inc., a multimillion dollar, privately owned property company that keeps a low profile, but has been a major player in the high-stakes California real estate market for more than 20 years. Dynasty owns a major portfolio of properties, including...

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday outlined plans for the four biggest U.S. banks to issue new bonds to stimulate mortgage lending, the latest in a series of steps to aid the troubled housing market. Paulson outlined rules to issue so-called covered bonds backed by mortgage loans. The instruments are popular in Europe but had little appeal in the U.S. until demand for mortgage-backed securities plummeted because of soaring home loan foreclosures. C,JPM,BAC,WFC...have signed up to issue covered bonds, seen as less risky than mortgage-backed securities. "Covered bonds have the potential to increase mortgage financing...

Wachovia Corp, the fourth-largest U.S. bank, on Tuesday posted an $8.86 billion second-quarter loss, slashed its dividend and announced 6,350 job cuts after losses tied to mortgages soared. Its shares fell $1.67, or 12.7 percent, to $11.51 in premarket trading. The net loss for the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank equaled $4.20 per share, and compared with a profit of $2.34 billion, or $1.22, a year earlier. Excluding items, the loss was $1.27 per share, compared with the average analyst estimate of $1.30, according to Reuters Estimates. "These bottom-line results are disappointing and unacceptable," Chairman Lanty Smith said in a statement....

By John Poirier WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators took over two banks on Friday and sold them to Mutual of Omaha Bank, the sixth and seventh bank failures this year as financial institutions struggle with a housing bust and credit crunch. ADVERTISEMENT Two weeks after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp seized IndyMac Bancorp Inc (Other OTC:IDMC.PK - News), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said it closed First National Bank of Nevada and First Heritage Bank NA of California. First National had total assets of $3.4 billion and $3 billion in deposits while First Heritage had assets of...

As financial storm signals appeared the past 18 months, some Bush officials urged drastic reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But, according to internal government sources, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson objected because it would look "too political." The Republican administration kept its hands off the government-backed mortgage companies that are closely connected to the Democratic establishment. Paulson is a Republican, but as head of the Goldman Sachs investment bank he had close ties with Democratic-dominated Fannie Mae.