http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/subprime/ en-us Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:08:22 GMT Focus Forum 15 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2412444/posts Our economy is about to relapse into the disease that sent us into the Great Depression: Part Deux. Subprime loans caused the initial illness. Option-ARMs will cause the relapse. In the first half of the past decade, subprime loans were king. They were cheap and easy to get approved. Along with the subprime boom came subprime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), which were equally easy to afford…for a while. Of course, the “A” and the “R” in ARM meant that the interest rate borrowers pay changes, or resets. The majority of these resets occurred between the summer of 2007 and the summer... Daily Reckoning http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2412444/posts#comment Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:08:22 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2406823/posts President Barack Obama's economic advisers are talking tough about the banks ahead of his meeting with heads of financial institutions. Larry Summers and Christina Romer say Obama will press bankers Monday to ease lending to help Americans get back to work. As Summers put it, bankers need to recognize that "they've got obligations to the country after all that's been done for them." He says no major bank would be intact without the government's bailout of the financial sector, and now they need to do all they can to get credit flowing again. Associated Press http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2406823/posts#comment Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:45:08 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2393319/posts In the bank's latest edition of its Monday Mining Minutes, Citi lays out a scenario which it calls the "Nightmare on Commodity Street." (via FT Energy Source) So here’s the nightmare scenario, which we hope will not happen: Thousands of very smart speculators have accumulated the biggest ever speculative physical raw material positions ever witnessed in the belief that either the dollar will collapse or an ongoing global ‘Supercycle’ will shake off the effects of the credit crunch and resume business as usual. They are funded in this venture by some of the lowest interest rates on record. What are... The Business Insider http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2393319/posts#comment Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:34:48 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2391797/posts As millions of Americans struggle to hold on to their homes, Wall Street has found a way to make money from the mortgage mess. Investment funds are buying billions of dollars’ worth of home loans, discounted from the loans’ original value. Then, in what might seem an act of charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the size of the loans. But as part of these deals, the mortgages are being refinanced through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal Housing Administration. This enables the funds to pocket sizable profits by reselling new, government-insured loans to other... New York Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2391797/posts#comment Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:41:47 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2390567/posts ... In its efforts to prop up a shattered housing market, the government is greatly extending its traditional support of real estate, including guaranteeing the mortgages of middle-class and even upper-class buyers against default. In 2007, the government did not insure a single mortgage in [San Francisco], one of the most expensive in the country. Buyers here, as well as in Manhattan, Santa Monica and every other wealthy area, were presumed to be able to handle the steep prices and correspondingly hefty down payments on their own. Now the government is guaranteeing an average of six mortgages a week here.... New York Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2390567/posts#comment Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:54:49 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2383737/posts America’s mainstream religious denominations used to teach the faithful that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. But over the past generation, a different strain of Christian faith has proliferated—one that promises to make believers rich in the here and now. Known as the prosperity gospel, and claiming tens of millions of adherents, it fosters risk-taking and intense material optimism. It pumped air into the housing bubble. And one year into the worst downturn since the Depression, it’s still going strong. ... America’s churches always reflect shifts in the broader culture, and Casa del Padre is no exception. The message... The Atlantic http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2383737/posts#comment Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:17:16 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2382902/posts Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy — and How They Will Do It Again if No One Stops Them By Peter Schweizer Harper, $24.99, 217 pp. With Architects of Ruin, Peter Schweizer again delivers a knockout punch of a book that is the must read of the season for conservatives and should be a main topic of conversation for conservative media. Schweizer blows the lid off the 30-year leftist war on banking standards in the name of “equality” that created the housing bubble and caused the foreclosure crisis. (Somebody get this book to Glenn Beck... Frontpagemagazine http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2382902/posts#comment Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:36:50 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2376370/posts National Mortgage News reports that Home Mortgage Disclosure Act figures for 2008 show that minorities “were big losers in the market contraction last year.” And with credit still tight, the outlook for minority access to home loans this year and next looks bleak. But is that a bad thing? Subprime lending enabled more minorities to become homeowners during the boom, but many of those folks got mortgages they couldn’t afford. The result: record foreclosures. Lending to Hispanics fell by more than half, from $266 billion to $130 billion. African Americans also registered a sharp drop in mortgages last year, from... Orange County Register Blog http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2376370/posts#comment Mon, 2 Nov 2009 11:37:29 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2175234/posts In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Coporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring. [And they did] Fannie Mae,... The New York Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2175234/posts#comment Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:36:56 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2373150/posts Just about everyone has become familiar with America’s foreclosure capitals – metropolitan areas like Las Vegas with the nation’s highest rate of foreclosed properties (1 in 20) or No. 2 Merced, Calif., (1 in 27). But the problem is expanding to new cities. In fact, as the subprime-mortgage crisis eases for some of the top metro areas, like Merced and No. 3 Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., economic pressures are creating new foreclosure capitals. One of them, Reno-Sparks, Nev., broke into the Top 10 foreclosure metros in the third quarter, according to a RealtyTrac report released Thursday. And others are gaining... Christian Science Monitor http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2373150/posts#comment Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:45:38 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2369896/posts Calpers burns in subprime fire 24 Oct 2009, 0000 hrs IST, REUTERS SAN FRANCISCO: Faced with huge losses on subprime loans, Calpers is suing the rating agencies which it said misled them by giving top ratings to mortgage bond funds which later turned out to be a house of cards. Calpers also was overcharged for foreign exchange transactions, says state Attorney General Brown, who is suing bank State Street. The market rally this year also has helped. “The recovery now is showing our asset strategy is doing pretty well,” Oliveira said. Calpers’ losses have been cut by about half from... Economic Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2369896/posts#comment Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:32:27 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2365116/posts Subprime mortgages: Myths And Reality Kent Cherny & Yuliya Demyanyk 17 October 2009 The global crisis is said to have originated in the US subprime mortgage market. This column argues that many of the most popular explanations that have emerged for the subprime crisis are, to a large extent, myths. Subprime mortgages have received a lot of attention in the US since 2000, when the number of subprime loans being originated and refinanced shot up rapidly. The attention intensified in 2007, when defaults on subprime loans began to skyrocket triggering what was known at the time as the “subprime crisis”... Vox http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2365116/posts#comment Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:46:17 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2359869/posts Small Banks Fail at Growing Rate, Straining F.D.I.C. By ERIC DASH Published: October 10, 2009 A year after Washington rescued the banks considered too big to fail, the ones deemed too small to save are approaching a grim milestone: the 100th bank failure of 2009. In what has become a ritual, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has swooped down on a handful of troubled lenders almost every Friday, seizing 98 since January alone and putting their assets into the hands of another bank. While the parade of failures still represents a mere fraction of America’s small banks, it underscores a... NYTimes http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2359869/posts#comment Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:17:09 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2359528/posts From 2002 to 2007, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loaded up on $1.73 trillion of subprime and $1.44 trillion of Alt-A loans and securities, taking a lion's share of these markets, according to mortgage market guru Ed Pinto. The agencies' share of loans and securities, then, was higher than the total for all private label mortgage-backed securities market held outside the agencies' purchases -- contrary to widely held views in the mortgage markets. The two agencies hid the level of risky lending and investment in securities by failing to classify the loans initially as subprime or Alt-A. Mind Over Market http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2359528/posts#comment Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:35:18 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2353916/posts Why haven't the rating agencies that were complicit in the subprime-mortgage securities scandal suffered the fate of Arthur Andersen? Despite some moves in Congress to change their behavior, U.S. authorities are still treating the agencies with extreme gentleness. Moody's and Standard & Poor's, the two giants of the industry, are still around despite causing the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars by badly rating subprime-mortgage-backed securities. Not only that, they are basically doing business the same way, taking fat fees from the investment banks whose securities they rate. In testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform... Newsweek http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2353916/posts#comment Sat, 3 Oct 2009 03:04:23 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2349231/posts The visits had a ritual quality. Three times a year, a coalition of Chicago community groups met with the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators to warn about the growing prevalence of abusive mortgage lending. They began to present research in 1999 showing that large banking companies including Wells Fargo and Citigroup had created subprime businesses wholly focused on making loans at high interest rates, largely in the black and Hispanic neighborhoods to the south and west of downtown Chicago. The groups pleaded for regulators to act. The evidence eventually led Illinois to file suit against Wells Fargo in July... Washington Post http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2349231/posts#comment Sun, 27 Sep 2009 05:00:22 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2343054/posts The Federal Housing Administration said Friday that its financial cushion will sink below mandatory levels for the first time in its history, but officials insisted the agency won’t need to be rescued. “Under no circumstance will any taxpayer bailout be needed,” said David Stevens, the F.H.A.’s commissioner. He also said its borrowers are unlikely to see any change. Amid the collapse of the subprime lending market, the government has taken up the slack. The F.H.A. has insured nearly a quarter of all new loans made this year, and about 80 percent of that business is from first-time homebuyers. But the... Associated Press http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2343054/posts#comment Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:05:54 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2342661/posts (Automatic Translation from Spanish to English)Source: Channel T47, TelemundoTitle: Immigration / "Illegal Immigrants Can Buy Homes" (Indocumentados Pueden Comprar Casa) by Delinés Batlle (BEGIN TRANSLATION) PUBLISHED: September 7, 2005 at 12:11 pm (ET) UPDATED: 30 September 2005, at 9:16 am (eastern) NEW YORK, NY. -- Thanks to an initiative of private banking it is now possible for illegal immigrants to buy homes in the United States without having a social security number. A new program helps immigrants who can not afford home to fulfill their American dream. Elena Hernandez has long had the dream of buying a home, but... TelemundoT47 Spanish Website, 2005 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2342661/posts#comment Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:07:00 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2342230/posts Here is a list of ACORN’s crimes—take special note of number nine. 1. This is a group that was knee-deep in voter fraud during the president’s election. 2. There seems to have been zero accountability for this fraud by the group’s leadership. 3. ACORN does not appear to have any true ‘leadership’ to speak of. 4. ACORN has now been deeply embarrassed by two amateur journalists. 5. They were embarrassed because they were assisting two people—posing as a pimp and a prostitute—who wanted help getting a loan on a house to keep 13 El Salvadorian sex slaves. 6. They did... American Shareholders http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2342230/posts#comment Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:51:52 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2336731/posts I think a lot of people are missing something here, I hoped I could bring focus to it more. This girl Kenya is trying to buy a house. That gets lost in the child prostitution part(and for good reason) but what it does is expose a part of the mortgage crisis that us conservatives have talked about for a while. ACORN couldn't do what it's doing without all the help it gets from government. Not just the 501c3 status, but also all the laws on the books that make way for politically correct loans. Now let's say this all actually... Full transcript via Big Government / Breitbart http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2336731/posts#comment Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:18:25 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2333842/posts As it tried to help shore up the ailing housing market during the past year, the Federal Housing Administration increased its exposure, particularly to mortgages in high-cost states that have also seen some of the sharpest price declines. Now concerns are mounting that the agency -- and the U.S. taxpayer -- may have to pay the price. The FHA insures loans secured with down payments as low as 3.5%. But values in many markets in which it has been increasing its activity have fallen far more than that in the past year. The result: A growing number of homeowners with... Wall Street Journal http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2333842/posts#comment Mon, 7 Sep 2009 12:17:06 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2324800/posts Many of the lenders eligible to receive billions of dollars from the government's massive foreclosure prevention program helped fuel the housing crisis by issuing risky subprime loans, according to a report to be issued Wednesday by the Center for Public Integrity. Under the $75 billion program, called Making Home Affordable, lenders are eligible for taxpayer subsidies to lower the mortgage payments of distressed borrowers. Of the top 25 participants in the program, at least 21 specialized in servicing or originating subprime loans, according to the center, a nonprofit investigative reporting group funded largely by charitable foundations. Much "of this money... Washington Post http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2324800/posts#comment Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:16:47 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2317412/posts More than 150 publicly traded U.S. lenders own nonperforming loans that equal 5 percent or more of their holdings, a level that former regulators say can wipe out a bank’s equity and threaten its survival. The number of banks exceeding the threshold more than doubled in the year through June, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, as real estate and credit-card defaults surged. Almost 300 reported 3 percent or more of their loans were nonperforming, a term for commercial and consumer debt that has stopped collecting interest or will no longer be paid in full. ... At a 3 percent... Tehran Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2317412/posts#comment Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:23:08 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2304479/posts A Senate panel has subpoenaed financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG, seeking evidence of fraud in last year's mortgage-market meltdown, according to people familiar with the situation. The congressional investigation appears to focus on whether internal communications, such as email, show bankers had private doubts about whether mortgage-related securities they were putting together were as financially sound as their public pronouncements suggested. Collapsing values for many of those securities played a big role in precipitating last year's financial crisis. The subpoenas are the latest in a series of moves by Congress to trace the roots... Wall Street Journal via Yahoo! News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2304479/posts#comment Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:51:52 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2303710/posts NEW YORK (Reuters) - Companies that service risky residential mortgages are warning U.S. officials that a key program to slow foreclosures may push some financing costs higher and derail their efforts, said a leading subprime firm. Their concerns about financing payments for defaulted homeowners comes as pressure mounts from Congress, regulators and state legislators for servicers to do more for the plan, which aims to slow foreclosures and modify loans. The U.S. Treasury wants the companies to spend more on its resources, including hiring staff and expanding training programs. At least four servicers from the coalition were among the 25... Reuters http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2303710/posts#comment Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:21:41 GMT