Wake Up, Get Angry, DO SOMETHING - Spitzer, Fed, the F. Fathers, Economy and Bush

[Vatoreus]

Yea, some people actually don't just give a shit about getting rich and how he can take advantage of people getting fucked. They actually, you know, give a shit about waking people up to the shit we're given on a constant basis.

Great post Scorp.

[Kaio]

Originally Posted by AladainAF

Most people losing their home got in "bargain" mortgages with teaser rates. If they used half of their brain and took about ~30 minutes of internet web searching, you could tell that its very possible that home mortgage rates could hit >15% (see early 80s), and the price of homes could go down. No, instead, they took a risk too, and they lost. They, just like companies, are responsible for that fate. When I bought my home in the height of this situation (Feb 2005), I knew damn well to get a Fixed rate, even if I am only going to be here for 4-5 years. ARMs are not worth the risk. If people have "unexpected bills", I'm sorry. That happens, and anyone can fall on hard times. I feel sorry for them. But if we get locked in this mindset that we have to bail everyone out that makes a financial mistake in this country, then we're going to be a country full of citizens who just don't get it.



It was balanced during the late clinton years and got fucked up early bush years. We need a balanced budget amendment badly. Your quote is exactly why - even though Bush was a horrible prez - I do not feel comfortable voting for a democrat. Universal healthcare is going to cost an absolute fortune, among other things. One thing I hope we have all learned from Iraq is that NOTHING the government says in respects to how much something costs is true.

It was definately a retarded move by the people who signed it but the banks have also made retarded short term decisions. They would have been better of keeping the rate the same or increasing it marginally after the initial interest rate time period was over. You would think they'd learn over time before they started imploding and needed bailouts. Squeezing people is one thing but squeezing people en masse to the point where they cannot pay their mortgage payments hurts the banks too. The system cannot handle this many...

Sadly, I agree about the universal health care thing. This is a shitty time for it and we need to cut a lot of fat. We need an Iraq strategy that costs a lot less then we are paying now too (get rid of our troops continue enlisting the help of the old Iraqi army personnel and have them secure their own land for less--the people would rather be protected by their own).

The good thing about Ron Paul is that even though he wouldn't be able to remove the IRS he'd probably veto any new bill that costs too much (which is probably most any bills). He'd be the perfect man to bring balance to the system imo. He wouldn't be able to pass any crazy bills but he'd be able to halt any additional spending and hopefully reduce it too.

[Gilgamel]

This thread is amazing. Two thumbs up.

[Cynno]

I think it's funny that the people claim the homeowners are the retarded ones for taking out mortgages.

Fuck that, they got houses and some made a lot of money doing it. The best part is all this bad paper that these dumb fuck banks signed will cost them billions. The only problem is that the Banks have a nice friend they call the Federal Reserve.

Bank: ZOMG WERE LOSING BILLIONS BECAUSE WE CAN'T CALCULATE THE RISK OF A SUB PRIME LOAN. HELP HELP.

Fed: OK, sell me your shit loan paper and I'll give you treasuries!!! YOU"RE SAVED!!
--------------------------------------------------------------

Person: Shit, my ARM adjusted, the housing market crashed and now I can't even refinance to save my ass because my house price tanked. HELP HELP.

Crickets: CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP

[Tripamang]

Originally Posted by AladainAF

No they were not. If you had money in Bears bank, then your money is insured and safe FDIC style (in other words <=100k per account). No stock is risk free. It never has been. If there is one with a decent return, sign me up.

The laws in question were your consumer protection laws against this kind of loan giving, which puts the point under it into context.

[Havelock]

I remember when I was a passionate college student who knew everything. Those days were a lot of fun. Everything seemed so important, so worth getting worked up over, and if everyone just opened their eyes and we all worked together, we could make the world a better place. Perspective comes later (David Mamet just had a great piece about that in the Village Voice).

Anytime somebody is telling you to wake up and get angry, you better pray he's as far as possible from the reins of power. Rage and a sense of omniscience are antithetical to good policymaking. Like Mamet says, "people in general seem to get from day to day; and . . . we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances." Given the historically unmatched material prosperity and quality of life in the U.S., why would you want to upset that with some sort of revolutionary movement? The better the circumstances, the greater the potential for radical changes to make everyone's lives substantially worse. And despite all the negativity being thrown around, generally by those who want to feel better about themselves for noticing it and trying to rally people against it, we have it better in the U.S. than almost anybody has ever had it at any time in human history. Dramatically rocking the boat at this point is an exercise in pure ego.

[Gryeyes]

Thats sort of the point havelock. Now that alot of peoples comfort and security are being threatened kind of opens their eyes. A vast majority of humanity will let those with power do whatever they wish as long as they are fed,warm and happy. Threaten those things and thats when shit starts burning.

[mylek]

Few seek changes that would upset the well being of the country. My expectation is that our government can and should adopt some of the sound policies already employed by other first world countries. Is that really too much to ask?

Too often these policies are ignored or rejected outright due to the influence of corporate interests. A nation without its people is nothing. Our government does us a great disservice by favoring the needs of corporations over the needs of the people.

[Tolanin]

Originally Posted by mylek

Few seek changes that would upset the well being of the country. My expectation is that our government can and should adopt some of the sound policies already employed by other first world countries. Is that really too much to ask?

Too often these policies are ignored or rejected outright due to the influence of corporate interests. A nation without its people is nothing. Our government does us a great disservice by favoring the needs of corporations over the needs of the people.

the corporations are evil man!

[Dinthug]

Cramer at Penn State on the 26th, stop by and say hi

[Kugbok_Fennin]

We have all heard the phrase "History is doomed to repeat itself".

Everything that is happening now is a product of what happened in the early 1900's. JP Morgan/Chase is running the same play from the same book that spawned the Federal Reserve. How long before we have Bank Scares? How long before you can sell your dollars any longer?

Were playing in a engineered Chess game here, people need to get with the program or all of us our fucked.

It's high time we all start bleeding a little Red, White, and Blue.

[Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Tolanin

the corporations are evil man!

Yeah! Damn then evil corporations and banks for forcing people to take out loans!

[Phelps McManus]

Originally Posted by AladainAF

If they used half of their brain and took about ~30 minutes of internet web searching, you could tell that its very possible that home mortgage rates could hit >15% (see early 80s), and the price of homes could go down. No, instead, they took a risk too, and they lost. They, just like companies, are responsible for that fate. When I bought my home in the height of this situation (Feb 2005), I knew damn well to get a Fixed rate, even if I am only going to be here for 4-5 years. ARMs are not worth the risk.

Haven't rates come down since 2005? Wouldn't someone in an ARM actually have a lower payment right now? The people who are losing their houses aren't losing them because their Adjustable Rate went up. At best, they had a teaser rate that expired, which they could have just as easily have gotten on a Fixed-Rate mortgage.

Question for you. When the interest rate is 15%, what does in inflation look like? How about salary increases?

[Abysmal]

Originally Posted by Havelock

I remember when I was a passionate college student who knew everything. Those days were a lot of fun. Everything seemed so important, so worth getting worked up over, and if everyone just opened their eyes and we all worked together, we could make the world a better place. Perspective comes later (David Mamet just had a great piece about that in the Village Voice).

Anytime somebody is telling you to wake up and get angry, you better pray he's as far as possible from the reins of power. Rage and a sense of omniscience are antithetical to good policymaking. Like Mamet says, "people in general seem to get from day to day; and . . . we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances." Given the historically unmatched material prosperity and quality of life in the U.S., why would you want to upset that with some sort of revolutionary movement? The better the circumstances, the greater the potential for radical changes to make everyone's lives substantially worse. And despite all the negativity being thrown around, generally by those who want to feel better about themselves for noticing it and trying to rally people against it, we have it better in the U.S. than almost anybody has ever had it at any time in human history. Dramatically rocking the boat at this point is an exercise in pure ego.

it's basic human nature to want to constantly improve, we just happen to be at the top of the food chain and so it makes us appear to be ego maniacs. some people would like us to feel guilty that we could possibly ask for more when others have it so much worse. this is all relative, and wealth, if anything, only provides temporary increases in happiness. what matters most is that your basic human needs are met; food, shelter, general well being and health, a sense of security and certainty, etc. it is pretty well known and studied in psychology that many dramatic changes in our lives have little long term effect and we tend to feel about the same as we did before these changes took place. in the long run, winning the lottery, losing the ability to walk, or being diagnosed with some kind of disease leave people feeling about as happy or unhappy as they did before the incident took place.

i don't think we're talking about a civil war here, and protesting or some other uprising would change life very little. i think our inaction proves how little we actually care about these issues and why people get so worked up about them on places like the internet. we love to talk about it, and it all sounds so great on paper, but when it actually comes down to it anything less than a truly outrageous act gets little support.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

I was a self-employed real estate appraiser for fifteen years, so I can speak to this latest sub-prime mortgage crisis shit as a highly trained professional. I was also admitted as an "expert witness in real estate valuation" in over fifty different courts. I got out of the business when I realized what a disgusting cess-pool it was, and when my income started lagging badly due to my acquiring a reputation for being honest. Strangely enough, once word gets around the state you live in that you're an "honest appraiser", nobody will call you any more. Nobody wants an honest appraiser; they want an appraiser that does what the fuck they're told and values the property exactly as told (usually much higher than its real value). So, I know a bit about what I'm talking about and you conspiracy faggots might want to listen.

The #1-3 reason for the sub-prime mortgage collapses are as follows:

1) Dishonest, greedy, stupid fucking property owners. I'd estimate that in my fifteen years in the business, a solid 80%+ of property owners were deliberately trying to borrow more than they should, and were dishonest with their mortgage broker and me - the appraiser - about what they thought their property was worth. I was lied to so many thousands of times about "what the Jones' property down the road sold for last year" that it made me puke. Hell, I knew exactly what every residential property within fifty miles of my office sold for over the previous ten years so nobody was fooling me.

Many of them also failed to educate themselves on what the word "adjustable" meant in regards to adjustable rate mortgages. And, of course, no mortgage broker is going to do so, since they might lose the loan (and their only source of income - fees, commissions, etc.).


2) Extremely dishonest mortgage brokers. In my time in the mortgage business, I had around a thousand different mortgage broker clients total. Somewhere around ten (yes, one percent) were what I'd term "honest". These sleazy fuckers were absolutely unreal, and there is no way any other trade in this country has a more despicable, deceitful reputation than these people. I'd trust a used car salesman from New Jersey with my wife before any of these shitheads. I'm so amazingly happy to see these companies going out of business at a prodigious rate lately, even though many of them still owe me thousands of dollars.

They'd send out appraisal orders with "Owner's Estimate of Value: $X" on them, and usually this number was padded a good $10,000-50,000 over what the owner had actually told them. Since the owner was usually "optimistic" to the point of absurdity already (i.e., lying), these values were generally 30-40% higher than the real market value of the property. So, I'd go out to these properties, and as soon as I pulled in the driveway it was obvious that there was no way I'd be appraising this property for even close to what they wanted. In those situations (probably a hundred times a year or so), I'd have to bail and honestly inform the broker and owner that this deal wasn't happening. Of course, I made zero cash when this happened. And the next day, they'd have some other - dishonest - appraiser out there who would happily appraise the property for whatever they were told.

Another addition to the problem for the homeowner was that these sub-prime mortgages generally had fees around $5,000 (broker commissions) in addition to a bunch of other shit tacked onto the loan amount. When the total loan is only ~$50,000-100,000 (typical for my area), that extra $7,000 is a bit outside the norm for total interest, I'd say.

On the professional side, these mortgage companies were unquestionably the most reprehensible creations in the history of U.S. business. Not only did they get away with totally ripping off millions of property owners, they also never paid their bills (i.e., my fees). This is actually prosecutable fraud, since they collected appraiser fees as "vendor fees" then generally never paid them out. They'd order 10-20 appraisals from somebody, then when that appraiser cut them off for non-payment, they'd just move onto appraiser #2, ad infinitum. God, I hate these fuckers. Many days of popping .45 ACP rounds into targets were directed at mortgage brokers in my imagination.


3) Dishonest appraisers. I'm not sure many U.S. citizens truly comprehend how completely awful this profession is. They created the "licensed real estate appraiser" back in 1991 due to the banking crisis back then. Within a few years, it was back to being as incestuous and deceitful an operation as it was before. The simple truth is that a solid 95% of appraisal requestors don't *WANT* an honest appraiser. Whether it's for a bank loan, estate sale, divorce, etc., people always have a motive for their appraisal, whether it's a "high" value (lending, seller in divorce settlement, etc.) or "low" value (tax appeal, buyer in divorce, etc.) and they'll check around for the appraiser who will "play ball". Well, when I left the business, it got to the point where a solid 90%+ of appraisers all over the country would "play ball". You can directly blame these "ball players" for the empty, foreclosed subdivisions in suburban Cleveland, etc. There are extremely few honest people in this profession any more. My own father is still a commercial property appraiser, and I know he's very rarely honest in his appraisals and is a great "ball player". It's sad. Damn sad.


Oh, and you conspiracy theorists with your Bush-Cheney, Halliburton, etc. bullshit are fucking morons. You obviously spent too many years hanging around colleges with idiotic, Marxist, U.S.-hating professors (i.e., nearly all of them) and too little time in the real world.