Forums: Subprime Mortgage Crisis Solutions Debate

In what's being called a "first of its kind," the report, analyzed more than half a million statewide cases of foreclosures and found that the vast majority-48%-has been on Latinos. Whites totaled 35%, African Americans 8% and Asians 6%. An in-depth 2009 report on Latino home ownership by the Wall Street Journal found another reason why so many Latinos sought home ownership in the first place. The Journal's investigation found "a push by low-income housing groups, Hispanic lawmakers, a congressional Hispanic housing initiative, mortgage lenders and brokers, who all were pushing to increase homeownership among Latinos." It looks like this...

Higher monthly fees are coming for consumers who take out home loans guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration, the primary source of mortgages for first-time homebuyers. Earlier this year, the FHA raised the upfront fee to 2.25 percent of the total mortgage amount from 1.75 percent. Agency officials want to lower that to 1 percent. The combined impact of lowering the upfront fee and raising the monthly fee would mean a borrower taking out a mortgage of $170,000 at an interest rate of 5 percent would pay an extra $38 a month.

EXCERPT Page 110: Ramping up the pressure was the 1992 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston that had concluded there was widespread racism and income discrimination in the mortgage- lending process; in other words, people were being denied mortgages based purely on their race and income level, even if they had the means to repay tortgages. The study purported to prove statistically that many minorities might have had bad credit scores, but they also held jobs and were being denied mortgages even though they had the ability to repay them. The Study argues that the traditional ways of...

Democrats claim their sweeping financial-sector reforms will guard against the kind of problems that triggered the recent economic meltdown. But if they really wanted to do that, they would've focused on how so many US officials were simply . . . bought. Fat chance. Nonetheless, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform, is demanding just such a review -- and, for the sake of the nation, he should get one. Last week, Issa wrote to Alfred Pollard, general counsel to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,...

DETROIT – General Motors Co. will buy AmeriCredit Corp. for $3.5 billion, a deal that allows the automaker to expand loans to customers with poor credit and offer more leases, key areas where GM must grow to accelerate its car sales. But the acquisition of the independent auto financing company also means that GM, which is 61 percent owned by the U.S. government, is getting back into the business of making risky loans. GM said it advised the U.S. Treasury Department of the acquisition, although government approval was not required.

Housing: America still has far too many underwater debtors labeled as "homeowners," but Washington can't bear to let them liquidate. Instead, it saddles taxpayers with ever-costlier bailouts. The federal government has tried just about every trick in the book to revive the nation's housing market and forestall a feared tsunami of foreclosures. How well have they worked? The answer depends on how you judge success. If the object is to keep "owners" - really, maxed-out debtors - in their homes, the results have been so-so. But there's another way of framing the issue. What if it would have been better...

For almost a quarter century, Cynthia Johnson, a Boston homeowner, has paid the mortgage on her three-bedroom single-family house on time. But in July, for the first time, she'll miss a payment. "I'm on [the bank's] doorstep at this point, saying, 'The savings are gone. I can't pay you as promised,' " she said. Unless something changes, Ms. Johnson (not her real name) is set to join the nearly 2.4 million Americans with prime loans seriously delinquent on their mortgages. They are the new face of the housing crisis. Unlike subprime borrowers, most of these homeowners did everything right. They...

Sometime in the early summer of 2007, the name Barack Obama began to register in my consciousness. I began to hear and see his name more often, and within the next year, a plethora of terms that I had heard of but not paid much attention to before began to show up in things I read, saw and heard on a daily basis: "Economic Justice" "Positive Rights" "Living document" "Black Liberation Theology" "Saul Alinsky" "Rules for Radicals" And so on. In the summer of 2008, I decided to read "Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky, because I knew both of...

Students fresh out of college, six-figures deep in debt, face decades of debt slavery. Both parents and students are wondering what went wrong. Please consider Placing the Blame as Students Are Buried in Debt. Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college, and they maintained a blind faith that the investment would be worth it. Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt from her four...

"Sub-prime mortgages are just the start the worst still to come" 60 Minutes special. Get out of Dollars and the US Stock Market. There is going to be a run on the dollar soon as China becomes a net seller of treasuries instead of a net buyer like they are currently. They just announced a 600b bailout of their own, how do you think they will pay for it? Dump their 1Trillion plus in US treasuries. The game is up. In 2010 a hundred US dollars wont even buy you a case of beer.