The Treasury department said Wednesday that about 774,000 homeowners have dropped out as of last month. That's about 54 percent of the more than 1.4 million people who applied. And it's up from October, when approximately 756,000 had fallen out.
The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly payments. Borrowers start with lower payments on a trial basis. The program has struggled to convert them into permanent loan modifications.
Another 505,000 homeowners have secured lower payments permanently. That's about 35 percent of the number who enrolled on a trial basis, up slightly from October's reading.
However, the program reached more homeowners in November than in October. The number of new trial modifications increased to about 30,000, up from about 24,000 in October. And the number of trial modifications that turned permanent rose to about 31,000, up from about 26,000.
It is absolutely ridiculous, the "press" has gone full throttle being a spin machine. While they congratulation Obama, people like Simon Johnson are pointing out they just set up the next economic crisis, due to the massive debt.
Of course taxes have little to do with the real reasons the economy isn't growing or producing jobs.
Did you get that number from some study, if so where? I agree with you that age discrimination is brazen, institutionalized and in some industries it's surreal, high tech we've seen age discrimination past the age of 30! We could literally do a "where's Waldo" contest to find anyone, anyone at all, who isn't an executive and doing the tech work with a gray hair on their heads in Silicon valley. I'd bet that prize would go unclaimed.
It's just at epidemic levels and considering so many had their retirements denied, wiped out, it's even more critical to confront age discrimination. These people need jobs!
The US Government wonders why they are distrusted by so many according to recent polls, when they distribute unemployment figures that are so transparently false, they insult the intellegence of many. They are aware of the disinformation used to calculate the unemloyment rates.
In addition, at my age the chances of obtaining work are less than 8%. Yes Virginia, Age dicrimination is alive and well, and living in the US, regardless of Federal Law.
The data that you present is the right response to the 60 Minutes hysteria. Who benefits from that hysteria? Don't know their names specifically but the end result is easy to figure out. Drive down pensions, wages, and expenditures in the middle of a nasty recession with U6 at 16% and more rigorous estimates at 23%.
What is is about this rate or real unemployment tha fails to spell EMERGENCY to those running the show?
Your point on viable alternatives is also well taken. In the case of California, we're in for some innovation from Governor Brown. He has some exciting possibilities and alterantives. Expect something innovative and very different.
The ChiComs have used U.S. shell companies for spying, industrial espionage and and takeovers. Money Party shut Lou up for good reasons. Money Party and it's organs like USCOC has one idea: More Money for Me.
The last corporate takeover of the U.S. partially ended with Teddy Roosevelt got into office on a fluke (Mckinnley was assassinated and at that time, they put trouble makers into the VP slot to silence them). Then FDR was phase 2.
Right now Nixon looks like a Communist is comparison to what's happening now.
Even worse, that's already happening in the West states. They won't do a damn thing about illegals using social services, but cutting services to the disabled and elderly...oh yeah, that's first to go.
This is a huge problem, the left is absolutely insane on their special interest groups, which frankly they won't deal with labor economic and population realities. Howard Dean was on Ratigan yesterday, on and on about the Dream act, sidestepping huge economic questions about jobs, taxes from Ratigan. The Dream Act, from what I could tell, was yet another special interest, backdoor bad bill again and this is coming from someone who believes kids of illegals who have done well in school and so on, should be rescued somehow.
You cannot get the left to deal with sane economic policy and economic realities, putting American workers first and foremost, anymore than you can deal with the right.
Which makes me question the entire structure of the U.S. government. Seems parliamentary systems are slightly better. For the U.S. to get real change we have to get a FDR or a Teddy Roosevelt into the White House and we know it sure isn't that situation right now.
Over on DK, there is a movement to change the Senate rules for a real filibuster. My immediate thought was, for what? So you can pass this absurd open borders agenda and pay no attention to the labor market? Democrats had plenty of time to pass something on Chinese currency manipulation, on trade, they should have passed the corporate tax loophole if they tried....they did not fight for a single major agenda item that was the reason they got into office in the fist place, esp. in those areas that flipped back red this election, with trade/manufacturing/jobs being at the top of that list. Instead, you have Joe Corporate Representative Lieberman, of all people, pushing for the one thing they did manage to get through, the repeal of DADT.
It's ridiculous, they should be demanding just one page bills, just these one change policies, one line....be passed. They could make a world of difference, instead we get these corporate written loophole 2000 page monstrosities which are usually disaster.
This is probably great news. There are just minor blurbs so far, but the SEC is probing U.S. attorneys, banks for allowing Chinese to buy, go on the stock market through back door methods.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has begun a probe into Chinese companies listing on U.S. stock exchanges through reverse takeovers, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people with knowledge of the probe.
The regulator's move came after hundreds of Chinese companies gained a U.S. listing by merging with dormant shell companies, the Journal said.
The SEC has begun a probe into how U.S. accountants, bankers and lawyers have helped the process, the people told the paper.
the SEC has also begun to target individual Chinese companies for accounting violations and lax auditing practices, beyond a number of previously announced investigations, the people told the paper.
Folks, if you see some details on what's going on, please at least post it in a comment. This is a much bigger deal than what's implied for the U.S. economy.
There is no shame or fear in the Simpson Commission. There is no sense of history. When the Great Sea Wall called of the Welfare State - SS, UI, Survivor Benefits, Disability come down, there is going to be a real shit storm world wide and it's happening now.
The big advantage, world wide goes to the Left. But some deep thinking people on the Right may come up with answers like localizing everything lost in the Welfare State collapse. The demise of Public Pensions is not going down well. There is talk on the far left of the 5th International. The crisis of capitalism is exceeding the Great Depression.
I do not see a second term for Obama if he co-opts and does all dirty work for his opposition. On the economic side, you have done much education in the components of GDP, and government is a component.
We have a "financial crisis", which of course requires trillions in bail outs...therefore the only answer available is to slash retirement and any government pension program (social security). It happened in Greece, then Ireland, happening in the U.K. and is becoming increasingly evident to be a target in the U.S.
One of the more popular posts on EP is when I wrote up about Obama's economic advisers promoting a "partial" privatization and reduction of social security and that is before any financial armageddon happened.
I think we're in huge trouble, one of the worst disasters for Americans would be to have that meager benefit reduced or eliminated. It's bad enough that the people about to retire and younger were denied pensions....so this coming poverty wave has not even started to hit yet. But it will and we're going to see a world of pain like no other.
Social Security cuts are happening across the globe. The worst kinds of CT are plausible. IMF, World Bank and other predators are behind this as part of the G20 deals worked out this year. Yes, monies are stolen because of the Inter-Generational Social contract now broken.
By the same token we are free now to think the previously unthinkable, politically socially,economically. Nothing is out of bounds.
The Politico report is vague but pointing to the worst
"
The second part, now being teed up by the White House and key Senate Democrats, is a scheme for the president to embrace much of the Bowles-Simpson plan — including cuts in Social Security. This is to be unveiled, according to well-placed sources, in the president’s State of the Union address.
"
I'm telling you that freaking Social Security tax cut is making me lose sleep. That came from out of the blue. It muddied the waters and will be used as an excuse. Social Security is solvent the money was stolen. Now another blame the victim game begins. we are entering an endgame here. Either Obama does not get it or he is part of the machine.
One assumes that self-report is used rather than whether they are 65+. Many 65+ can be seen working at Wal Mart, grocery baggers, local shops, self-employed, etc. I don't know whether the numbers are significant but may be offset by 62+ retirees. Anyone living on SS alone would seem to be SOL.
Supposedly Obama going to propose cutting social security in the State of the Union.
These days with blogs, reporters and people like us, one hopes Politico checked their sources, but I imagine they found out something to write up a story like this.
We're written many pieces in the last couple of weeks pointing out the real target of Wall Street, corporations, uber-rich's 40 year agenda to destroy what is left of any social safety net and it's clear they have a bulls-eye on social security for this year.
If Obama proposes cutting social security in the State of the Union, it's official, this guy is a corporate oligarchy nightmare, regardless of what political flavoring you come from. If he does it, I'll make a point to promote all of the conspiracy theory "documentaries" on Obama that I have never put into the Friday Night Video with the disclaimer, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get cha.
I'm almost being ridiculous in refusing to really examine the data on what is going on with illegals on these metrics. The reason is it's just a political charged topic, anything, even just data collection, gets a few name calls and such.
A huge problem is the BLS and the government databases just do not collect on immigration status. So, you can get "Hispanic", but that's everybody, lumped all together. You cannot tell if someone is Cuban, from Spain, from Mexico, from Chile and if they are a U.S. citizen, a legal resident or illegal.
They also lump in foreign guest workers, on various Visas in these numbers and those numbers are in the millions of foreign workers. Where that can really skew numbers is when you get down to occupational categories and those unemployment statistics.
That said, I find it interesting that the states with the most "sanctuary" policies, who refuse to really even enforce any immigration law or even IDs, demanding legitimate IDs one would be called a racist xenophobe, also seem to have some of the worst statistics economically. Michigan I'm not sure about, but both CA and FL have high illegal populations, so do NY and NJ. IL is notorious.
My attitude towards this stuff are numbers are numbers and labor economics are labor economics. You have to be dead to not realize Population growth and immigration affect all of these unemployment and jobs statistics and yes folks, the labor economics 101 laws still apply.
There is no way to address these issues in some sane, practical manner with the way the politics are. I mean Mexico right now looks worse than Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of a particularly vile war zone and it barely even gets a mention in the main stream press.
In terms of unemployment rates, official, all of those not officially looking for a job are put in the "not in the labor force" pool, so all of the FL retires aren't biasing the count.
The Feds need to consider new taxes, namely a Wall Street transaction tax and a VAT and probably some sort of alternative tax to target executive excessive compensation. A VAT is extremely regressive, but it can be used as a tool for trade imbalances. So, if they rebate it to make it more Progressive, it could really help with trade and it's quite dynamic too, easily adjusted. The, they need some sort of transaction tax to deal with these flash traders, those using engineering architectures to make bucks on stock/market trades....
it's increasingly becoming a rigged gambling house instead of an investment vehicle.
Then, the obvious is we need a super rich major tax and I think targeting executive compensation, based on some scale on how many U.S. jobs that company had in a year, what they gave back to the nation, i.e. a tax directly on executives and also directly tied to what they did for America in addition for their shareholders. They could also reform executive compensation, it's sorely needed.
Florida unemployment rate is right in line with California -- don't think we have as many illegals as CA. Tampa Bay area is above state average, as is LA. Another consideration is the age structure -- Florida has about 18% of its population 65 and over, thus more retired. If we didn't have SS and UI, it would be a repeat of the great depression. Property taxes 2009 to 2010 in Tampa Bay area seemed to be flat, but 2011 may be down (reflecting softness of real estate). Raising sales tax depends on voter approval -- good luck with that. Florida has no state income tax, and getting one passed would take a constitutional amendament on the ballot -- good luck with that one as well. This is getting to be a tale of two Americas.
Some new statistics on HAMP are out.
It is absolutely ridiculous, the "press" has gone full throttle being a spin machine. While they congratulation Obama, people like Simon Johnson are pointing out they just set up the next economic crisis, due to the massive debt.
Of course taxes have little to do with the real reasons the economy isn't growing or producing jobs.
Did you get that number from some study, if so where? I agree with you that age discrimination is brazen, institutionalized and in some industries it's surreal, high tech we've seen age discrimination past the age of 30! We could literally do a "where's Waldo" contest to find anyone, anyone at all, who isn't an executive and doing the tech work with a gray hair on their heads in Silicon valley. I'd bet that prize would go unclaimed.
It's just at epidemic levels and considering so many had their retirements denied, wiped out, it's even more critical to confront age discrimination. These people need jobs!
The US Government wonders why they are distrusted by so many according to recent polls, when they distribute unemployment figures that are so transparently false, they insult the intellegence of many. They are aware of the disinformation used to calculate the unemloyment rates.
In addition, at my age the chances of obtaining work are less than 8%. Yes Virginia, Age dicrimination is alive and well, and living in the US, regardless of Federal Law.
Emergency and Depression in policy terms should be synonyms for most people. That is how we once could laugh at the following exchange:
Secretary to Daddy Warbucks:
Daddy Warbucks, its President Roosevelt on the phone, he says it's urgent
Daddy Warbucks:
Everything's urgent to a Democrat.
That was when Democrat meant FDR, not what we got now.
The data that you present is the right response to the 60 Minutes hysteria. Who benefits from that hysteria? Don't know their names specifically but the end result is easy to figure out. Drive down pensions, wages, and expenditures in the middle of a nasty recession with U6 at 16% and more rigorous estimates at 23%.
Shadow Government Statistics
What is is about this rate or real unemployment tha fails to spell EMERGENCY to those running the show?
Your point on viable alternatives is also well taken. In the case of California, we're in for some innovation from Governor Brown. He has some exciting possibilities and alterantives. Expect something innovative and very different.
Again, great post.
The ChiComs have used U.S. shell companies for spying, industrial espionage and and takeovers. Money Party shut Lou up for good reasons. Money Party and it's organs like USCOC has one idea: More Money for Me.
This is probably going to happen over time, but now the Census has some of the data online, here and here.
Once some strong economic/jobs/demographics data is available, more will be written here.
The last corporate takeover of the U.S. partially ended with Teddy Roosevelt got into office on a fluke (Mckinnley was assassinated and at that time, they put trouble makers into the VP slot to silence them). Then FDR was phase 2.
Right now Nixon looks like a Communist is comparison to what's happening now.
Even worse, that's already happening in the West states. They won't do a damn thing about illegals using social services, but cutting services to the disabled and elderly...oh yeah, that's first to go.
This is a huge problem, the left is absolutely insane on their special interest groups, which frankly they won't deal with labor economic and population realities. Howard Dean was on Ratigan yesterday, on and on about the Dream act, sidestepping huge economic questions about jobs, taxes from Ratigan. The Dream Act, from what I could tell, was yet another special interest, backdoor bad bill again and this is coming from someone who believes kids of illegals who have done well in school and so on, should be rescued somehow.
You cannot get the left to deal with sane economic policy and economic realities, putting American workers first and foremost, anymore than you can deal with the right.
Which makes me question the entire structure of the U.S. government. Seems parliamentary systems are slightly better. For the U.S. to get real change we have to get a FDR or a Teddy Roosevelt into the White House and we know it sure isn't that situation right now.
Over on DK, there is a movement to change the Senate rules for a real filibuster. My immediate thought was, for what? So you can pass this absurd open borders agenda and pay no attention to the labor market? Democrats had plenty of time to pass something on Chinese currency manipulation, on trade, they should have passed the corporate tax loophole if they tried....they did not fight for a single major agenda item that was the reason they got into office in the fist place, esp. in those areas that flipped back red this election, with trade/manufacturing/jobs being at the top of that list. Instead, you have Joe Corporate Representative Lieberman, of all people, pushing for the one thing they did manage to get through, the repeal of DADT.
It's ridiculous, they should be demanding just one page bills, just these one change policies, one line....be passed. They could make a world of difference, instead we get these corporate written loophole 2000 page monstrosities which are usually disaster.
This is probably great news. There are just minor blurbs so far, but the SEC is probing U.S. attorneys, banks for allowing Chinese to buy, go on the stock market through back door methods.
Folks, if you see some details on what's going on, please at least post it in a comment. This is a much bigger deal than what's implied for the U.S. economy.
There is no shame or fear in the Simpson Commission. There is no sense of history. When the Great Sea Wall called of the Welfare State - SS, UI, Survivor Benefits, Disability come down, there is going to be a real shit storm world wide and it's happening now.
The big advantage, world wide goes to the Left. But some deep thinking people on the Right may come up with answers like localizing everything lost in the Welfare State collapse. The demise of Public Pensions is not going down well. There is talk on the far left of the 5th International. The crisis of capitalism is exceeding the Great Depression.
I do not see a second term for Obama if he co-opts and does all dirty work for his opposition. On the economic side, you have done much education in the components of GDP, and government is a component.
We have a "financial crisis", which of course requires trillions in bail outs...therefore the only answer available is to slash retirement and any government pension program (social security). It happened in Greece, then Ireland, happening in the U.K. and is becoming increasingly evident to be a target in the U.S.
One of the more popular posts on EP is when I wrote up about Obama's economic advisers promoting a "partial" privatization and reduction of social security and that is before any financial armageddon happened.
I think we're in huge trouble, one of the worst disasters for Americans would be to have that meager benefit reduced or eliminated. It's bad enough that the people about to retire and younger were denied pensions....so this coming poverty wave has not even started to hit yet. But it will and we're going to see a world of pain like no other.
Social Security cuts are happening across the globe. The worst kinds of CT are plausible. IMF, World Bank and other predators are behind this as part of the G20 deals worked out this year. Yes, monies are stolen because of the Inter-Generational Social contract now broken.
By the same token we are free now to think the previously unthinkable, politically socially,economically. Nothing is out of bounds.
The Politico report is vague but pointing to the worst
"
The second part, now being teed up by the White House and key Senate Democrats, is a scheme for the president to embrace much of the Bowles-Simpson plan — including cuts in Social Security. This is to be unveiled, according to well-placed sources, in the president’s State of the Union address.
"
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46430.html#ixzz18iP5aeVX
why are the American people not in outright revolt at this point.
I'm telling you that freaking Social Security tax cut is making me lose sleep. That came from out of the blue. It muddied the waters and will be used as an excuse. Social Security is solvent the money was stolen. Now another blame the victim game begins. we are entering an endgame here. Either Obama does not get it or he is part of the machine.
IF you go to the BLS website, you can find data on those over 65 as well as considered "not in the labor force", and do calculations from there.
I did some of them in this post.
Since FL has a disproportionate number of people over the age of 65, you can probably get to the state data and do something similar.
It isn't exact, you will have people over the age of 65 who need and cannot find a job in there, but it whittles down the numbers.
One assumes that self-report is used rather than whether they are 65+. Many 65+ can be seen working at Wal Mart, grocery baggers, local shops, self-employed, etc. I don't know whether the numbers are significant but may be offset by 62+ retirees. Anyone living on SS alone would seem to be SOL.
Supposedly Obama going to propose cutting social security in the State of the Union.
These days with blogs, reporters and people like us, one hopes Politico checked their sources, but I imagine they found out something to write up a story like this.
We're written many pieces in the last couple of weeks pointing out the real target of Wall Street, corporations, uber-rich's 40 year agenda to destroy what is left of any social safety net and it's clear they have a bulls-eye on social security for this year.
If Obama proposes cutting social security in the State of the Union, it's official, this guy is a corporate oligarchy nightmare, regardless of what political flavoring you come from. If he does it, I'll make a point to promote all of the conspiracy theory "documentaries" on Obama that I have never put into the Friday Night Video with the disclaimer, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get cha.
I'm almost being ridiculous in refusing to really examine the data on what is going on with illegals on these metrics. The reason is it's just a political charged topic, anything, even just data collection, gets a few name calls and such.
A huge problem is the BLS and the government databases just do not collect on immigration status. So, you can get "Hispanic", but that's everybody, lumped all together. You cannot tell if someone is Cuban, from Spain, from Mexico, from Chile and if they are a U.S. citizen, a legal resident or illegal.
They also lump in foreign guest workers, on various Visas in these numbers and those numbers are in the millions of foreign workers. Where that can really skew numbers is when you get down to occupational categories and those unemployment statistics.
That said, I find it interesting that the states with the most "sanctuary" policies, who refuse to really even enforce any immigration law or even IDs, demanding legitimate IDs one would be called a racist xenophobe, also seem to have some of the worst statistics economically. Michigan I'm not sure about, but both CA and FL have high illegal populations, so do NY and NJ. IL is notorious.
My attitude towards this stuff are numbers are numbers and labor economics are labor economics. You have to be dead to not realize Population growth and immigration affect all of these unemployment and jobs statistics and yes folks, the labor economics 101 laws still apply.
There is no way to address these issues in some sane, practical manner with the way the politics are. I mean Mexico right now looks worse than Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of a particularly vile war zone and it barely even gets a mention in the main stream press.
In terms of unemployment rates, official, all of those not officially looking for a job are put in the "not in the labor force" pool, so all of the FL retires aren't biasing the count.
The Feds need to consider new taxes, namely a Wall Street transaction tax and a VAT and probably some sort of alternative tax to target executive excessive compensation. A VAT is extremely regressive, but it can be used as a tool for trade imbalances. So, if they rebate it to make it more Progressive, it could really help with trade and it's quite dynamic too, easily adjusted. The, they need some sort of transaction tax to deal with these flash traders, those using engineering architectures to make bucks on stock/market trades....
it's increasingly becoming a rigged gambling house instead of an investment vehicle.
Then, the obvious is we need a super rich major tax and I think targeting executive compensation, based on some scale on how many U.S. jobs that company had in a year, what they gave back to the nation, i.e. a tax directly on executives and also directly tied to what they did for America in addition for their shareholders. They could also reform executive compensation, it's sorely needed.
Florida unemployment rate is right in line with California -- don't think we have as many illegals as CA. Tampa Bay area is above state average, as is LA. Another consideration is the age structure -- Florida has about 18% of its population 65 and over, thus more retired. If we didn't have SS and UI, it would be a repeat of the great depression. Property taxes 2009 to 2010 in Tampa Bay area seemed to be flat, but 2011 may be down (reflecting softness of real estate). Raising sales tax depends on voter approval -- good luck with that. Florida has no state income tax, and getting one passed would take a constitutional amendament on the ballot -- good luck with that one as well. This is getting to be a tale of two Americas.
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