These proposals address three issues: 1) negative equity via principal reductions; 2) negative effects of foreclosures on families and communities by giving people options to rent; and 3) a less complex, less securitized home mortgage system.
Just taking the first steps to refinance a 400K 2nd home that has declined in value by half -- still angry that I paid too much because the banksters and real estate "industry" pumped up prices (I bought about a year before the peak and paid 20% down), and now massively under water. I still have good income, and more than enough money, butI have visions of defaulting and letting the banks worry about it. Yes, I know the arguments -- my 775 FICO goes south, plus they will sue me, but I would like to see ALL who have mortgages just stop paying at once. I'm willing to buy my mortgage at a discount -- oh, that's right, securitization and the Fed have made the mortgage disappear and it is considered priced at par. But I still have these visions of telling the people who dealt this mess to eat it. A mass default may be the only way the American people can wake up these clueless bankers and Uncle Ben's gang.
Seriously. I have seen so many special interest and corporate agenda labeled as Progressive, it's the main reason I grabbed Populist as a title.
What does that mean? I know what you think it means but I also think this is the reason DeFazio started the Populist caucus in Congress.....because the term Progressive has been co-opted.
Here's what I would like to see, some plain good ole fashioned common sense policy, based on real statistics, real theory and is in the national interest.
I think every political flavor can agree we sure as hell don't have that!
Take just trade as an example, does it make sense to put together policies and agreements that have created the largest trade deficit in U.S. history? I think not.
Does it make sense in any way, shape or form to say financial institutions have gotten so large, they pose systemic risk and are too big to fail....therefore.....we should make them bigger?
Anyone with even a 2nd grade education knows that's fundamentally nutso.
Does it make sense to use taxpayer dollars to offshore outsource jobs? Uh, not by any calculation or formula I've seen....unless one is seriously interested in destroying the U.S. middle class and enable global labor arbitrage that is.
Seriously, it does not add up in terms of recycling public expenditures as stimulus back into the domestic economy from where that money originated. It's just pouring government expenditures out of the nation. Then, even if one looks at wages, either the cost savings are not there or often, the costs actually increase....
so this is just stuck on stupid and you won't hear a peep out of State and Federal government on it.
And your point of this post, does it make sense to make it more profitable to foreclose on residential properties than simply giving a principle reduction and let people keep their homes in a bankruptcy? (the law was changed in 2004 to force this situation). Obviously not. The foreclosure projections for 2010 are...
(drum roll please)....about 4 million, which is a steady increase from this year.
Does it make sense to have it make more sense to walk away from a mortgage than pay it? No.
Political labels are just more noise in the machine....regardless of flavor, we simply get legislation, policy written by corporate lobbyists and not based on sound, fundamental economics and statistical realities....
We need the national interest and common sense party!
I'm going to label this YARP or yet another research project
That's one of the best things about EP (to me). If one has a hypothesis, say membership in the EU isn't that great after all vs. being solo, or say JV's conclusions that numbers are fudged....
digging out some research on this and writing it up after digestion for the rest of the class is a great feature for EP and gives original writing.
As previously mentioned, there are a host of topic areas that main stream economists will not touch because they are somehow against the current political religions and will get you kicked out of the club.
Apparently no one realizes that when the required withdrawals from the 401K rollover IRA begin, it forces most of us into the maximum tax bracket, for the rest of our lives. That applies to not just the IRA withdrawals, but pensions, a large fraction of Social Security, and all other sources of income. Also, it pushes the Medicare part B premium which is deducted from SS, from around $100 to around $300/month. The 401K is the worst mistake that I ever made !
First some background. Estonia and Latvia are not unlike Ireland is some ways but very different in other ways. The three nations were held out by the neo-liberals as the World’s so-called economic success stories in the period leading up to the crash although a significant component of the growth was tied in with real estate booms.
Both Latvia and Estonia chose, as a precursor to entering the EMU (which remains their blind aspiration), to peg their currency to the Euro and run currency boards.
Estonia pegs its currency at 15.60 krooni per Euro (after joining the European Exchange Rate (ERM) system in June 2004. Latvia pegs its currency at 0.71 lat per Euro and joined the ERM in 2005. Estonia initially pegged against the German mark when the Soviet system collapsed and they abandoned the rouble. Latvia switched their currency anchor from the IMF Special Drawing Rights bask to the Euro on January 1, 2005.
So Estonia and Latvia are both running currency systems similar to Argentina in the 1990s which ultimately collapsed and led to its default in 2001 (Argentina pegged against the US dollar). Pegging one’s currency means that the central bank has to manage interest rates to ensure the parity is maintained and fiscal policy is hamstrung by the currency requirements.
Point is these countries are giving up a lot - mainly sacrificing tools to manage an economic crisis.
The best way for a country to work its way out of a private credit binge is to ensure people can save and that means they have to be in employment. The worse thing for both Estonia and Latvia can do is to drive unemployment up further which just continues to undermine the capacity of workers to pay their way.
It also withdraws essential personal care services (particularly health care) at a time when the stresses would indicate more of these services are required.
The path to reform should be to float the exchange rate, as in the case of Argentina, and once that is accomplished, fiscal policy can be used to promote activity in the domestic economy and to encourage import-substitution and investment in productive activity.
Dubai is a mess. The jobs are going down the pan as people wake up to the fact that the real economic growth in the region is centred in Abu Dhabi rather than the investment-led phantasm that is Dubai. And yeah, if you haven't taken steps to protect yourself, you can be in a lot of trouble - private individual and business alike...
I think that the Congressional Oversight Panel has released their latest TARP report, and it is very important because it has created an implicit guarantee for major financial institutions that distorts pricing for capital and encourages excessive risk-taking.
http://taxvacancies.com find the top Tax accountant, tax manager position in your field. Your job is your life- dont let another day slip by with a sub-standard salary! Find tax manager jobs today at http://taxvacancies.com. With our privacy protection and selectivity, get the targeted job search you cant find from a recruiter!
It's about the usage of health/social services. As the population ages, it will require more medical attention. Some countries have national pension plans, these will also start to be tapped. The combination of healthcare and social/pension requirements is what Dr.Roubini is focusing on, correlating that with revenues to fund demand in addition to make up for any slack from an aging workforce.
Italy fudged it's books to enter the EU, they miraculously established within the parameters of budget deficits to GDP % when for decades the opposite had been true. And I believe a few years back, France was fined or something for violating certain fiscal restrictions after it joined. Who is to say that many of these countries simply didn't cook the books in some periods? There was a reason why many were hesitant on allowing former Warsaw-Pact nations from joining the EU besides irking their friendly neighborhood gas company (Russia).
The problem with the EU, which was warned by many, was that it was a half measure of integration. If we had the same structure here in the US, Michigan and Ohio would be in the same situation as Greece. They all share the same currency, and get a host of subsidies and regulations. But at the end of the day, this confederation of sovereign states needs to realize the situation on integration if it wishes to have more harmonization (which was one of the goals going back to the Maastricht Treaty, wasn't it?)
I've noticed that too and I've also noticed if an economist mentions the "offshore outsourcing" and a few other topics, it is like they are "kicked out of the club". No more papers getting published, assuredly not invited on talk shows and especially not invited for any op-eds in the NYT or WSJ, not invited to various talks....
very obviously a "boys clubs" type of deal with "unwritten rules" that there are certain things one is not supposed to talk about.
Then, there is the theory and the mathematics. In all of my diggings, every time to date, I find the theory itself does tell you that "trading people", i.e. making people a variable as if people are "something to trade", is a disaster for workers, middle class....it shows wage arbitrage, displacement, i.e. a "race to the bottom" for workers.
Take Alan Blinder. I've never seen someone "soft shoe" around offshore outsourcing like he does....he excuses things, preferences his talks, discounts his conclusions...
Pretty incredible. Even the "godfather of economics", Paul Samuelson, now he wrote up (he died recently) a short paper showing exactly that offshore outsourcing does hurt workers and also hurts an economy, through basic mathematics..
and even he was attacked and he's probably the premiere economist of this century.
Anywho, this is yet another reason for EP to exist. To get regular folk, who "can" basically, take that education or sister fields of study or even Econ grad school or whatever it is, look at the data, the stats, the mathematics and start talking about all of this.
That's why I'm always pointing out "bad math" because right now there is some sort of belief that all of the theory is crap, well, from what I've been digging around looking at, that isn't quite so, it's more the politics of people that's a real problem. That's with trade theory, labor econ, etc.....
But on the other hand, it seems Roubini does have a reasonably better handle on global economies and how they interact.
Yeah, I agree with that, and I suspect he still has direct communiction with old man Soros, who is funding his chair at NYU (if he's still there?? and they've enjoyed something of a mentor-mentee relationship).
It simply strikes me that so many of these "objective" econ types push forward an agenda for, let's say, offshoring and destruction of any public good/public commons' structures, while claiming other reasons why it's necessitated (as in Peter G. Peterson always pushing for the abolishment of Soc. Sec. and Medicare, and the offshoring of as many jobs as possible, proclaiming demographics to be the reason --- meanwhile he's the biggest bandit on the planet with his plunder and pillaging as chair of the Blackstone Group --former chair, now, I guess). His record on unemploying people while destroying companies and corp/national wealth is unparalleled.
Like all those people now proclaming China to be America's sworn enemy --- the very same ones who have always pushed for offshoring both the jobs and technology there. The very same ones who claimed that they would now be a fully democratic nation by this time if all those jobs and technology transfer went there!
That's a good point, Roubini is an obvious globalization type. We should pull up others who don't get so much press, but are a lot more on the money overall maybe.
This is a problem generally, you can have completely accurate, sane data points and so forth then go to another subject and it's just outright denial of the stats, facts and even the theory.
But on the other hand, it seems Roubini does have a reasonably better handle on global economies and how they interact. (with your points entirely intact!)
Is Roubini still with the Peterson Institute? I know he's with the Bretton Woods Committee, which is the penultimate in anti-worker, anti-union, anti-citizenry. That Peterson Institute has long been pushing for the abolishment of Social Security and Medicare, and promoting the offshoring of as many American jobs as possible.
Seems they are anti-tax base as well. (Since very few of those corporations are paying fed taxes [GAO-08-957].)
Greece's situation and economy sounds awfully similar to the U.S.!
and here is a nice article that defines Progressive values for me.
These proposals address three issues: 1) negative equity via principal reductions; 2) negative effects of foreclosures on families and communities by giving people options to rent; and 3) a less complex, less securitized home mortgage system.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
I strongly advocate that we create a new less complicated less sliced and diced system like the one Denmark has.
BTW, don't forget that in some states banks have a right to pursue deficiency judgments against mortgage borrower.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Just taking the first steps to refinance a 400K 2nd home that has declined in value by half -- still angry that I paid too much because the banksters and real estate "industry" pumped up prices (I bought about a year before the peak and paid 20% down), and now massively under water. I still have good income, and more than enough money, butI have visions of defaulting and letting the banks worry about it. Yes, I know the arguments -- my 775 FICO goes south, plus they will sue me, but I would like to see ALL who have mortgages just stop paying at once. I'm willing to buy my mortgage at a discount -- oh, that's right, securitization and the Fed have made the mortgage disappear and it is considered priced at par. But I still have these visions of telling the people who dealt this mess to eat it. A mass default may be the only way the American people can wake up these clueless bankers and Uncle Ben's gang.
Seriously. I have seen so many special interest and corporate agenda labeled as Progressive, it's the main reason I grabbed Populist as a title.
What does that mean? I know what you think it means but I also think this is the reason DeFazio started the Populist caucus in Congress.....because the term Progressive has been co-opted.
Here's what I would like to see, some plain good ole fashioned common sense policy, based on real statistics, real theory and is in the national interest.
I think every political flavor can agree we sure as hell don't have that!
Take just trade as an example, does it make sense to put together policies and agreements that have created the largest trade deficit in U.S. history? I think not.
Does it make sense in any way, shape or form to say financial institutions have gotten so large, they pose systemic risk and are too big to fail....therefore.....we should make them bigger?
Anyone with even a 2nd grade education knows that's fundamentally nutso.
Does it make sense to use taxpayer dollars to offshore outsource jobs? Uh, not by any calculation or formula I've seen....unless one is seriously interested in destroying the U.S. middle class and enable global labor arbitrage that is.
Seriously, it does not add up in terms of recycling public expenditures as stimulus back into the domestic economy from where that money originated. It's just pouring government expenditures out of the nation. Then, even if one looks at wages, either the cost savings are not there or often, the costs actually increase....
so this is just stuck on stupid and you won't hear a peep out of State and Federal government on it.
And your point of this post, does it make sense to make it more profitable to foreclose on residential properties than simply giving a principle reduction and let people keep their homes in a bankruptcy? (the law was changed in 2004 to force this situation). Obviously not. The foreclosure projections for 2010 are...
(drum roll please)....about 4 million, which is a steady increase from this year.
Does it make sense to have it make more sense to walk away from a mortgage than pay it? No.
Political labels are just more noise in the machine....regardless of flavor, we simply get legislation, policy written by corporate lobbyists and not based on sound, fundamental economics and statistical realities....
We need the national interest and common sense party!
I'm going to label this YARP or yet another research project
That's one of the best things about EP (to me). If one has a hypothesis, say membership in the EU isn't that great after all vs. being solo, or say JV's conclusions that numbers are fudged....
digging out some research on this and writing it up after digestion for the rest of the class is a great feature for EP and gives original writing.
As previously mentioned, there are a host of topic areas that main stream economists will not touch because they are somehow against the current political religions and will get you kicked out of the club.
Be too safe, be very sorry.
Apparently no one realizes that when the required withdrawals from the 401K rollover IRA begin, it forces most of us into the maximum tax bracket, for the rest of our lives. That applies to not just the IRA withdrawals, but pensions, a large fraction of Social Security, and all other sources of income. Also, it pushes the Medicare part B premium which is deducted from SS, from around $100 to around $300/month. The 401K is the worst mistake that I ever made !
This comes from "The further down the food chain you go, the more the zealots take over". Warning: this stuff truly questions are current thoughts on economics.
I would add Iceland to this list as well. Heck, it is said that the former Prime Minister of Iceland was heavily influenced by Milton Friedman. So, basically another neo-liberal cluster fu*k.
Point is these countries are giving up a lot - mainly sacrificing tools to manage an economic crisis.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Dubai is a mess. The jobs are going down the pan as people wake up to the fact that the real economic growth in the region is centred in Abu Dhabi rather than the investment-led phantasm that is Dubai. And yeah, if you haven't taken steps to protect yourself, you can be in a lot of trouble - private individual and business alike...
Webmaster, thank you. Was a good article. I wish you continued success of
I think that the Congressional Oversight Panel has released their latest TARP report, and it is very important because it has created an implicit guarantee for major financial institutions that distorts pricing for capital and encourages excessive risk-taking.
http://taxvacancies.com find the top Tax accountant, tax manager position in your field. Your job is your life- dont let another day slip by with a sub-standard salary! Find tax manager jobs today at http://taxvacancies.com. With our privacy protection and selectivity, get the targeted job search you cant find from a recruiter!
But John Stewart's take on the congressional testimony was even better!
with socialized medicine, maybe the costs increase (unlike the US) but I still say there is enormous age discrimination in assumptions going on.
It's about the usage of health/social services. As the population ages, it will require more medical attention. Some countries have national pension plans, these will also start to be tapped. The combination of healthcare and social/pension requirements is what Dr.Roubini is focusing on, correlating that with revenues to fund demand in addition to make up for any slack from an aging workforce.
Italy fudged it's books to enter the EU, they miraculously established within the parameters of budget deficits to GDP % when for decades the opposite had been true. And I believe a few years back, France was fined or something for violating certain fiscal restrictions after it joined. Who is to say that many of these countries simply didn't cook the books in some periods? There was a reason why many were hesitant on allowing former Warsaw-Pact nations from joining the EU besides irking their friendly neighborhood gas company (Russia).
The problem with the EU, which was warned by many, was that it was a half measure of integration. If we had the same structure here in the US, Michigan and Ohio would be in the same situation as Greece. They all share the same currency, and get a host of subsidies and regulations. But at the end of the day, this confederation of sovereign states needs to realize the situation on integration if it wishes to have more harmonization (which was one of the goals going back to the Maastricht Treaty, wasn't it?)
I've noticed that too and I've also noticed if an economist mentions the "offshore outsourcing" and a few other topics, it is like they are "kicked out of the club". No more papers getting published, assuredly not invited on talk shows and especially not invited for any op-eds in the NYT or WSJ, not invited to various talks....
very obviously a "boys clubs" type of deal with "unwritten rules" that there are certain things one is not supposed to talk about.
Then, there is the theory and the mathematics. In all of my diggings, every time to date, I find the theory itself does tell you that "trading people", i.e. making people a variable as if people are "something to trade", is a disaster for workers, middle class....it shows wage arbitrage, displacement, i.e. a "race to the bottom" for workers.
Take Alan Blinder. I've never seen someone "soft shoe" around offshore outsourcing like he does....he excuses things, preferences his talks, discounts his conclusions...
Pretty incredible. Even the "godfather of economics", Paul Samuelson, now he wrote up (he died recently) a short paper showing exactly that offshore outsourcing does hurt workers and also hurts an economy, through basic mathematics..
and even he was attacked and he's probably the premiere economist of this century.
Anywho, this is yet another reason for EP to exist. To get regular folk, who "can" basically, take that education or sister fields of study or even Econ grad school or whatever it is, look at the data, the stats, the mathematics and start talking about all of this.
That's why I'm always pointing out "bad math" because right now there is some sort of belief that all of the theory is crap, well, from what I've been digging around looking at, that isn't quite so, it's more the politics of people that's a real problem. That's with trade theory, labor econ, etc.....
Yeah, I agree with that, and I suspect he still has direct communiction with old man Soros, who is funding his chair at NYU (if he's still there?? and they've enjoyed something of a mentor-mentee relationship).
It simply strikes me that so many of these "objective" econ types push forward an agenda for, let's say, offshoring and destruction of any public good/public commons' structures, while claiming other reasons why it's necessitated (as in Peter G. Peterson always pushing for the abolishment of Soc. Sec. and Medicare, and the offshoring of as many jobs as possible, proclaiming demographics to be the reason --- meanwhile he's the biggest bandit on the planet with his plunder and pillaging as chair of the Blackstone Group --former chair, now, I guess). His record on unemploying people while destroying companies and corp/national wealth is unparalleled.
Like all those people now proclaming China to be America's sworn enemy --- the very same ones who have always pushed for offshoring both the jobs and technology there. The very same ones who claimed that they would now be a fully democratic nation by this time if all those jobs and technology transfer went there!
Demons all.....
This is a classic and it's like Colbert is reading EP on top of it. I'm not kidding you will roll off your seat on this one. (first clip).
That's a good point, Roubini is an obvious globalization type. We should pull up others who don't get so much press, but are a lot more on the money overall maybe.
This is a problem generally, you can have completely accurate, sane data points and so forth then go to another subject and it's just outright denial of the stats, facts and even the theory.
But on the other hand, it seems Roubini does have a reasonably better handle on global economies and how they interact. (with your points entirely intact!)
Is Roubini still with the Peterson Institute? I know he's with the Bretton Woods Committee, which is the penultimate in anti-worker, anti-union, anti-citizenry. That Peterson Institute has long been pushing for the abolishment of Social Security and Medicare, and promoting the offshoring of as many American jobs as possible.
Seems they are anti-tax base as well. (Since very few of those corporations are paying fed taxes [GAO-08-957].)
Greece's situation and economy sounds awfully similar to the U.S.!
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