Ya gotta shake your head when just like that Hank Paulson and the Bush administration hand over $250 billion to selected banks yet try to fight any of the bail out money going to homeowners.
FDIC publishes $24 billion plan to avert 1.5 million foreclosures by end of 2009
Testifying on Capitol Hill Friday, Neel Kashkari, the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for financial stability, said the aim of the $700 billion plan was to make investments with the hope of getting the money back. That he said, was "fundamentally different from just having a government spending program" that would disburse money with no chance of ever seeing any returns.
Government spending program? No returns? Seems like financing executive pay packages for do nothings who already ran their companies into the ground is the real spending program with no returns.
Some details on the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae restructuring plans:
Under the proposal, mortgage servicers will work with borrowers to reduce monthly payments to 38 percent of their gross income, a threshold of affordability, by lowering the principal, reducing interest rates and extending the length of the loan term. The plan doesn't include money from the Treasury's $700 billion bank rescue and isn't mandatory for companies that received federal aid.
Conditions and Fees
Homeowners that qualify will receive notices about the program. Their loan modifications won't become final until they have made three consecutive payments, and there is no limit to the number of times a loan can be modified. The new payment will include all of the borrower's monthly housing costs, such as taxes and condominium payments.
This is actually some very good news and frankly also a no brainer. How hard is it to realize one has set terms so predatory and unrealistic that they send their customers to the poor house? Maybe, just maybe it's a good idea to renegotiate reasonable terms so they actually make a little money after all instead of bankrupting their clientele?
JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest U.S. bank by market value, said it won't begin foreclosure proceedings for as long as the next 90 days while it finds ways to make payments easier on $110 billion of problem mortgages.
The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are considering a program that may offer about $500 billion in guarantees for troubled mortgages to stem record foreclosures, people familiar with the matter said
The terms, not official would be:
The plan, which might put as many as 3 million homeowners into affordable loans, would require lenders to restructure mortgages based on a borrower's ability to repay
The relentless slide in home prices has left nearly one in six U.S. homeowners owing more on a mortgage than the home is worth, raising the possibility of a rise in defaults -- the very misfortune that touched off the credit crisis last year.
The result of homeowners being "under water" is more pressure on an economy that is already in a downturn. No longer having equity in their homes makes people feel less rich and thus less inclined to shop at the mall.
And having more homeowners under water is likely to mean more eventual foreclosures, because it is hard for borrowers in financial trouble to refinance or sell their homes and pay off their mortgage if their debt exceeds the home's value. A foreclosed home, in turn, tends to lower the value of other homes in its neighborhood
Increased 8% in July, 55% in a year. But I think the raw number tells the best story.
How many American families (not investors, not foreign investments or 2nd properties, rentals, bank owned, speculators) are actually owned in the United States?
What's the real percentage of US families, your typical working family, losing their home?
U.S. foreclosure filings more than doubled in the second quarter from a year earlier as falling home prices left borrowers owing more on mortgages than their properties were worth.
The housing crisis grew worse in May, as more than 73,000 American families lost their homes to bank repossessions, up a staggering 158% from the 28,548 households that were dispossessed in May 2007.
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