Livinglies’s Weblog

Credit Crisis Over? — Not by a Long Shot

As you can imagine I get emails and comments from hundreds of people seeking help and whose houses are going into sale or foreclosure, most of whom are completely unaware that they have rights superior to the lender, if they can find someone to help them like www.repairyourloan.com. 

Lawyers won’t help you until you get the mortgage audit completed. It is then that you will know the extent of your claims and what you do to stop the foreclosure, the eviction or even extinguish the mortgage and release yourself from liability on the mortgage note. 

Here is an article which illustrates why you need to beware of both the government and the lenders. They are trying to give the impression that the credit crisis is (a) not as bad as people thought and (b) over. What they are really trying to do is pivot your attention away from the fact that the massive mortgage meltdown has caused a meltdown in all the credit markets. It has caused a massive meltdown in asset values for individuals, corporations and government entities. 

This is not the beginning of the end. It is, as Winston Churchill said in World War II “the end of the beginning.” We have years to go before this shakes out just in terms of education of the public. And we have decades to go to recover from this utter failure of government to do its job — to referee between those who know things and those who don’t. 

In the process the government, the corporations and the individuals owning houses or doing their jobs have all been smacked in the face, really hard and have snapped out of their wishful confidence in their government and in the “good faith” of a good faith estimate before closing on a loan.

Credit Crisis

Congress And The Credit Crisis

Joshua Zumbrun 05.14.08, 6:00 AM ET

Washington, D.C. - 

A congressional panel meets Tuesday morning looking to answer two big questions about the economy: Is the credit crisis over? And can anything be done to prevent another crisis in the future? 

To both questions, the answer is “No. And proceed with great caution.”

For the credit crisis, reasons for optimism are emerging. Monday morning, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke outlined positive signs: confidence between banks has risen, the market for repurchase agreements of Treasury securities has improved, secondary markets even for troubled mortgage-backed securities have more liquidity than they did in May.

“These are welcome signs, of course, but at this stage conditions in financial markets are still far from normal,” Bernanke cautioned. (See “Recovery: Are We There Yet?”)

Still, the battered housing market continues to drag. Data released Monday from the National Association of Realtors showed that home prices are still falling. In the first quarter of this year, the median home price dropped 7.7% from a year ago–the biggest decline in the 29 years NAR has compiled the prices.

The number of borrowers who owe more than their house is worth is still growing. Loan defaults and foreclosures are likely to continue, as will losses to the lenders. Foreclosures tend to drag down the prices of their entire neighborhoods. But even here, Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, sees some signs of optimism: “Neighborhoods with little subprime exposure are holding on very well.” And at least banks are not originating new subprime loans.

Now for the second question: How to prevent risk in the future. That’s what makes Tuesday morning’s hearing significant. The early advice Congress receives could shape regulation of banks and the financial market for years or even decades. And, as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson noted in proposing a series of regulatory reforms in March, “few, if any, will defend our current balkanized system as optimal.”

The March collapse of Bear Stearns exposed a weakness in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a 1999 law that removed the barriers between commercial banks, investment banks and insurance companies. The amount of systemic risk was not recognized until too late.

After Gramm-Leach-Bliley, banks and insurance companies were allowed to undertake the same activities, but they still answered to their old regulators. Five federal regulators oversee deposits, in addition to regulation from state governments. Futures and securities are regulated by separate agencies. Insurance regulation is spread across more than 50 regulators.

The result was a confused alphabet soup–SEC, CFTC, OCC, NCUA, FDIC–with muddled boundaries or, as SEC Chairman Christopher Cox described the result, “a statutory no-man’s land.”

But regulation presents pitfalls as well. It must be considered not in terms of more or less regulation but rather in terms of flexibility and efficiency. 

“In the wake of a bust, there is always a predictable series of political activities,” says Alex Pollock, former president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, who will testify before the committee. “First, the search for the guilty; second, the fall of previously esteemed heroes; and third, legislation and increased regulation to ensure that ‘this will never happen again.’ But, with time, it always does happen again.”

The guilty have been identified as the twin bogeymen of the subprime underworld: “speculators” and “unscrupulous lenders,” enabled by banks unable to price risk and an irrational belief that home prices would always rise. The esteemed heroes have fallen: the collapse of Bear Stearns, disappointing results from Wall Street’s banks. Even Alan Greenspan has lost some of his luster.

The third act at the boom and bust theater is well under way. This week the Senate is ironing out its companion legislation to the House’s Foreclosure Prevention Act, which passed last week with a 266-154 margin. The president has indicated he would veto the bill’s current incarnation but could support a toned-down version. All that remains is the predictable regulatory overhaul and then a long wait for the inevitable cycle to begin in the future. 

Bank earnings falling off, failures still a threat on the horizon.

Even with the phoney accounting rules allowed by the SEC and the FASB, the reported earnings of most banks are taking major hits. Hidden below the surface of this bad news is more bad news as the rate of delinquencies, foreclosures, evictions, and repossessions continue to skyrocket. 

We have said it before and it bears repeating: AMNESTY FOR ALL is the only approach that will defuse this bomb. By changing the rules of civil procedure and substantive law, stopping the foreclosures, stopping the evictions, and mediating payments terms that are within the means of the borrowers, the mortgages can remain on the books, balance sheets can be restored and claims for improper sales of CMO and CDO securities can be staunched. EVERYONE must benefit from the solution. Any effort aimed at only one segment of the marketplace will fail.

FROM FORBES:

Earnings Preview

Banking’s Mean Season

Liz Moyer, 04.14.08, 2:55 PM ET

Wachovia set the tone Monday for what is expected to be an especially bloody first-quarter earnings season, which starts this week. 

Posting a surprise 20 cent a share loss, the Charlotte, N.C., bank announced it would slash more jobs in its investment banking division, dramatically increase reserves for loan losses and return to the markets for the second time this year to raise new capital. Oh, and it’s cutting its dividend.

Across the banking industry, profits are slumping or swinging to losses as the credit crisis spreads from big Wall Street firms to the regional banks that depend more on traditional lending for their revenues. Especially hard hit: banks concentrated in areas of the country most sharply feeling the housing downturn.

Video: Citi And Banks

Washington Mutual, the largest U.S. thrift, already announced its greater than expected disappointment, saying last week it would lose $1.1 billion after setting aside billions for anticipated loan losses. It cut its dividend to 1 cent and went hat in hand to Texas Pacific Group, which agreed to give it a $7 billion investment.

The pressure on regional lenders will inevitably lead to another round of bank consolidation. National City, based in Cleveland, is seen having a 38% drop in earnings per share in the quarter. It already cut its dividend nearly in half and acknowledged it was looking for a buyer or other strategic alternatives. Two other Cleveland banking companies are also feeling the pressure, even though each is viewed as a potential bidder for National City. KeyCorp’s profits per share are expected to fall 48%, and Fifth Third Bancorp’s by 25%.

Elsewhere, analysts expect a 33% decline in profits per share at Dallas-based Comerica; a 30% drop at Birmingham, Ala.-based Regions Financial; and a 13% drop at San Francisco’s Wells Fargo.

Wall Street’s pain is also enduring for another quarter. Merrill Lynch and Citigroup are expected to post losses per share of $1.90 and 95 cents, respectively, and both are expected to have billions more in write-downs of mortgage securities and loan holdings. JPMorgan Chase, which rescued Bear Stearns last month, is expected to report a 50% drop in earnings per share.

Wachovia’s undoing was its ill-timed foray into mortgage banking in California. The bank bought San Francisco-based Golden West Financial in 2006 in what was then seen as a shrewd entry into a red-hot mortgage market. Golden West specializes in adjustable-rate mortgages and had a long track record of surviving real estate booms and busts because of its conservative lending philosophy.

But this is no ordinary bust. California’s real estate crisis is weighing on banks with a big lending presence there, including Wachovia, Bank of America, Citi and Wells Fargo.

Analysts had expected Wachovia to say it had profits of 40 cents a share for the period, and they expected that announcement to come several days from now. But Wachovia moved up its earnings report after a weekend negotiating a new way to shore up its sagging capital.

Non-performing assets of $8.3 billion rose 56% from the fourth quarter and were eight times the level of just a year ago. Wachovia said troubled loans in the Golden West portfolio deteriorated more quickly than expected.

“I’m deeply disappointed with our first-quarter results,” said G. Kennedy Thompson, Wachovia’s chief executive, on a conference call Monday. “I know these actions aren’t without cost. I wish they weren’t necessary, but they are.”

Wachovia cut its dividend by 41%, saving $2 billion in order “to build capital ratios and provide more operational flexibility.” It is also selling $7 billion in new shares, its second share offering of the year.

The company is bracing for continued loan losses into next year, saying it would set aside up to $1 billion in anticipation.

As recently as last fall, Wachovia was seen as a potential savior, particularly for Merrill Lynch, which is said to have approached it about a merger as the losses mounted on its exposure to credit derivatives. Now, Wachovia, the fourth-largest U.S. bank, is seen as a target.

If mortgage losses go beyond already gloomy predictions, “they could succumb to more capital pressure, and their independent-company days may be numbered,” says David Hendler, an analyst at CreditSights.

Trouble for American Consumer is building and the perfect storm threatens our tenuous economy. 

DEEP RECESSION LOOMS WITHOUT FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN OUR POLITICS AND ECONOMIC POLICIES

The inevitable outcome was always the same: eventually we would hit the the top, like in any Ponzi scheme. 

Consumers, who maxed out their credit cards, and maxed out their borrowing on their homes, and maxed out on their purchasing power which has declined significantly over the same 25 year period, and who are vastly unemployed or underemployed (further decreasing their wages and purchasing power), and maxed out their borrowing from consumer finance, and even maxed out their short-term borrowing through pay day lending and overdraft privileges and eliminated their savings plans, have reached the point where (1) they can’t buy anymore “stuff” and (2) they don’t want to. 

The end result is that we have spent ourselves and our country into a hole, diminished our standing in the world, and we continue to insult the world by asserting a dominance that was once real, but isn’t anymore. And the world is telling us as politely as possible to shove it. 

The strength of the Euro, the movement amongst the oil producing countries to create a unitary currency for the Gulf countries and other trends around the globe all spell the same thing: everyone is looking for an alternative to the U.S. dollar and an alternative to the U.S. altogether. We have brought ourselves and the world to neither peace nor prosperity, and neither security nor safety. 

Asian inflation which is gearing up to be as bad as we have seen in any emerging economy is starting to hit wholesale prices. Rising costs due to rampant and growing inflation in countries that had before been “cheap” producers is hitting hard on products purchased here in the U.S. 

Add to that the more or less daily devaluation of the dollar and the effect is multiplied. Add to that mixture the further devaluation of the dollar caused by the mortgage meltdown where central bankers are converting their dollar reserves to Euros and the effect is further increased.

The headlines in most papers is the end of the free ride we had for a long time where the dollar was king and we could purchase imports more cheaply because dollars were in great demand. 

Our headline here is that we are headed for the deepest recession since the greatest depression. 

The reasons are many but all fairly simple. The United States converted from being a nation of production to a nation of consumption. The final nail in the coffin of this unfortunate conversion was the advent of credit cards — not at their inception — and the high interest rates that were institutionalized during the double digit prime rate days 25 years ago. The theory was that the credit card companies were under hardship because it cost them more to get capital to lend than they could get under usury laws, once you factored in defaults and the extremely high interest rates that the issuers had to pay. But when rates went back down to modest figures of around 7% prime rate from highs of 22% credit card companies were allowed to keep their rates at 21-22% and eventually raised those rates to as high as 35%. Adding insult, the issuers now have fee schedules that add to the absurd payments. 

This “free money” craze coupled with stupendous profits earned by credit card issuers caused a huge but temporary surge in consumer sending encouraged by government, business and lenders. Everyone liked it because for consumers they were getting more “stuff”, for government they could claim better economic performance, and for credit card companies, they had a stranglehold on an economy that was now addicted to credit card and home equity loan consumer spending. As with the mortgage meltdown, nobody thought it through. 

Our economy became addicted to, dependent on and under the control of consumer spending, which up till now has accounted for around 70% of our entire economy.

The inevitable outcome was always the same: eventually we would hit the the top, like in any Ponzi scheme. Consumers, who maxed out their credit cards, and maxed out their borrowing on their homes, and maxed out on their purchasing power which has declined significantly over the same 25 year period, and who are vastly unemployed or underemployed further decreasing their wages and purchasing power, and maxed out their borrowing from consumer finance, and even maxed out their short-term borrowing through pay day lending and overdraft privileges and eliminated their savings plans, have reached the point where (1) they can’t buy anymore “stuff” and (2) they don’t want to.

Alan Greenspan is now defending his record of relying on the marketplace to work things out. Free market ideologies, like the one Greenspan relied on, are like all other theories in economics. They seem to work for a while and then they don’t. Ideology does not govern how people act. People act as they choose to and the way they choose is based upon mostly subjective factors at the time of their decision. That is a lot messier than the neat and clean theories and policies, indexes and measurements that have been used in determining economic policy, foreign policy, and domestic agendas for decades. 

The underlying flaw in all currently used economic theory is that people are not theoretical. They are real and they are complex. 

This is not a new observation. Plenty of brilliant analysts and thinkers have known this for thousands of years. Just look at some of the most recent contributions from Rothbard and von Mises and you’ll see that the idea that human motivation and human thought process as the real issue has been around for a very long time, well understood, and pointing toward policy mechanisms that were based in reality rather than the mythical world where everyone behaves according to the “plan.” 

The problem is that economics and politics are inseparable — like time and space. You cannot define one without reference to the other. And in politics, the goal is to get elected and stay in power. You are playing to an audience with precious little time to get the finer points of economics, personal finance and monetary policy. 

People are too busy trying to make ends meet, getting the kids off to school and after-school activities, and working a two-income family schedule with increasingly longer working hours. Up until now, buying “stuff” has been a recreational outlet and they had the “free money” to do it. Now they can’t even pay the “minimum payment” without borrowing more and they can’t borrow more.

You don’t get elected giving people bad news — especially the news that things will get worse before they get better. So politicians create agencies to give them reports, indexes, median incomes, and unemployment data that provides them a reference point from which to pontificate about things these “leaders” actually know nothing about. They create slogans and “programs” that will never happen to give the potential voter a reason for putting them or keeping them in office. 

The end result is that we have spent ourselves and our country into a hole, diminished our standing in the world, and we continue to insult the world by asserting a dominance that was once real, but isn’t anymore. And the world is telling us as politely as possible to shove it. The strength of the Euro, the movement amongst the oil producing countries to create a unitary currency for the Gulf countries and other trends around the globe all spell the same thing: everyone is looking for an alternative to the U.S. dollar and an alternative to the U.S. altogether. We have brought ourselves and the world to neither peace nor prosperity, and neither security nor safety. 

WHAT DO WE DO? BITE THE BULLET, GIVE UP IDEOLOGY AND GET REAL

If you want to stop the mortgage and credit crisis, go with Barney Frank’s plan which takes blame out of the equation and simply stops the worst from happening. It gives everyone an opportunity to recover and it is the only way to do it — taking everyone’s interest into account rather than one group over another. 

If you want to stop foreclosures and evictions, change the rules of civil procedure in each state and in federal bankruptcy court that enables cram-down procedures and mediated results that allow for the same outcome as Barney Frank’s plan. Home values were inflated far beyond fair market value. Everyone should share in the loss and everyone should share in the potential recovery. 

If you want to stop the health care crisis and the economic nightmare created for our citizens, take insurance out of the equation, wind down the current system and move relentlessly toward a single payer system that pays medical service providers well, does not subject them to liability for bad results, and gives them incentives to get their patients healthier. That is what other countries do and what we should do here. 

Eliminate the restrictions on so-called “alternative care.” Those protocols have been around a lot longer than allopathic medicine. End the hegemony of allopathic medicine, provide incentives for preventative lifestyles and care, and the costs of health care will drop like a stone while the prospects for a longer, productive, happier life will rise. Reinstate the basic pledge “First do no harm.”

If you want to create a country with solid economic foundation, we need savings. To create savings, people must have the financial resources to cover their expenses and set aside money for the future. Take credit card debt and other forms of predatory lending off the table. Change the “no end in sight” vision to a light at the end of the tunnel. Stop telling people to spend money when you know they don’t have it. All you are doing is making things worse when you could be leading them out of the darkness.

If you want an economy that has solid prospects and good earnings potential for its citizens and the country as a whole, change the direction of innovation from getting our own people to part with their money to buy “Stuff” and make innovation work to produce things the rest of the world values. In other words shift back from the consumer driven economy to production. The products might be the same, similar or entirely different as before. 

BRING BACK UNIONS: Stop trying to minimize costs and start working to maximize revenues. Anyone can eliminate their costs by simply going out of business. A business is worthless without growth and strength in the marketplace. By eliminating our production capacity, we have effectively relinquished our sovereignty. Have government intervene wherever necessary to prevent dominance that results in imbalance — encourage the start-up of new small businesses and create a level playing field for them to compete. 

If you want to reassert America’s place in the world give the world a reason to respect and honor us besides our military power. Raw power is a transient commodity. Eventually it ends. If you want to retain sovereignty over our economic affairs and avoid becoming a satellite of China or a junior member of the European Union then demonstrate the power of the American worker and the attractiveness of living and working here. 

If you want communities to prosper allow community banks and credit unions the same access to providing financial services as the megabanks, where centralization has shifted local deposits into faraway investments of dubious value to anyone. State and Federal programs should be deposited into local banks rather than national or international combines. The infrastructure already exists without any changes required to enable this to happen. What is necessary is for State regulatory authority to become more active and more focussed on their own State’s economy.

As the song goes, these are a few of my favorite things. What are yours?

• I’ve been working on this problem for over a year. 
• No act of prescience or brilliance was required to know that if you pour water from a pitcher, eventually it will be empty even if you splash some more in from time to time. There isn’t enough money in the world to save us from a crash. 
• The ONLY thing that save our economy and the many other economies of the world that are tied to our fortunes is by consensus: 
• Stop the foreclosures and evictions, 
• redo the mortgages with incentives for people to stay in their houses, 
• create a payment pattern that is possible even if it is not ideologically congruent with your philosophy, 
• restore CDO values as close as possible to par, 
• enlist the culprits who created this mess because they are the ones with the open channels to get this done, 
• add to the recent moves to accept CDOs at or near par for valuation purposes (thus increasing capital reserves and allowing the release of billions in loans that are waiting to be made), 
• change the rules of civil procedures in each of the states on foreclosure to stop or slow them down, 
• change the rules of civil procedure on pleading to force the foreclosing party to state its case more clearly — especially as to ownership of the loan, 
• change the rules of civil procedure to stop or slow evictions, and 
• change the rules of civil procedure to require mediation after the issues are joined, thus providing some breathing room for this all to get worked out. 
• Legislation can’t do it, executive leadership won’t do it. That leaves the rest of us and hopefully the judiciary, without sacrificing due process and protection of property rights. 
• It can ONLY happen with consensus. Without agreement, this will crash, inflation will destroy what is left of the middle class and a good part of the upper class and drive the U.S. into third world status before you can say “$30 per gallon.”

Here is Martin Wolf’s column: 

Martin Wolf

America’s economy risks mother of all meltdowns

February 20, 2008, Financial Times

Recently, Professor Roubini’s scenarios have been dire enough to make the flesh creep. But his thinking deserves to be taken seriously. He first predicted a US recession in July 2006*. At that time, his view was extremely controversial. It is so no longer. Now he states that there is “a rising probability of a ‘catastrophic’ financial and economic outcome”**. The characteristics of this scenario are, he argues: “A vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe.”

Prof Roubini is even fonder of lists than I am. Here are his 12 – yes, 12 – steps to financial disaster.

Step one is the worst housing recession in US history. House prices will, he says, fall by 20 to 30 per cent from their peak, which would wipe out between $4,000bn and $6,000bn in household wealth. Ten million households will end up with negative equity and so with a huge incentive to put the house keys in the post and depart for greener fields. Many more home-builders will be bankrupted.

Step two would be further losses, beyond the $250bn-$300bn now estimated, for subprime mortgages. About 60 per cent of all mortgage origination between 2005 and 2007 had “reckless or toxic features”, argues Prof Roubini. Goldman Sachs estimates mortgage losses at $400bn. But if home prices fell by more than 20 per cent, losses would be bigger. That would further impair the banks’ ability to offer credit.

Step three would be big losses on unsecured consumer debt: credit cards, auto loans, student loans and so forth. The “credit crunch” would then spread from mortgages to a wide range of consumer credit.

Step four would be the downgrading of the monoline insurers, which do not deserve the AAA rating on which their business depends. A further $150bn writedown of asset-backed securities would then ensue.

Step five would be the meltdown of the commercial property market, while step six would be bankruptcy of a large regional or national bank.

Step seven would be big losses on reckless leveraged buy-outs. Hundreds of billions of dollars of such loans are now stuck on the balance sheets of financial institutions.

Step eight would be a wave of corporate defaults. On average, US companies are in decent shape, but a “fat tail” of companies has low profitability and heavy debt. Such defaults would spread losses in “credit default swaps”, which insure such debt. The losses could be $250bn. Some insurers might go bankrupt.

Step nine would be a meltdown in the “shadow financial system”. Dealing with the distress of hedge funds, special investment vehicles and so forth will be made more difficult by the fact that they have no direct access to lending from central banks.

Step 10 would be a further collapse in stock prices. Failures of hedge funds, margin calls and shorting could lead to cascading falls in prices.

Step 11 would be a drying-up of liquidity in a range of financial markets, including interbank and money markets. Behind this would be a jump in concerns about solvency.

Step 12 would be “a vicious circle of losses, capital reduction, credit contraction, forced liquidation and fire sales of assets at below fundamental prices”.

These, then, are 12 steps to meltdown. In all, argues Prof Roubini: “Total losses in the financial system will add up to more than $1,000bn and the economic recession will become deeper more protracted and severe.” This, he suggests, is the “nightmare scenario” keeping Ben Bernanke and colleagues at the US Federal Reserve awake. It explains why, having failed to appreciate the dangers for so long, the Fed has lowered rates by 200 basis points this year. This is insurance against a financial meltdown.

Is this kind of scenario at least plausible? It is. Furthermore, we can be confident that it would, if it came to pass, end all stories about “decoupling”. If it lasts six quarters, as Prof Roubini warns, offsetting policy action in the rest of the world would be too little, too late.

Can the Fed head this danger off? In a subsequent piece, Prof Roubini gives eight reasons why it cannot***. (He really loves lists!) These are, in brief: US monetary easing is constrained by risks to the dollar and inflation; aggressive easing deals only with illiquidity, not insolvency; the monoline insurers will lose their credit ratings, with dire consequences; overall losses will be too large for sovereign wealth funds to deal with; public intervention is too small to stabilise housing losses; the Fed cannot address the problems of the shadow financial system; regulators cannot find a good middle way between transparency over losses and regulatory forbearance, both of which are needed; and, finally, the transactions-oriented financial system is itself in deep crisis.

The risks are indeed high and the ability of the authorities to deal with them more limited than most people hope. This is not to suggest that there are no ways out. Unfortunately, they are poisonous ones. In the last resort, governments resolve financial crises. This is an iron law. Rescues can occur via overt government assumption of bad debt, inflation, or both. Japan chose the first, much to the distaste of its ministry of finance. But Japan is a creditor country whose savers have complete confidence in the solvency of their government. The US, however, is a debtor. It must keep the trust of foreigners. Should it fail to do so, the inflationary solution becomes probable. This is quite enough to explain why gold costs $920 an ounce.

The connection between the bursting of the housing bubble and the fragility of the financial system has created huge dangers, for the US and the rest of the world. The US public sector is now coming to the rescue, led by the Fed. In the end, they will succeed. But the journey is likely to be wretchedly uncomfortable.

Strategies for Living in a Failing Economy: Break the Bond of Mortgage and Note

While You Deal with Foreclosure and Eviction: Buy time and Make Money

Time for States and People to Act Now — Don’t Wait for Federal Government

Even while the Bush administration and bell ringers on Wall Street attempt to maintain the appearance of business as usual, the underpinnings of the entire U.S. economy are coming unglued and taking the Euro Union with it. Oil prices are up in U.S. dollars by 350%, up in Euros by 200%, and up in gold by 0% — that’s right. If you held gold when the price of oil started its meteoric climb in dollars, you would be sitting in the same position as before (no loss of purchasing power, oil would cost the same as before). If you held Euro’s, you would have lost ground, but only about half the ground lost by 300 million Americans who perform commercial transactions in dollars.

Besides the obvious importance of this to investment strategies, the consequence for every day American lives has been bad and is now turning catastrophic. The net buying power of the average American has been going down persistently for more than 20 years and the loss is likely to accelerate to hyper inflation levels that were unheard of in the lifetimes of most people living today.

The CDO (free money) scheme hatched on Wall Street where they created money and moved the risk away from those who were granting loans, opened the barn door and all the horses left. The scheme probably worked far better than they ever imagined it would — and far worse. The net effect is that tens of trillions of dollars have been moved like the water moving out from the beach before the tsunami hits. And now, like everything else, the pendulum starts swinging the other way. When the wave hits, it will bury some of the best companies along with the worst, and it will forever shake-up the way we conduct our commerce, monetary policy and political regulation of financial markets. Firing a bunch of CEOs isn’t going to cut it. Neither will sending them to jail, although they certainly deserve it.

And attempting to hold back the forces of change by avoiding the benefit to undeserving buyers/borrowers falls flat in view of the enormity of this worldwide fraud. Frankly, I don’t care if some people get an undeserved benefit and I don’t care if whether some people get fired or go to jail. What I care about is finding a way out of this mess — a solution that works, even if it means getting the people involved who created the mess or who should have known better. 

Current estimates now show a $10,000 decrease in the value of all homes that are near areas with high rates of foreclosures. So if you live in an area where there are 10,000 homes and 1500 of them are foreclosed, the 8500 other homes will sustain an $85 million loss. But the government and Wall Street reports only the loss in the foreclosures which is only part of the value of the 1500 homes that were foreclosed. So the government and Wall Street might report a loss of $5 million when in fact the direct economic effect is $85 million and the indirect economic effect caused by loss of consumer purchasing power is over $400 million. Multiply that times tens of thousands of communities all over the country and the world and you get a picture of how big this REALLY is.

So if you read the previous posts on strategies for dealing with eviction and foreclosure, here are a few pointers about why you should fight and why you will win if you take the fight to them.

IF THEY HAVE NO LIEN, THEY CAN’T EVICT AND THEY CAN’T FORECLOSE: A legal objective would be to separate the mortgage lien from the note in the transaction that you signed. This can be done in state court, bankruptcy court or by local government enforcement filing an action to help everyone stuck with this mess. By alleging fraud and other torts relating to the execution of the original documents, you form the basis of a “quiet title” action that can result in extinguishing the mortgage lien. This will still leave the note, but the note can then be adjusted downward either by negotiation, mediation judicial declaration or cram-down in bankruptcy. By separating the lien from the note, the right to foreclose and evict is permanently removed. They can’t evict and they can’t foreclose. Yes you probably need a lawyer to accomplish this, but you can probably find considerable help from a city, county or state attorney who is looking at state revenues dropping like a rock.

Reverse Negative ARM With Equity Kicker is Answer

Your only hedge against the massive inflation that is in process is the house you were cheated into buying. And the only hedge that CDO investors have against total or near total loss is to maintain a deal where recovery in full or nearly in full is possible. And this is the only hope for the intermediaries — developers, mortgage brokers, appraisers,  “lenders”, investment bankers, and retail securities brokers and institutional sales agents. The entire transaction must be recast to (1) stop the tide from coming back in caused by defaults and losses to CDO holders, (2) provide a reasonable period of time for recovery (sell-out of housing inventories), (3) provide a reasonable period of time for growth (normal demand-pull inflation), (4) provide a reasonable probability for recovery of investment in CDO securities and (5) provide a low but acceptable return to CDO holders while this mess gets cleaned up.

In order to make this happen, all the players — including culprits and ne’er do wells — must cooperate and will cooperate because they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Lower mortgage payments to teaser rates or keep them there if they have not been reset. Keep it simple and gradually adjust it upward on a very slow schedule spanning 10 years. Eliminate negative amortization — except if the house is sold for more than the price paid. Provide an equity kicker to CDO holders that allows participation in the proceeds of sale over the adjusted principal borrowed. Adjust the original principal borrowed downward by 15% of the price of the house. 

Meanwhile, holders of gold reserves should be paid a fee for allowing issuance of gold redemption certificates that are issued as currency in the areas hardest hit by the meltdown. The spread of the new currency(ies) might occur in areas not directly impacted by the meltdown. Dollars will trade freely, but after some wild gyrations will find an equilibrium in parity with gold. Eventually a complete return to fiat money is possible but more likely, parallel currencies are likely to continue for quite some time. Hyper inflation will be mitigated, and the dollar, now headed for extinction might be saved. No guarantees, mind you, but it is worth a try. 

This writer, under the sponsorship of General Transfer Corporation has offered a prospectus to government leaders all over the country for the creation of two new entities immediately: The Interstate Finance Commission for regulation and the Interstate Currency Network, that will (a) make arrangements for issuance of gold redemption certificates as currency and (b) regulate the electronic funds networks who until now have operated as quasi-governmental entities with no accountability to the government, merchants taking electronic payments (credit, debit, ATM) or the consumers. 

The Federal government has demonstrated its lack of relevance and lack of power to do anything about this mess. By the time the next president and the next congress is sworn in, the damage will be irreversible. The people an the states must act immediately under the powers vested in them by the U.S. Constitution, forming regional coalitions and cooperating groups to facilitate and if necessary coerce the parties in cooperating with these remedies.

If you agree, send a copy of this email to your local government officials and newspapers. 

Mortgage Meltdown: Who is to Blame?

In a word: everybody. Right now we need to put that aside and get to correcting the problem. Articles are coming fast a furious about “fraud” against the banks. See the latest LA Times articles where Lehman Brothers got stuck with an inflated price and a borrower whose paper net worth was not worth the paper it was written on. 

Dig a little deeper though and you will see that all this never happened before because people were exercising judgment — and the reason they were exercising judgment is that they were accountable. Everyone was in on this fraud and everyone knew everything. Nobody said anything because each one thought they were getting a piece of a pie. The fact that the pie didn’t exist was snowed over by dreams of riches beyond their wildest imagination. 

Now, because government moves so slowly, and events are moving so quickly, we have to build an infrastructure that will enable people to fight back on their own, collectively and with other groups, including government law enforcement. It isn’t fair. We should be able to rely on our government to protect us, but it is a fact.

Many thanks to the immediate response and support we are receiving on building GTC | Honors. The book orders are coming even before we set up payments on PayPal, Visa and MasterCard. A few cynics are complaining that this is a money making venture. Do the Math. You’ll see that the cost of setting up a grass roots infrastructure to reverse the meltdown, save the dollar, and re-start the economy by energizing innovation will cost thousands of times more than anything we can raise. Our hope is that thousands of other people will be moved to do the same thing — people like myself who after living 61 years have something to offer in terms of knowledge, experience and good strategic thinking. 

To order Garfield’s HandBook for Borrowers in the Mortgage Meltdown, contact us at ngarfield@msn.com. $19.95 for digital (email), $24.95 for hard bound). Automatic Updates digitally for 60 days. 

Happy New Year to all our readers, and good luck in the coming year. We’re all going to need it!

It is time for truth and unfortunately consequences. The numbers are staggering. More than $46 trillion in commerce has been impacted by the astonishing scope of this fraud. The rippling effects are washing over unsuspecting people, towns, states and countries like a tsunami and it just keeps getting bigger. 

The lies are now compounded by manipulations of economic indicators, the stock market indexes, and the completely unfounded assurances from the Federal Reserve. The truth is something we don’t want to hear and never thought we would hear. The U.S. is in decline and the dollar is no longer king. 

Don’t take your cue from the stock market. It is being artificially buoyed by people who are creating demand through placing purchase orders on money they have and money being lent to them. The big banks and brokerage houses are not just being bailed out, they are being sold out to foreign interests because they can no longer be trusted with world commerce. 

The Fed’s proposal for better regulation in the future without addressing the past abuses is impotent. It is an admission that the lies and deception and cheating and manipulation was rampant at every step and and every layer of the mortgage process. “currency” was created and fake fees were paid on fake loans on real property with fake values. Good for victims who want to keep their homes by defending and suing the players because they were victimized — but no good for the future of the economy.

It is true that the horrific decline of the dollar while it continues is going to hit with another tsunami of inflation the likes of which nobody alive has seen in this country. And it is true that in absolute dollars, the stock market might go up and not down. But on a net value using Foreign exchange and REAL inflation guides, the DJIA stock market index and P/E ratios should be adjusted to a present value of less than 7,000. Inflation will give way to accelerating inflation, accelerating inflation will give way to high inflation. And high inflation will give way to hyper-inflation (more than 100% per year). 

That’s right you think the market is high but it isn’t. It is giving you a false sense of security and the government and big business are very busy behind the scenes trying to save what they can in terms of confidence and solvency. In times past it was appropriate and successful to restore confidence in the U.S. economy, the financial markets and the U.S. financial institutions. However, nothing is going to take away the stink of this fiasco in the end. Collapse and chaos are inevitable. Then comes the rebuilding. 

Right now, there is nobody left to buy what we are selling. Either they can’t afford it or they don’t want it.