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Senate Committee Votes To Fingerprint Lenders
tjstork recommends a blog post up at Openmarket.org on the passage by a Senate committee of a fingerprinting provision in a foreclosure assistance bill. The provision would require thousands of people connected with the mortgage industry, even tangentially — possibly including part-time and seasonal real estate agents — to send fingerprints to the feds for storage in a database. No explanation is in evidence as to how this would help the problem of loan fraud. The measure passed the Senate Banking Committee by a bipartisan majority of 19 to 2. "The measure the committee passed states that 'an individual may not engage in the business of a loan originator without first... obtaining a unique identifier.' To obtain this 'identifier,' an individual is required to 'furnish to the newly created Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry 'information concerning the applicant's identity, including fingerprints for submission' to the FBI and other government agencies."
Uh, how about, so they can track the people making fraudulent loans regardless of what identity they assume? Maybe?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Good luck in getting Guido "The Killer Pimp" Loanshark to send in his finger prints...
haven't you heard? when you can't find a way to solve the problem, you do the second best thing. Solve some other problem instead, and market it as a solution to the first problem.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
that all the problems these days can be solved either by litigating or by making laws enabling the government to collect more and more personal information.
This panacea coming to the country near you soon.. stay tuned!
But it doesn't solve the kind of problem that makes a "foreclosure assistance bill" seem like a good idea.
What they should do is pass a bill that requires new loans to be made under the following term:
For collateral backed loans, turning over the collateral relieves the debtor's obligation.
That forces the banks to assume the risk of risky loans instead of the borrower. Which is right and proper because they'll have a better understanding of what those risks are, anyway. Of course, they'll have to charge more for their money, and that will mean that some people won't be able to buy the house they want (and housing prices will drop somewhat to accommodate *some* of those people), but those are the people that would have found themselves homeless with thousands of dollars of debt after a pretty-likely future foreclosure, anyway.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This just looks like a subtle way to destroy Prosper.com
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
This is something that the NASD has been doing for years for people with securities licenses. This isn't something new. However, I don't really see the benefit of doing it. Maybe they are cross referenced with some law enforcement databases.
WARNING: WE HAVE NOT CONDUCTED A FELONY-CONVICTION SEARCH OR FBI SEARCH ON THIS INDIVIDUAL.
I'm a lender on Lending Club and I've got money that's not going to come back to me for another 3 years. Anyone got a guess about whether or not it will affect me?
I wonder what this would do for sites like prosper.com?
Take DNA samples, too. Add cameras EVERYWHERE. Why pretend that isn't the goal, or that the majority of people are against it? One day, it might help the children by catching ch1ld pr0n predatr0s. Or catch that mafia guy down at the loan store who talked me into that loan I can't afford. Or the creep that sold me that gas guzzler last year.
Here's something I would really like to see: Drug tests for every elected office holder, every day. Make the results public as soon as they're available. No exceptions. Another would be to implement transparency on all elected office holders' bank accounts. Let the sun shine in.
I volunteer helping some of those folks that were "victimized" by the "evil" mortgage industry. In every case, folks just bought too much house than they can afford. And a few times, they bought a few houses. Folks don't leave any wiggle room in their budget - at all. So if they lose a job, or they get sick, or a divorce, or any combination thereof, they get behind in their payments. There's nothing in their budget for savings.
A lot of those folks bought a house with one of those interest only loans counting on the house price increasing dramatically in the first couple of years, sell it for a huge profit, and buy more. Folks pyramided their profits with the expectation that home prices can go only up. The mortgage industry went long because these folks were able to make the payments. now, the economy slows, folks lose their jobs, and now they can't make their payments - bankruptcy and this current crisis.
Here's the real problem: in America we have this budget by payments mentality. In other words, we can afford something as long as we can make the payments and of course that's counting on having a job that gives raises every year and asset prices always increasing. Some folks actually lied on their applications - FYI.
There's no evil entity here to blame and there are no victims: just some folks who don't know how to mange their money and were too optimistic about the economy and the real estate market.
Those of you who think you can make a buck off a police state would do well to remember learn the fate of Fritz Thyssen. He was an industrialist and early supporter of Adolf Hitler, in part financed by Prescott Bush. He made plenty of money re arming Germany and he approved of racial purity laws. By the time he realized the Nazis believed all of the crazy things they said, it was too late for him to do anything about it. He was thrown into a concentration camp and was lucky to survive the wars he did not approve of. If you don't think the Neocons are just as crazy as the Nazis you have not been listening to them long enough.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
Yes, Americans run out and throw away your privacy as fast as you can without thinking about it! The mortgage crisis was caused by a lack of fingerprints? Right!
.... enact regulations that require a loan company to ensure:
... driven by easily obtained mortgages ... that your banks could make a killing by intentionally handing out mortgages to people who couldn't make the payments, forclosing on the mortgages and reselling the houses at a higher price to the next sucker!
... No Income, No Job Applicants!!!
You should have done what Canada and many other countries did DECADES ago to protect your citizens from the banks, protect your banks from your citizens, and to ensure the market could not be manipulated into such a crisis
- that mortgage applicants actually have the income needed to support paying back the mortgage! DUHHH!
- that a large enough down payment is made that if a small drop in the home's value happens, it won't eliminate the collateral the mortgage was secured on. (currently minimum 5% downpayment)
- that if a downpayment is not significant (under 25%), the mortgage applicant must have mortgage insurance.
Too many Americans still ignorantly believe that the mortgage crisis was accidental!
It was entirely predictable and preventable. It was entirely based on the greed of your unregulated banks!
Your housing market had prices that were rising so fast
I spoke to a young up-and-coming American mortgage broker recently who was not just entirely blind to the damage his industry had caused to the American (and world) economy for a short term again, he was dumbstruck with adoration and respect for the professors of American business schools that had come up with the idea and was going to attend a conference hosted by them soon after! He referred to his favourite mortgage applicants as NINJA's
Once the market turned, and prices stopped increasing, the mortgage pyrimid scam became unprofitable. Suddenly your banks couldn't resell all their stolen houses, suddenly your banks were stuck with huge amounts of debt that they couldnt carry.
But instead of stopping and minimizing the losses, and preventing the ruin of the American economy, they kept going! They intentionally carried the scam so far that not only could they not be punished for it lest it destroy your banking system, you as taxpayers were forced to bail them out for your own protection!
So you got scammed into mortages you couldnt afford, got your houses stolen back by the scammer, and are now paying off the debts through your taxes! It's the great American way! Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of being a victim of fraud perpetrated by other Americans!
So go out and submit those fingerprints. It will solve EVERYTHING!
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vidzkYnaf6Y
Fingerprint the CEOs and anyone with the final approval to accept or decline a lone, and leave everyone else alone.
If your bank uses an automated approval process, then designate some human being to sign off on the rules the automated process uses, and fingerprint him.
Even better, skip the bureaucracy and don't fingerprint people, just hold the companies responsible if they don't do due diligence on their hiring.
Geesh, this is banking, not munitions transport.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I think this is something that really should be done. The level of important information that passes through our hands is astounding. While some of this is public info (eg: trust deeds, some business income statements) a whole lot of it is private info (eg: socials (which you totally need for lending and buying), dl #'s, private account numbers). The problem is that in most states the education and bonding requirements for our positions and/or licenses is minimal or non-existent (eg: a local company used to offer to get you your license in one weekend). I am writing this as I host an open house full of nice things owned by a family that I have only ever met once. Fingerprinting lets government know if you have a record before approving licensure as well as helping the chain of custody when investigating information or property theft.
..from New York to Philadelphia. One of them keeps throwing pieces of bananas out the window and after a while the second man asks why he does this.
:-)
Why, it keeps the elephants away.
-But there are no elephants here.
See how good this works?
Get the point?
home
A friend of mine is a mortgage broker and explained the problem. The Feds demanded the mortgage industry provide more loans to minorities. All too often, minorities applying for loans did not have sufficient income to qualify. If they turned them down, AS THEY SHOULD HAVE, they would have been accused of discrimination. This whole mortgage crises was created by the Feds forcing the industry to give loans to people who had no chance of paying them back.
A secondary problem was idiots rolling over interest-only loans, hoping the market would keep going up. Interest-only loans aren't much different from gambling.
-- Will program for bandwidth
For the doggies pooping on the path...
Then they came for the usurers..
Then they came for the real estate agents..
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
When banks collateralized their mortgages into Asset Backed Securities, they usually lost the paperwork. And if they don't have a document trail proving that they own the house, they can't collect on Foreclosure Day.
Who Owns Your Home? has all the links.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
"Yes, Americans run out and throw away your privacy as fast as you can without thinking about it! The mortgage crisis was caused by a lack of fingerprints? Right!"
There's no doubt about it...
Thats what that old army post was for...
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
If a debtor defaults on a mortgage, they surrender the collateral (the house.)
Your proposal is already in effect, and has been for almost a century.
In any case, I don't think loaning to minorities is causing the current issues. For one thing, I don't think that so-called minorities are the primary people who speculated on property in florida, and other places, assuming that the price would go up by the time that development was finished and they could flip for a quick profit. Why banks would lend to such speculators, often with no obvious source of income, is beyond me. Furthermore, the NYT published a graphic on the largest foreclosures, and the cities are not those one associates with urban minority populations. Place like Merced, minneapolis, fort myers. Though these do have the minority population, and everyone has to take blame, the finance industry blaming it on government regulation is just weak.
This is why. Many years ago, Texas has a good regulation. The regulation was based on the idea that a persons home was not a liquid asset, but a vital possession. As such, texas allowed a person a great deal of protection to keep the home. The taxes would be fixed after 65. Your home could not be easily foreclosed or taken in a bankruptcy. In many jurisdictions taxes are easily disputed so people would not lose their houses due to excessive taxes. In exchange for these protections, Texans did not have the right to home equity loans.
That is until the financial industry bought out the Administration of George Bush and won his support to change the law. We now have a state of speculators instead of home owners. Prices went through the roof(tripled in 8 years) because the financial speculators wanted them to. Homeowner lost their house to due high taxes. Speculators moved in, borrowed against the house, and then moved out when they could not borrow leaving a blighted block. this was not due to government regulation forcing mortgage companies to loan to minorities. This was a calculated attack on the home owner back bone of america.
The sad thing is that the financial industry has made it bag of gold, and now is crying foul. Many of the mortgage holders are walking away, which they should, and the financial industry doesn't like it. Instead of renegotiating loans, they are begging the government for a bailout. It is sad. Those of us with eyes saw what was happening all those years ago, but all anyone else could see is free money. Now, as always, they are blaming it on regulation and minorities. The fact that the mortgage brokers were greedy bastards had nothing to do with it.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
the states already do all this. It is effective and will always be far more effective than any federal level law.
Wot da hell ever happened to educating people? That is the most effective thing against lender fraud. But, no, the stupid and ignorant must be protected instead (after all it's the stupid and ignorant who can be most easily manipulated).
This usurps states' rights and appears to be unconstitutional on the face of it. The states already do background checks on lenders, real estate brokers and agents, loan brokers, et cetera, ad nauseum. There is no need for yet another useless federal program. The federal government has no right to do this but I know that will not stop them.
It appears to be yet another federalisation plan, similar to the health care bullpuckey that Clinttoon wants to force everyone into and the federal welfare program that has been so successful at destroying families and creating new and serious problems by forcing social changes. It will be as useful and effective. It will make it far more difficult to get a legitimate mortgage, preventing many from owning their own home. It will do severe harm to business by delegating the administration of this law to unelected, capricious and unaccountable bureaucrats.
me. --a by-product of public education
Sounds like your friend doesn't want to take blame for what he and his coworkers did. If you really want to understand what your friend doesn't want to tell you, listen to this show. There's plenty of blame to spread around without slipping into racism.
Am glad to have this valuable reminder that fraud is something that little people do. Seriously, does anybody actually believe that the architects of our current lending debacle are a bunch of two-bit conmen running around with cheap suits and suitcases full of fake IDs?
Bankers have been saved without relief for debtors (another source). It's a good idea to prevent a general collapse because we use a fiat currency but leaving thousands of people ruined won't do enough. Trickle down has made a lot of executives very rich while leveling US manufacturing and consolidating all other commerce. The people responsible for the predatory lending crisis deserve to be treated like criminals. Many of the debtors are the victims of some very shady deals, which include intentionally inflating the value of property in cooperation with lenders. There's a lot of scandal here from top to bottom.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
Plenty of people mock the 1960's hippies, but fail to see the truth:
The hippies were not weak and useless by themselves, any fruitful movements were penetrated by government intelligence and rendered useless, read history and discover this for yourself.
In the 1960's you see people breaking away from the cattle control of the government and doing their own thing, forming their own communities. Today any serious break away group or community, whether they be truly peaceful or whether they harbor ill intentions, are penetrated and scattered. I'm surprised the Amish are allowed to exist in today's world, but I'm sure they are heavily infiltrated and kept under constant observation. There have been attempts to bring them into the grid as I'm sure they will be swallowed into it given enough time and excuses.
Do you hate the war in Iraq? The futile and immoral war on drugs?
Posting online and talking about it do nothing, YOU (via taxes) ARE FUNDING these things you hate! You are as guilty as the ones who directly participate in it!
Without OUR funding, there would be no war in Iraq, there would be no war on drugs! Why do you continue to fund matters you don't agree with? Because you are scared of this same monster throwing you in jail?
Why do concern yourself with matters outside your "illusion of control" when you continue to fund them?
If you pay into the things you hate, hate yourself first, you are to blame, there is no hand washing, you are the problem.
Where do we go today? First, read "Food of The Gods" by Terrence Mckenna. See how the television is the worst drug of all, controlling and manipulating our perception. Timothy Leary was right, and hallucinogenic drugs are banned and some schedule I because they allow us to break free of the lies and brainwashing, you wouldn't know unless you've tried them.
Why are mushrooms in cow shit illegal? Didn't nature give these gifts to us?
Why is marijuana illegal? Why do we allow government, controlled by big Pharma, to control and dictate to us?
Why do we cower in fear and OBEY?
Why are so many of us scared to peacefully stand up and say ENOUGH? Because we might lose time at the computer, game consoles, etc? Because standing up for our rights and liberties which have been stolen from us would deprive us of our enjoyment? "But I have a family..." is not a good excuse, if you do not defend your freedom you do not deserve to live in a land where people went to war and died to protect them.
Anyone who cares about protecting our freedom is labeled a nut or added to a database. This has to STOP. Maybe the image of the dirty street dweller shouldn't return, but damnit, the peace sign and all it embodies should make its way back into the culture, we need to unite, we are divided, and we have already began to fall.
If you do nothing but talk and blog while funding the corrupt system, you are the corruption you hate. Change does not happen by people funding and rewarding a broken and corrupt government.
"All governments are liars and murderers" - Bill Hicks
Bumper stickers won't cut it, we need to come together, right now.
You all sell the house and split the proceeds. Duh.
You get a return on your money because you're risking it. The risk is that if the debt doesn't get repaid, your fraction of the house might not be worth what you paid for the note.
More risk should equal more return. Pawning off the risk on some third party shouldn't even be on the table.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I really don't understand how that got an insightful score. It wasn't. It just sounded like an ignorant rant. Greed is the job of banks. That they act stupidly when not regulated is not exactly a ground-breaking observation. Fingerprinting is required in many states for all people involved in lending and real estate. That is appropriate. It cuts down on property theft and identity theft. It is generally used as a way of screening out applicants in the industry. If you saw the amount of personal property and personal private information that we put our hands on, you might think differently.
What about the people next door to the forclosure which is empty and trashed? What about the the investors in those mortgage securities (probably your retirement fund...).
Fingerprint / Eye scans are just to warm us up for the eventual mass-mandatory-microchipping
Get ready for "Digital Angel", think "Splenda" for a product which causes your dick to rot.
I work for a large financial services firm. Everyone who comes to work there is required to undergo a background check and criminal records check, which includes fingerprinting (and running those fingerprints for matches in criminal and disciplinary databases). The goal with the SEC is, at least partly, to ensure that someone who has been convicted of securities fraud cannot sneak in after suspension of their license, etc.
Note, I'm not a licenses broker or any such thing - I'm in IT. But the rules apply.
OK, you're (or your friend's) fundamentally confused.
1) Most of the people defaulting on loans are not, in fact, minorities.
2) All the anti-discrimination provisions of federal housing law are public. Try http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/homes/rea08.shtm for a start. None of it has anything in it about lowering standards, only prohibiting discrimination.
3) People can accuse of discrimination all they want; if they can't prove it who cares? There's no way defending those cases would be as expensive to mortgage companies as having the loans blow up.
So, sorry, but this problem cannot be blamed on the economic actors in the situation who had the LEAST control over what was happening. Aim Higher!
Work for any financial firm (and if you write software for in a big city, odds are you are or have worked for a financial firm at one time) you have to get fingerprinted. No one throws a stink about that. After this ridiculous mortgage crisis, is it any surprise they extended it to include lenders?
Maybe I'm just used to it, so I don't see the big deal. But I think I have been fingerprinted at least 4 times over the past 10 years in order to work for financial firms.
Meh. Perhaps it is something to get worked up over. But it isn't really a new thing--perhaps it is to many here? This practice, or something like it, has been in place for years in the greater financial market.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
This smacks of the same tactics Microsoft used to force IE on everyone. When they were ordered to un-bundle IE from the OS, they responded by doing so, but then making IE a requirement for everything... want to use Platform Builder? You need IE. Want to use Visual Studio? You need IE. Want to play Al Unser Jr Racing, and read the Help? You need IE.
This sounds like the establishment wanting the FBI to have fingerprints on everybody (you're all potential criminals, after all), but knowing it will never fly. So instead... you want to lend somebody money? That's a fingerprintin'. Next, it will be "Want to borrow money from a fingerprinted lender? Well you need to be fingerprinted too, or there's a security gap."
Next it will be buying a gun, car, getting a US passport (even if you're native-born). Then it will be your health insurers before giving you coverage.... before you know it, bingo, everybody's on file.
And then it will be, well, everybody's on file, so when your new baby is born, we'd better get them fingerprinted, chipped, tagged, whatever, or else there'll be in danger of being kidnapped, sold to the Far East, ground up for medicine, etc. You don't your child to be the only one not being tracked do you? That will make him a target!
Michael Coyne
http://turthalion.blogspot.com
3) People can accuse of discrimination all they want; if they can't prove it who cares? There's no way defending those cases would be as expensive to mortgage companies as having the loans blow up.
Riiight. Will your bank say that when Jesse Jackson and other minority "leaders" are picketing outside and CNN is running a story on a slow news day? And even if you are legally in the clear, juries often award millions when they see a sad poor plaintiff and a deep-pocketed defendant.
So, sorry, but this problem cannot be blamed on the economic actors in the situation who had the LEAST control over what was happening. Aim Higher!
There were many bad actors:
- borrowers, for borrowing large amounts that they couldn't afford
- banks and brokers, for lending large amounts to borrowers that the borrowers couldn't afford
- fraud by borrowers on mortgage applications
- fraud by banks and brokers on mortgage applications
- investment banks creating overly complex CDOs to sell those mortgages to investors
- credit-rating agencies giving these CDOs their safest AAA ratings when they are far riskier
This is why. Many years ago, Texas has a good regulation. The regulation was based on the idea that a persons home was not a liquid asset, but a vital possession. As such, texas allowed a person a great deal of protection to keep the home. The taxes would be fixed after 65. Your home could not be easily foreclosed or taken in a bankruptcy. In many jurisdictions taxes are easily disputed so people would not lose their houses due to excessive taxes.
If you owe me $200,000 and you have a $200,000 house, why should I be the one stuck with the bad debt? Why are you somehow morally and ethically superior to me?
And what is so magic about age 65? That is fundamentally unfair - tax the seniors the same as everyone else. If the local municipality needs a certain amount of revenue to run their operations, everyone should share the pain (and complain about it, and vote for changes).
Umm, in America you normally have mortgage insurance unless you put 20% down.
>>Too many Americans still ignorantly believe that the mortgage crisis was accidental!
No way.
The mortgage crisis was entirely caused by the fact that our loan operators didn't have fingerprints taken, and so when they skipped out of town, there was no way for the lendees to track them down to pay them back.
This bill will finally solve the problem of deatbeat lenders who don't want to get paid back.
Amen!
Mirrored surveillance will never be a complete solution to the Big Brother problem, for the simple reason that power to act on the information is not equal on both sides. You can write a blog post about how unfair some cop busting you was, but you're still spending the night in jail and he's still at work the next day. The authorities, on the other hand, can abuse information to set you up, and you're still spending the night in jail and they're still at work the next day. Whichever side appears to have the information upper-hand, you're the loser.
Remember, you (assuming you're in the US) have a president who thinks your constitution is scrap paper and is busily ignoring it whenever it suits his purposes. We're not doing any better here in the UK: we have a Prime Minister who gained the office on an almost unbelievable series of political technicalities and has no popular mandate, who is busily trying to push through lots similarly abusive and unpopular legislation. Everyone who watches the news or reads a paper knows this, but what good does it do when there is now way to remove such people from office, or put them in a court where they must defend their actions or face the consequences?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The problem wasn't increasing loans to minorities, per se, but increasing loans to people classified as sub-prime (of which there is some correlation with minorities).
It was one of Clinton's last gifts to us that his administration began pressuring banks to issue sub-prime loans.
Of course, it isn't politically correct to criticize political correctness, so it's all blamed on the banks.
I work for a loan servicing company that is owned by one of the major NY brokerage/investment banks. As such, part of working for an SEC-regulated company means getting an official fingerprint card made with your fingerprints on it, per SEC regulations...
So, is the SEC regulating mortgage originators? Hmm... might as well, as mortgages are still being packaged up into financial securities...
or a double mortgage... 80% is main mortgage, and the rest covered by a 2nd, all to avoid paying a little bit of PMI. The interest on the 2nd is gonna be a couple percentage points higher, at least, compared to the primary mortgage...
Stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime...
Greed is the job of the banks?
... high interest, no service charges. The bank i grew up with went from paying me interest on every penny I had with them to giving me nothing unless I have 60,000+ in my account, and dinging me with charges every time i inhale ... as well as making it take as long as possible to transfer money in and out of ING Direct.
Funny when I was a kid, the bank was a place where you put your cash for safe keeping, where they paid you for the privilege of using your money while they kept it safe.
20 years later and just about the only bank that actually does the above is ING Direct
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
BULLSHIT.
... supposedly not as fast as the market value of your home increased, cuz markets never change direction right?
Are you really so gullible as to believe those lies? And you have no clue if you think 'interest-only' loans were the worst of it. Some mortgage lenders were giving out mortgages where your principle increased each month
And I havent even touched upon the misleading deals where interest rates ramped up over time far beyond following the prime rate.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
It appears the US has taken a page out of the UK 1984 manual. In the UK, ID cards would "not be compulsory", but nothing will work without.
I think those who propose this stuff should get the same treatment as meted out to the German Minister of Justice by the Chaos Computer Club.
There IS a use for biometrics, but it's not by storing it in a large data bank.
Insert
Property taxes should be fixed the moment the house is purchased, at the price it was purchased at. Here in Allegheny County PA we face a constant stream of 'reassessments' every time they want more money but can't get a millage rate increase passed. If I bought a house for $50,000 in 1965 I should pay taxes on a $50,000 house.
As for this mortgage 'crisis' (it really isn't one other than to the lenders, a very small percentage face forclosure) it WAS largely created by pressure from the Government to write more subprime loans. The Banks make a good scapegoat for Congress to point to though.
The situation with oil is much the same. Congress prevents building new refineries and drilling for domestic oil, AND take a larger % of profit in the form of taxes than the oil companies do. Who gets the blame though? That's right, the oil companies.
Congress loves playing shell games with us and we keep on buying their BS>
They want your DNA to prevent - errr - INCOME FRAUD!
Really. We're PAST the level already of spying on your citizens that the East-German Stazi had reached.
Privacy is terrorism.
How about fingerprinting lobyists so we see who's REALLY behind crackpot laws that get pushed through our respective governments.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
The feds didn't demand anything, this is complete BS. This crisis is just the result of the financial system lobbying for and obtaining the relaxing of regulations.
Said regulations were enacted initially as a result of the 1929 crisis; when they got turned off, well, no surprise, what was supposed to happen, happened.
Everyone who applies for a real estate license in the state of Oregon already has to submit fingerprints.
Interestingly enough, California already does this. When I got my real estate license 5 years ago I was required to submit LiveScan fingerprints to them. And last year when I began working for a government contractor I initially was declined a security clearance because my fingerprints came up in a DOJ database. Had to argue with them to stop and actually look at WHY the fingerprints were in there to begin with. They just assumed that because my fingerprints were on file with the DOJ it was due to something criminal. On another note, consider that I originally filed my fingerprints as part of a STATE licensing requirement. They then showed up in the Department Of Justice's files even though I had never been fingerprinted before for any other reason other than a drivers license. Why does the federal government get access to my fingerprints even though I have never been convicted of a crime? They are consolidating information on every single one of us.
I am not sure what reminiscing about the good ol days has to do with the question at hand. To clarify on my statement (which may have been too much of a shorthand for some) the purpose of banks is to make money through investing large percentages of deposited money. Also, the easy interest banks gave back then is part of the reason many of those banks do not exist any more. My family, who has been doing real estate since the potato famine (that is not an exaggeration) hated the older interest practices of banks because the high rates meant that most folks in the US could not afford almost any credit regardless of borrowing history. However if you would like to just go off and tell me about the good old reagan and thatcher years and complain about the evil bank be my guest. I think we will both agree they need either better hedges against risk (eg:enhanced reserve requirements or double-backed credit ratings) or just better regulation. I am one of a rather small group of real estate professionals who would argue that. Also, fingerprinting is still a really helpful practice.
The correlation with minorities, again, is suspect as much of the problems comes from speculation, not individuals trying to buy a house. For instance, Houston which is about 1/3 white, 1/3 hispanic and 1/3 black has only a 6% foreclosure rate, although it was a one of the highest subprime rates in the country. Tulsa, OK, OTOH, with a 60%+ white demographic has a nearly 9% foreclosure rate, with similar subprime loans and job losses. Much of the high foreclosure areas are places like newyork, california, florida, illinois, and other places where speculators were given huge loans to flip property. There has been more than one story in which people were allowed to accumulate million dollar debts with little or no visible means of support.
This has nothing to do political correctness, but merely personal responsibility. Those with ethics take responsibility for thier actions, those without blame others. Even Bush beat the subprime drum to homeownership, and in fact has shown the only discrimination to class, if not race. He was willing to bail out wall street, but not the common homeowner.
In fact the only person who has a rational approach, at least prior to gaining the presidential nomination, was John McCain. Let the chips fall where they may, let the foreclosures happen, let the banks write off their bad decisions, and then clean up the mess afterwards. Evidently such a plan would have negatively effected his white working class base, as he now, one again, has flip flopped to another tune. If anything the rate of subprime loans appears to correlate with the percent of white population, not against it.
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Crudely Drawn Games
"but what good does it do when there is now way to remove such people from office"?
:) may I point you, since you're in the UK, to your ruler and mine, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth?
:)
Assuming you meant "no way" (/. posts must contain pedantry, I think?
And Google "Gough Whitlam" while you're at it.
He was an Aussie PM who got fired, by the Governor General of Australia (the represent of, you guessed it, the Queen).
So your Queen should have the power to remove a minister from office, because our representative of her, here in Australia, acting on the Queens authority as Queen of the Commonwealth of Australia sure does. iirc, IANALOH (Or Historian)
So you think the solution to having an unelected Prime Minister that the people don't want is for the unelected Monarch to remove him?
I'm not sure that fills me with confidence... :o)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"that a large enough down payment is made that if a small drop in the home's value happens, it won't eliminate the collateral the mortgage was secured on. (currently minimum 5% downpayment)"
Uhh, what? 0% down loans are easily available in Canada, and have been for some time now. Or perhaps you just live in a different Canada than I do?
And what is so magic about age 65? That is fundamentally unfair - tax the seniors the same as everyone else. If the local municipality needs a certain amount of revenue to run their operations, everyone should share the pain (and complain about it, and vote for changes).
On the other hand, their Social Security benefits do not scale with inflation, so it would seem fair to me that their property tax burden also not scale as their home's price goes up from inflation. However, this is all moot anyway as the laws were changed.
As a landlord, fair housing is something that I take very seriously. It's good business practice not only to avoid discrimination, but to avoid making people feel like they could have been discriminated against. That means things like accepting an application from anyone who cares to apply. If I were to tell someone, "Oh don't even bother applying. You'll never qualify," I might as well just write a check for $10k to my attorney right then and there.
The same thing happens with mortgage brokers. They've got their compliance officers saying, "Take an app from anybody!" and "If they qualify for any mortgage, even if it is an expensive one, you must tell them!" That's life in this overly-litigious country. 3) People can accuse of discrimination all they want; if they can't prove it who cares? There's no way defending those cases would be as expensive to mortgage companies as having the loans blow up. This is false. Mortgage brokers suffer no financial consequences if the borrower defaults. But they are definitely on the hook when it comes to the Fair Housing Act.
Look, there were a lot of reasons that the meltdown happened. The most basic reason was mispriced and misallocated risk. The market became inundated with new, complex products that were not well understood by anybody in the market.
1. Consider the Option-ARM. How many borrowers really understood them? I understand them, and I've used them before. They are a great tool if you know what you are doing. But most mortgagors do not understand them.
2. Then you have the mortgage borker/salesperson who is compensated by dollars lent. What a great incentive model to minimize risk, no? Especially since the broker bears no default risk. Especially since it's very easy to confuse an unsophisticated buyer with new, complex products.
3. Then you have the actual lender. You'd think the lender assumes the default risk, but that is not the case after a certain time period (usually a year). Why? The lender is going to sell the loan anyhow and use the proceeds to make more loans. So the lender has no incentive to make sure the borrower can safely make more than 12 of his 360 payments. What a great business model to minimize risk, no?
4. Then you have the secondary market makers who buy the loans from the lenders. They slice and dice them up, pool them together, and issue securities which they sell off to investors (and use the proceeds to purchase more loans). There are a dizzying array of different types of mortgage-backed securities out there of all different risk grades. Ultimately, the risks on many of them weren't well understood. When it became clear to investors in MBSs that they didn't understand what they were buying and if they were being correctly compensated for their risk, they dumped their MBSs and refused to buy any more. In fact, investors lost faith in much of the credit market and just stopped buying until the dust settled. That is the liquidity crunch that the fed has been working on.
Summary: The mortgage market had serious issues at every level, and one big part of it is at the broker level and one big part of that is the Fair Housing Act. If the broker were to say, "Sorry, you don't qualify for a loan," when the buyer did in fact qualify for a loan (albeit an expensive one), that could be a costly mistake.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Look at California. All purchase money mortgages are non-recourse by statute. That means the bank's only recourse in the case of default is to foreclose on the asset. Could you please explain how this has decimated home ownership in CA?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock