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2010-10-15 Economy

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Posted by Fred 2010-10-15 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11129 views ] Top

#1 RT (Russian Propaganda TV in the US ) was claiming today that Homeless in percentage and absolute terms are now greater in NYNY than during any time in the Great Depression.

Posted by Water Modem 2010-10-15 00:25|| 2010-10-15 00:25|| Front Page Top

#2 They told me that if I voted for McCain (albeit holding my nose), the number of homeless would surge...

Posted by Pappy 2010-10-15 00:56|| 2010-10-15 00:56|| Front Page Top

#3 That's Glen Reynolds line, Pappy!

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2010-10-15 04:38|| 2010-10-15 04:38|| Front Page Top

#4 The Iran Press loves to report these stories.

Posted by JohnQC 2010-10-15 09:51|| 2010-10-15 09:51|| Front Page Top

#5 That does raise a very interesting point, however. With as many as 1 in 5 adult Americans now unemployed, or not looking for work, where the heck are they?

That is, if some food bank gets in a huge shipment, it is flooded with people. But then they go *somewhere*, but where? This suggests that housing in America is so vastly overbuilt, that we can absorb an effective 20% unemployment just by increasing occupancy in our existing homes.

Posted by Anonymoose 2010-10-15 10:18|| 2010-10-15 10:18|| Front Page Top

#6 tw, the figure appears to be correct. Here's an article from 2008. Things are much worse now. Perhaps half of the subprime loans are not performing.

A million foreclosures in one year against 50 million mortgages. That's two percent added to those already in foreclosure but not evicted!

And Obama throws more sand into the gears with his pocket veto. The markets can't clear.

You heard about the family that broke into the house they were evicted from and changed the locks while the police watched? Where the new owner had already renovated the place and was ready to move in? Utter chaos.

Posted by KBK 2010-10-15 10:21|| 2010-10-15 10:21|| Front Page Top

#7 Karl, wasn't the TARP supposed to take care of this?

We're they supposed to be paying down the bad mortgages with the "bail out"?

So we gave a bizzillion dollars to the banks who killed real estate in the US for the next 15 years and now they want to own the rest?

James, apparently Barney and Bernanke didn't factor greed into their equations.

Posted by James Carville/Karl Rove 2010-10-15 10:27|| 2010-10-15 10:27|| Front Page Top

#8 Every house foreclosed allows someone ELSE to live in it cheaper.

Bailing out people who over-pay for assets is crazy.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2010-10-15 10:48|| 2010-10-15 10:48|| Front Page Top

#9 They're camping, Anonymoose.

"Living in well-worn campers and tent compounds overstretched with 20-foot-long tarps, 85 percent of residents here are permanent, a good chunk of them economic refugees. Its an increasingly familiar scene across the country as campgrounds, RV parks, national parks, and city-owned pockets become inundated with permanent campers, and as entire tent cities spring up and expand, with some hinting at permanence by voting on village bylaws.

Its not quite Hoovervilles, but its getting there, says Leonard Heumann, a housing policy professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, referencing the massive tent cities and shantytowns erected during the Great Depression."

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2009/0831/for-more-hard-pressed-americans-a-campsite-is-home

Posted by Black Charlie Chinemble5313 2010-10-15 12:06|| 2010-10-15 12:06|| Front Page Top

#10 Obamavilles? Hum... to middle American. How about "Barry Boroughs?"

Posted by Secret Master 2010-10-15 12:51|| 2010-10-15 12:51|| Front Page Top

#11 And Obama throws more sand into the gears with his pocket veto. The markets can't clear.
Obama either vetoed or pocket-vetoed the "Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010" last week. I can't identify the process by which he rejected that from reading the media, I just know the bill was not enacted. Were you referring to this? IRONA2010 was a piece of garbage designed to interfere with property rights, traditionally a key justification for the existence of government itself. It was designed to force all state courts to accept the lowest possible standard of legal documentation in their courts, using the infamous and currently-acceptable distortion of the Commerce Clause. NO ONE forced the banks and mortgage financiers to utterly screw up the documentation of ownership the way they did. Not the Dems, not the GOP, not the government regulators, not the liberals or the socialists. The banksters brought it all on themselves, by their own selves. They were fully capable of handling these papers in a much better way than they did. Perhaps the mortgage industry could have (oh, the horror) either trained or hired a sufficient number of competent people to process the documents in a proper manner, but the expense would have been unbearable, and would have eaten into the bank's profits and diminished the bonuses paid to corporate insiders. The worst thing you can say about the government's role in this is that they didn't crack down on the utterly inadequate documentation of mortgages far sooner than they did. A least one Florida judge called such documentation 'a fraud upon this court.' Obama's veto was a good thing.
As far as 'clearing the market', just slash the prices of the houses in question until the market 'snaps them up'. That is all it would take. Housing is still far too expensive. Foreclosure is one way of doing clearing the market, and renegotiating mortgages (by slashing the principal due) is another. Of course, slashing housing prices would show the largest banks as being insolvent, which they have been since 2008. That is something the government has been trying to paper over since 2008 with ever decreasing success. Keeping zombie corporations and banks alive is what counts above all.
And no, I am not in favor of free houses for deadbeats. I am in favor of property rights for those of us who like to think we own our houses.
This point in the crisis was predicted by the usual cast of Cassandra bloggers and renegade financial columnists back in 2007 if not earlier. Of course, they are not the best and the brightest, and their opinions and predictions don't matter.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-10-15 13:32|| 2010-10-15 13:32|| Front Page Top

#12 If foreclosures are stalled through faulty documentation or the ability to claim invalidity of of out-of-state notarizations, the market for those particular houses can't clear. No one knows who owns them.

You may be right about the slipshod legislation, but what's going to replace it, and when? Sand in the gears, I say, and to Obama's benefit: more chaos.

Posted by KBK 2010-10-15 13:43|| 2010-10-15 13:43|| Front Page Top

#13 No one knows who owns them. Ever since the documents were first made out, years ago, then compounded. State laws about real estate ownership have been hammered out over the centuries, then in the last 20 years ignored by the banksters for their own profit and perhaps for their ultimate doom.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-10-15 13:52|| 2010-10-15 13:52|| Front Page Top

#14 That's Glen Reynolds line, Pappy!

Interesting, considering that I don't read Glen Reynolds.

Posted by Pappy 2010-10-15 14:47|| 2010-10-15 14:47|| Front Page Top

#15 You should.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2010-10-15 16:57|| 2010-10-15 16:57|| Front Page Top

#16 No one knows who owns them.

Which is why Title insurance companies are now refusing to deal with titles from some of the major banks. That makes the titles unsaleable except to gamblers. The deal in a gamble is to dangle a big pay off for a small investment. To get people to buy tainted paper, the price has to be reduced to induce. In effect, it'll do the reduction in value the banks are desperate to keep artificially high. Instead the banks are suspending foreclosure proceedings at the point of execution to liquidate and are going to hold the paper. It keeps the books cooked and the bonuses for the management flowing.

The best tool to end this situation is the local county treasurer who can identify property in arrears in taxes for sheriff sales and new papers. If the banks can't competently keep track of the existing papers and titles, they certainly are not necessarily keeping up with the taxes either.

Posted by Procopius2k 2010-10-15 17:56|| 2010-10-15 17:56|| Front Page Top

#17 Since I'm a Georgist it seems entirely fair to me that as the State creates property rights and the banks are not paying the state for them then the banks should lose their right to the property.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2010-10-15 19:01|| 2010-10-15 19:01|| Front Page Top

#18 So this month they stopped all foreclosures. Next month Bawney, Zero and his cast of morons will be standing up touting the market has turned and all is well because there will be records set for lack of foreclosures!!!!

Posted by 49 Pan 2010-10-15 19:40|| 2010-10-15 19:40|| Front Page Top

#19 "Perhaps half of the subprime loans are not performing."

Geez, who could have seen that coming?

That also means half are performing, KBK - I'm surprised that many are.

Posted by Barbara Skolaut 2010-10-15 19:43|| 2010-10-15 19:43|| Front Page Top

#20 If the banks can't competently keep track of the existing papers, they should be euthanized.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-10-15 22:10|| 2010-10-15 22:10|| Front Page Top

#21 tw, the figure appears to be correct. Here's an article from 2008.

Thank you, KBK. My education proceeds apace. :-)

Posted by trailing wife 2010-10-15 23:52|| 2010-10-15 23:52|| Front Page Top

23:52 trailing wife
23:47 Redneck Jim
23:38 trailing wife
23:33 JosephMendiola
23:32 trailing wife
23:12 lotp
23:11 lotp
22:47 Mullah Richard
22:27 JosephMendiola
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22:10 Anguper Hupomosing9418
22:07 JosephMendiola
22:07 Private Eye
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21:45 Punky Thavish9434
21:40 JosephMendiola
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20:55 Water Modem
20:33 Water Modem
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20:05 Frank G