Ontario, Canada - have a higher downpayment and a stable income source.

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With the oil and housing bubbles bursting, prices us ordinary folk pay are returning to their lower, more natural levels? ask your congress person if this is true. please tell me if it's false. the present mess is partly the fault of the bush admin because the sec hasn't been doing its job. but the "investment bank crisis" has been brewing since 1913 when congress gave up its constitutional power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof" to the bankers. in 1913 congress gave us the federal reserve (which is not government but bankers) and the income tax. it started with paper money. read your dollar bill, it says federal reserve note. a note is an instrument of debt, a promise to pay, not actual payment. so we've been using ious to do business. in 1934 america went bankrupt. so by law, people were forced to line up at the banks and trade in their gold coins (which is real money) for paper. in 1964 the government mints took silver out of the coins. ah, now inflation can really start. the bankers can print all the money they want, loan it into circulation. since then the bankers have invented all manner of "investments" like "derivatives" and "hedge funds" which has resulted in a house of cards allegedly built on real estate loans. for the last 20 years that house of cards has gotten taller and shakier. where was government oversight? where has the securities and exchange commission been? then a few years ago congress made the bankers start loaning "sub-prime" to people who they shouldn't have loaned to, but as long as the payments were being made, the bankers were happy to collect the interest. over the last few years the federal reserve (which is the bankers, not government) has kept interest rates too low. resulting in lots of people getting adjustable rate mortgages at the bottom of the interest rate cycle. bankers aka federal reserve raise the rate (to curb inflation which they created by making money out of thin air) people's payments go up, they can't afford the payments and the house of cards starts to get very shaky. meanwhile, the last 2 years the fed has been printing money and creating credit like crazy called inflation. on the world oil market, oil needs to be paid for by every country in "dollars". rampant inflation means it takes more dollars to buy the barrel of oil. lehman, which just went under, was a major "speculator" driving up oil prices. the reason oil prices have recently plunged is that their speculative bubble burst, as all bubbles will. so combine the housing bubble bursting, oil bubble bursting, we see the house of cards falling and major investment firms and insurance companies going under. can we blame bush? sure, the sec has allowed this game to continue to the breaking point. but the true culprit is congress for not at least keeping a leash on it's creation from 1913. congress is supposed to "regulate the value" of money, not the bankers. but congress persons are so busy getting reelected every 2 years they probably never had time to actually read the constitution. meanwhile, people got suckered into investing 401k and ira in the stock market, which is basically gambling with the speculative bankers. so the current mess (and it's not over yet) has been brewing for a long time and nobody in government, which is supposed to be providing oversight of their created corporations, has done their job, since forever. maybe because the government folks have somehow benefited from . . . oh, no, that's impossible, our public servants would never . . . sell us out for their own benefit . inconceivable. :-) anarchis, thanks for providing an important piece of the puzzle. actual knowledge is hard to find on y/a

Some of what you are saying is true, but they had safety in place up to 1999...... You can Blame Bill Clinton and a congress of 1999 for this resent crisis, it's not all FRB fault. This is investment Banking problems. Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was designed to prevent the kinds of speculative conflicts of interests that pervaded Wall Street in the 1920s and helped bring about the Great Depression and this resent crisis. In 1999, the law banning brokerages and banks from marrying one another — the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 — was REPEALED , and voila, the financial supermarket has grown to be the places we know as Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, et al. But now that banks seemingly have stumbled over their bad mortgages, it’s worth asking whether the fallout would be wreaking so much havoc on the rest of the financial markets had Glass-Steagall been kept in place. With the stroke of a pen, Bill Clinton ended the long saga of Republicans and Democrats, working in concert, for their puppet masters (the bankers) with his signing of the 'Financial Modernization Bill' (Nov 12, 1991). As he signed his name, William Jefferson Clinton symbolically signed the death warrant of a level playing field. Clinton & both parties knew better than FDR and our Supreme Court. Nov 12-1999, President Clinton stated, "Glass- Stegal (FDR Banking Bill) is no longer appropriate for our economy. This was good for the industrial age. The (1999) Financial Modernization Bill is the key to rising paycheck and great security for ordinary Americans" (sounds like Obama speech). Tell this to Michigan - NH - California - Georgia etc. The public was distracted from one of the most important pieces of legislation in this nation's history being signed by Bill Clinton, with round the clock coverage, of the Monica debacle. Undecided-independent

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Here are all the facts regarding who tried to and did not try to regulate the economy. in end, i say the problem was all of us, would you agree? fact 1) deregulation of banks was passed under the gramm leach bliley act (glba) in 1999 (under clinton) - althought this allowed banks to expand beyond traditional regulatory controls, the affects have been both good and bad. it has allowed many of the larger banks to cross into different financial services making them more stable (the reason why citibank, jp morgan, and bank of america haven't gone under) fact 2) regulation of accounting practices by public corporations was passed under the sarbanes oxley act (sox) in 2002 (under bush). the affectiveness of the bill is still debated. many argue the bill has put into affect many costly practices which actually disadvantge domestic corporations. still, this was an attempt at financial regulation. fact 3) greenspan warned of trouble, nobody really listened about fannie mae and freddie mac: "the strong belief of investors in the implicit government backing of the gses (government-sponsored enterprises) does not by itself create problems of safety and soundness for the gses but it does create systemic risks for the u.s. financial system as the gses become very large," he said. additional facts) the truth of the matter, the current financial problems had a number of factors, check out the factcheck.org article, it notes the causes as: -the federal reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap. -home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively. -congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses. -real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes. -the clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families. -mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates. -former federal reserve chairman alan greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages. -wall street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into mortgage backed securities (mbs), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral. -the bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market. -an obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic. -collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up. there is an old engineering saying, to have something break takes a single point of failure, and to have an entire system fall apart and become fubar takes multiple points of failure. sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/gramm- leach-bliley_act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sarban es-oxley_act http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/19/new s/economy/greenspan_fannie/ http://www.factcheck.org/elections- 2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis .html

As the factcheck.org article points out, if we want to assign blame for our current crisis, there is plenty of blame to go around. But the most important point is that, “…these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task [of resolving the crisis] more difficult.” I don’t give a damn who, or which party, created the crisis. I want to see it resolved. Let future historians write books about responsibility. But we need some fairly current historians to write, and soon, about how we resolved it and got back on track. This is a crisis that threatens the foundations of our economy and jeopardizes the financial security of our citizens. If someone sets fire to your house, you will call the Fire Department first to come put out the fire. Only then will you call the Police Department and the Arson Squad to determine who set the fire. That’s what we need to do here. We should learn a lot from this debacle. The most important thing is that Congress is not a good regulator because our elected officials do not understand many of the things they regulate. They don't know the difference between a mortgage and a mountain or between an oil well and a wishing well.

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I am 54 and lost my job 7 mos ago, my partner's company went bankrupt a month later. we have run through most of our savings except for about 50k we have invested in a business that is breaking even right now but not really making any money. i have about 130k in my 401k and my house is about 100k underwater. i have it listed for a short sale but the new houses that are being currently built in my neighborhood are selling first. i have a 7% interest rate. we have moved out of the house and are now living in my friends guest house to save money on cable and utilities, etc. my mortgage is $2100. we are now living off of unemployment and do not have any jobs in the foreseeable future although we are very actively trying to find some. i have about an 800 credit score. this is really bothering me not to pay my mortgage, but i don't know what else to do. do i risk my retirement years and business to pay this? rental prices are so low i would lose about $1200 a month.

Normally I would say suck it up and don't let it go but it appears that you have put a lot of thought into this and hearing your situation I would say that letting it go may be your best option. You've done all you can do. At 54 don't risk your retirement and empty your savings on a lost cause. Banks are typically taking about 12 months to foreclose so maybe if you and your partner can get back on your feet you maybe able to work it out with the bank and restructure your loan and save the foreclosure. If not, let it go!

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I moved with my husband to charlotte nc about 3 years ago from fl. we purchased a house from the bank (3 years ago) that we thought was a great deal, we only paid $115, 000. since there was not urgency to move we decided to refinance the house for a lower interest rate about a year ago which brought our loan to $123,500. i have since lost my job, and my hubby is able to transfer back to fl so we want to sell and move asap as we are using our savings to cover some bills. the problem is that so many houses in my neighborhood went into foreclosure and sold for an average of $80,000 as early as march 2009. we would have to sell our house for $133,000 to even break even with all the realtor fee's. as you know that seems almost impossible. we considered renting, but our mortgage with escrow is $1000 per month and we would only be able to rent for $800. that leaves us paying $200 out of pocket, and paying the property manager 10% on top of that. plus we would be responsible for maintenance and repairs. we can not afford that. what other options do we have aside from foreclosure and a short sale that will not effect our credit as bad, and will allow us to purchase another home in fl within a year? i have heard of deed in lieu of, is that a realistic option? are there any government programs that would assist since i am not working? i do not want to do a loan modification since there is also a fee for that by the bank and it will end up hurting us more then helping us.

None of the options will leave your credit untouched. None of the options will allow you to buy a home in FL within a year. The one that does the least damage to your credit, the short sale, does enough damage to prevent you from buying a house for a few years. Plus you usually have to be in default before they'll talk to you about a loan modification. A deed-in-lieu is almost as bad as a full foreclosure. This is going to be a huge problem for you. good luck!

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Before you answer consider this. their are 10 homes on your block 1/2 of them are foreclosure properties and are on sale or have sold for way less than your property is worth. your property values keep on dropping and dropping and dropping. the foreclosures are left on the market for month, empty, growing weeds, kids break in to them, hobos live in them, further bringing down the neighborhood values. know consider your job is sending you to another state, so you have to move, if you don't you lose your job. you have to sell your home, but even though you've kept up with your mortgage, you the right loan a fixed rate low interest maybe 5%, you're house is worth less than your mortgage. you can't sell it,and the neighborhood has gone down so you can't even rent it for what your mortgage is, so what do you do? so who suffers more, the homeowners who abandon their home to foreclosure, or the homeowner who has a home, doing everything right, but whose home price keeps going down. i've worked in real estate and had something similar to this happen. she did what was right, had to move, but couldn't sell her home. i can still see the for rent sign up when i drive by, until it became an reo. her job, the military? (this question is concerning obama's plan) when the homeowner moves out, they aren't just cast on the street all the time, they can just rent a property. but if you read the homeowner who stays behind, if they need to move and can't wait for the market to turn around, they get screwed because they can't sell their home

I can only speak for the neighbors. Our next door buddies moved out in the middle of the night. They trashed the inside of the house (we actually live in a very nice neighborhood). We went in to backyard and the weeds were literally as tall as the fence. From that point on, we took turns mowing and such to keep the house looking decent. Our home percent certainly went down because of that. Thanks goodness and investor came in and redid it and rented it out. Rentals are usually bad things but this family seems to be really taking care of their property. As far as the people who snuck out, I could give a damn about them. Cowards. THey spent money they did not have. I know this because their trash constantly blew into my yard, and most of it was a letter from this bank or that credit card company. The woman drove a Navigator. The man drove a Caddy.

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I had been with my girlfriend for 3.5 years and love her more than anything. we dated for around 18 months, had some amazing times, it was incredible, i had never been so in love and niether had she. we moved in together buying a house near where we work. then the problems stated to begin. she had moved 25 miles down the motorway away from her friends and family, we reluctantly decided to do this as we could not afford the cost of 2 cars commuting 50 miles round trip in traffic each day. she misses her family and feels she doesn't have enough money to see them as much as she would like. also, we work together, so may be we see too much of each other and we irritated each other at times. in addition to this we work shifts, sometimes opposite ones, so we would see each other tired and stressed. it caused us to not be as happy together as lack of money, working together, and my girlfriend not seeing her family and friends as much has put a real strain on us. 2 years have passed, there is light at the end of the tunnel as mortgage payments are 50% less due to the low interest rate, we are able to sell the house (climate not the best though), she could change jobs as we can afford for her to earn less. the job she wants to do pays 6k p.a. less. 2 weeks ago we had a couple of petty arguments. the main one was for 10 days we worked opposite shifts and had different days off, then the day before we both had a day off together she said she was going to see her mom for the day so i would not see her. i was annoyed as i missed her etc. however it wasn't a major fallout/argument. then when she was with her mom we had a little row about something. when she got home she said we needed to talk, however she said she wasn't happy in the relationship and was going to move back to her mom and dad's to think about things, she said she still loves me but her feelings have changed, she doesn't feel like she is in love with me like that. we were texting and speaking to each other regular, i met up with her after a few days to talk. i told her how much i loved her and that i want to change things between us, move house, she can change jobs, i will try anything. i said lets try going on a few dates and see how we go, start having fun again. she said she would think about it. 3 days after that she called around our house to say she had thought about things, she's still not happy so wanted to break up. i was gutted, cried a lot, she packed all her clothes and day to day bit and pieces together and left. i was distraught, we have spoke a couple of times since and have text each other several times a day. it has been a week since we broke up now, i have told her how i feel, she said she needs time to think about 'what she wants in life'. i told her i would give her complete space and that i hope she finds out what she wants. i told her i will be here if she wants to come back to me. she thanked me for understanding her. we have 4 days before we see each other at work. i'm worried that i have lost her. will she come back to me? will she miss me? i'm feel so low about it all! i'm 26 and she's 25. i'm looking for advice on how to win her back. i know she still loves me.... she has the 3 year itch.

What i see is that the moving in together affected the relationship. Why? Because she was a little far from her loved ones (Friends, Family). If y'all would of moved in together a little bit close to her friends and family i don't think you would be in this situation you are right now. Give her the space that she needs, you already told her you would be there for her if she wanted to come back to you. I'm sure she just needs time to sort her head out and figure out what is it that she wants to do regarding the problem that y'all are having. There could be a 50/50 possibility of getting back together but you won't know until she decides what she wants to do. Be patient i'm sure she wouldn't want to waste those 3.5 years for nothing!

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The banks are one of the main reasons why we entered this recession. when they called wolf, the government stepped in to save them by buying their toxic assesments. why do they get away with this? when you are facing foreclosure and can't make enough money to pay off the mortgage do the banks ever step in and say " you deserve a lower interest rate " no, they are only interested in looking out for themselves so naturally why do we the american taxpayer have to rescue banks ? the banks don't care about you, they stand to gain more from selling your house and you going broke living off the streets

No we should not have bailed out the banks, or the automakers and we should not have had a stimulus bill nor should we have universal health care. All these things cost the American tax payer trillions of dollars that we don't have. We have borrowed so much money from China of all places that they won't loan us any more money. So what are they doing printing more money and while they do that they are lowering the value of a dollar. They have done that enough that the powers that be might change to a different currency for world wide use. Watch out because higher taxes are coming and not just on those making more than $250,000 per year.

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Economists please chime in. review and provide comments. 1. we refinance all the mortgage loans -especially delinquent loans -perhaps leaving out 30 year loans or just including adjustable/5 year or 7 year loans-at today's house values. and fix the interest rate at lowest possible rate for 10 years. this will give people confidence, decrease or fix their mortgage commitment and decrease the foreclosure. all lender is doing is taking property back and selling to mostly an investor or opportunist buyer. lender is taking a loss anyway. why not give consumer a break and increase his or her confidence. nobody wants to lose a house or have bad credit. 2. take the credit card amount for a consumer, calculate the original borrowing and then adding a low interest rate-let us say- 8-10% and then fixing a monthly amount for 5 year. so, let us i borrow $10,000 and later borrow another $5000. original amount would be $1,5000. add 10% interest (as opposed to 12-18%) and let us for 2 years it comes out to $3,000. total amount would be $18,000. this will be opposed to current situation where there is revolving recurring charges of interest rate and payment keeps fluctuating. again, this will give consumer confidence and fix their liability. this will put responsibility back to where it belongs- to opportunist lenders/banks as well as consumers-both meeting their responsibility but banker and lender writing off some of the debt to move things forward. i am not an economist and i have not done the math but somehow feel this should solve some of the problems. what do you think? math wizards/economists please chime in. most importantly write to your senator. we need everyone to be heard. i do agree with stopping other expenses such as on war etc. did not know about ron paul though...thanks for sharing.

I prefer this plan - PAY YOUR BILLS AND DON'T BUY WHAT YOU CAN'T AFFORD!! Why should bankers and other lenders reduce the amount owed to them? Consumers should have read the contracts before they signed on the line. If they suddenly can't afford the debt because of an interest increase that was allowed by contract, tough! Find the money by cutting back on something else. I have written to my senators (for all the good it won't do) and my alleged representative telling them I disapprove of the bailout.

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Plugging holes central banks' latest moves to increase liquidity will ease but not solve the credit crunch you might call it the sandbag approach to central banking. as the turmoil in credit markets deepens and broadens, central banks, particularly america's fed, have devised ever more ways to bolster the markets against collapse by providing more funds to more actors, for longer periods and against broader ranges of collateral. this week brought the latest round of sandbagging. in two announcements, on march 7th and 11th, the fed promised a series of new measures. it expanded the facility through which banks can bid for liquidity and introduced a new scheme under which the central bank would provide up to $200 billion of treasury bonds to market-makers in return for dodgier assets, such as mortgage-backed securities. on march 11th, other central banks joined in too. financial markets were delighted. wall street's main share indices enjoyed the biggest one-day rise in over five years. but the optimism did not last. within days dollar selling drove gold above $1,000 an ounce and the dollar below ¥100. though the fed's tools are useful, the bad news is not over. the logic behind broader liquidity provision is simple: to break a vicious circle of fear and forced selling. in recent days, many corners of the credit markets were becoming dysfunctional, with investors refusing to hold all but the safest government bonds. spreads in normally safe and liquid markets, such as bonds issued by the quasi-official mortgage giants, fannie mae and freddie mac, widened alarmingly and prices wobbled. higher volatility and wider spreads prompt banks to demand more collateral from borrowers, which in turn exacerbates the mess. by offering the safe treasury bonds that investors crave, and holding unwanted securities in return, the fed intends to block this spiral. a modest risk that makes a lot of sense. by reducing the panic-induced part of widening credit-spreads, the new liquidity tools mitigate the damage that dysfunctional credit markets would otherwise wreak on the economy. they also take the pressure off the central bank's other, rather blunter, policy tool—lower interest rates. the fed has already slashed short-term interest rates by 1.25 percentage points in the past two months, in part to counter the credit turmoil. before this week's liquidity actions, financial markets expected another three-quarter-point cut at the fed's next rate-setting meeting on march 18th. with commodity prices soaring, the dollar plumbing new depths and expectations of future inflation on the rise, such a large rate-cut would be risky. the new liquidity tools reduce the odds that the fed is spooked into recklessness. equally important, these gains come at only modest risk. the fed will hold dodgier securities. but by taking them as collateral for temporary loans and at a discount, it would lose money only if there is a bankruptcy among the market-makers borrowing treasury bonds. the ecb has long taken such securities as collateral. in the long term, central banks' willingness to broaden liquidity support during crises may induce banks to behave more riskily (a temptation that will need to be countered with more effective rules on banks' own liquidity). but that hardly seems a problem today. the biggest danger is excessive expectations. liquidity provision, however artful, is not a magic bullet for the credit crunch. it alleviates panic and buys time, but does not eliminate the underlying losses, get rid of the uncertainty about who holds them, or prevent the inevitable credit tightening that will follow. and the bad news is far from finished. as foreclosures and falls in house prices accelerate, estimates of likely losses on mortgage-backed securities, now around $400 billion, are still rising. the credit contraction these losses will spawn has hardly started. yet the economy is already in recession. that is not official, but the latest jobs figures, which showed private-sector employment falling in each of the past three months, leave little doubt that the economy is contracting. more mortgage losses will result as joblessness spawns foreclosures, along with higher defaults on everything from credit cards to corporate loans. there are some bright spots. banks are limiting the scale of the squeeze by raising new capital, over $100 billion so far—though they could raise more. the downturn is being cushioned by still-strong global growth. george bush's fiscal stimulus package will soon add a short boost. but, all told, recession suggests the credit problems will get worse before they get better. the fed's sandbag strategy will help ward off disaster, but it won't shore up a sagging economy.

we will find out next quarter if a recession in in effect the fed is throwing sticks into a inferno trying to smother it to a managible flame but the world is being affected and that will infulence bidders to reorganize there stockpiles in some ways this can be taken advantage of you just need to know where to look if the forshadowing jobloss, rising living cost, and foreign infulence hasnt knocked some sence into people the upcoming tax hike towards the wealthy will goodluck