DISQUS

Well, all I can say is back when I was unemployed during the boom nobody could give me the time of day. Now that I'm needed again, well, I'm making up for a severe drought in income and in activity. Those individuals who are REO professionals, are not needed during boom times, but they do a service for all when everything is going bust. We convert non-paying assets to paying ones. We take the "busted" American Dream of one family and convert it to the American Dream of another. I wasn't bitter when I was unemployed, and saw loan brokers making $50,000 per month. Now that things have reversed, allow me the same courtesy.

It appears the panel expects a bottom to occur in 2009. I wasn't to clear if they expected property values to bottom, or sales activity, but in any event, some sort of bottom to occur in late 2009. The reason I have a problem believing this forecast is because of the amount of ALT-A and prime loans already in the shoot towards foreclosure. Some of that inventory will be hitting the market by mid year and growing therafter. As we know, the ALT-A universe is greater than sub-prime, which has peaked and passed. How can a recovery occur when the tsunami hits in 2009? Add to this that 58% of all the loan modifications made thus far are back in foreclosure. I recently read another analyst's report indicating job losses could peak at 1 million per month in late 2009. This may seem a little extreme, but it continues at the half million loss per month rate, how can you support a bottom to occur in 2009? The panel also omitted several other hazards faced by the lending community, namely the collapse of commercial real estate, the credit card fiasco, and repo cars coming back at an alarming rate. These additional shocks to the credit market will surely forestall any sort of bottom, much less recover in 2009. As all these threats manifest and ripple through the economy, I don't see any bottoming until 2011.

Congratulations from California. We were so happy to see you win decisively over your opponent and her rhetoric. We look forward to your successful representation of your state. It's a great day to finally have a democrat in Jesse Helms' old office!!!

We always blame Congress and Washington for perpetually being divided along party lines. Obviously, the hate or ignorance that breeds this division has roots elsewhere. It appears that some of those small towns, often referred to as the "real America," are rich ground for this type of un-American thought process. Dislike of the current Administration, for its lack of respect to the Constitution, its disregard of civil rights, supporting torture, and the rebirth of an Imperial Presidency that is closed to scrutiny or criticism amongst other things does not mean you are either a liberal nor anti-American. Quite the opposite, it is every citizen's responsibility to question their government, their actions and motives. This is what a democracy is all about. Unfortunately, this is something Ms. Bachmann fails to understand.

I recently read that in California, only 1% of loan modifications involve some sort of loan amount reduction. This caused me to call the local Housing Services non-profit to hear their take, since they complete a large number of loan modifications on behalf of homeowners. They said the 1% was true, and in those instances its where the bank has done something wrong and they're willing to forgive debt in order to avoid a lawsuit. Given that a recent paper from the Fed (Boston) stated the main driver in people leaving their homes was negative equity, you would think more banks would be forgiving debt in order to avoid yet another foreclosure. The only "silver bullet" here is debt forgiveness, any proposal that falls short of that will be to no avail.