Blown Mortgage » Why I Hate My Industry

AIG wants donations back to pay bonuses

Morgan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:02:12 +0000

The sickening feeling in my stomach continues to worsen. AIG is looking to clawback a $490 million endowment and the $27 million in donations already made to charities to pay employee bonuses instead. The New York Post has the details on this underhanded, disgusting move by a company and board that has long been disgraced.

From the NY Post:

Insurance giant AIG is trying to seize a $490 million charitable endowment — and claw back $27 million it already awarded to New York charities — to pay executive bonuses, The Post has learned.

The endowment, called Starr International Foundation, is run by former AIG chairman Hank Greenberg, and has given millions to the Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, Citymeals and other local groups.

My favorite part about this all? AIG is in court to get the money back of course – spending taxpayer dollars to take money out of the needy’s hands and put in to lining pockets of mostly overpaid hacks who can’t run a hot dog stand, let alone an insurance conglomerate.

When will the depravity end?

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Jon Stewart Skewers Santelli and CNBC

Morgan — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:50:26 +0000

As much as I enjoyed Rick Santelli’s rant about the Obama administration’s homeowner bailout; Jon Stewart takes the cake with this pointed (and hilarious) retort which basically ruins the network for its well-known perma-bull bull#$%@.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM – Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

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“Wall Street Fighter”: Economic Crisis as video game

Constantine von Hoffman — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:30:56 +0000

See The Fed vs. ROI!

Dow Jones vs. Goldman!

Watch as Fannie Mae gives Merrill Lynch the dreaded No Bailout Bird!

!!!!ALL THIS and MORE in the ULTIMATE MELTDOWN SMACKDOWN!!!!

Watch it on YouTube. NOW!

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TARP Funds Not Just Hoarded But Used AGAINST You

Morgan — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:28:34 +0000

If you found the idea of billions of dollars being funneled out of your paychecks and in to banks with little accountability or oversight (see: TARP) was bad, wait till you see what they’ve been used for. Since receiving billions of dollars from taxpayers the largest banks in the country (see: TARP recipients) have spent significant amounts of money lobbying against consumer and employer protection bills that have been killed in the Senate. Nice to know that not only was the money given to the banks given to them without input and at the financial detriment of the public, but just to make sure we’re sufficiently crushed the money is being used to keep from enacting more consumer and employee protection laws.

It just goes to show that the TARP fund, the Fed and Treasury are the main events at work here. The stimulus package is just a side show to keep our eyes off what’s happening behind the curtain. Instead of arguing about the $787 billion stimulus, let’s talk about the $4.6 trillion doled out in one form or another by those entities. And let’s talk about how that money is being taken from us and used against us.

The litany of consumer-friendly legislation that these banks have dumped cash in to opposing is staggering.

From the Overruled blog:

Among the bills which the banking industry lobbied on after it began receiving TARP funds are bills to prohibit abusive arbitration practices, such as the Arbitration Fairness Act, the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act and the Fair Contracts for Growers Act; bills to help foreclosure victims and prevent irresponsible mortgage lending, such as the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act and the Helping Families Save Their Homes in Bankruptcy Act; bills to prevent the exploitation of credit card holders, such as the Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights and the Stop Unfair Practices in Credit Cards Act, and even bills to hold TARP recipients accountable for how they spend taxpayer funds, such as the TARP Reform and Accountability Act.

You can read a description of each over there.

This is crazy. Take our money and then use it to negatively impact our rights and our ability to get good jobs at the very institutions that we’re saving. Am I on crazy pills here?

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Using TARP to pay for hookers

Morgan — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:21:47 +0000

HuffPo has an interesting piece that quotes a famous New York madam as accepting corporate credit cards to pay for the proclivities of johns from the banking industry. No doubt some of these are our nation’s finest from Bear Stearns, JP Morgan, Citi, Lehman, and the other Wall Street banks currently holding billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Hey, on the upside, at least we’re not the only ones they were f’ing. (Maybe we should charge for the pleasure as well?)

From HuffPo:

“Some of these guys, I was invoicing on corporate credit cards,” she said. “I was writing up monthly bills for computer consulting, construction expenses, all of these things, I was invoicing them monthly so they could get it by their accountants,” Davis said.

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Home Values Lost $1.4 Trillion during 4Q 2008

Jay Hammond — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:02:17 +0000

Americans lost more, in terms of home values, during the final quarter of 2008 than in all of 2007. According to Zillow Real Estate Markets Report, home values fell 11.6 percent or $1.4 trillion during the eighth consecutive quarter of declines.

The declines mean that U.S. homeowners lost a cumulative $3.3 trillion in home values during 2008. During all of 2007, home values lost only $1.7 trillion. Since the peak of the housing market in 2006, home values have declined by $6.1 trillion.

As home values have declined, more American homeowners have found themselves underwater on their mortgages. One out of every six homeowners had negative equity by the end of 2008, up from the one in seven in the third quarter. Further, foreclosures made up nearly one in five or 19.9 percent of all transactions in 2008.

A witch’s brew of economic insecurity, foreclosure and tightened lending standards are helping to keep hard-hit markets down and to widen the scope of markets showing declines in home values,” said Dr. Stan Humphries, Zillow vice president of data and analytics. “As more markets turn down and markets that were already down go deeper, the pace at which value is being erased from the U.S. housing stock is rapidly increasing, with more value wiped out in the fourth quarter of 2008 than was eliminated in all of 2007. The fourth quarter is the first in which we were able to see the effects of the mounting economic insecurity that picked up steam in the fall of last year. People without jobs, of fearing jobs loss, typically don’t buy homes, no matter how low prices or mortgage rates might be. Public policy, in terms of both job creation and efforts to stem the tide of foreclosures, will have a large influence on when some of these markets find bottom.”

Of the 161 metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) surveyed as part of the Zillow Real Estate Market Reports, 21 are not feeling the pinch of declining home values. Home values in the Pittsburgh MSA were flat (-0.1 percent) in 2008. Home values in the Fayetteville, NC MSA actually increased by 6.9 percent, followed closely by the 6.2 percent increase in Yakima, WA MSA. Other areas in New York State, the Midwest and the South also experienced steady or increasing home values.

Unfortunately, 10.9 percent of all real estate transactions across the country in 2008 were short sales. The Lincoln, NE MSA led the country in the rate of short sales, with 14.1 percent of all transactions. Short sales also accounted for more than 11 percent of all transactions in California’s San Jose, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz MSAs. The Central Valley in California continued to lead the nation in foreclosures, as well. More than half of all sales in the Madera, Merced and Stockton MSAs were foreclosures compared to the 3.9 percent recorded in the New York City MSA and Grand Junction, CO MSA, which were the nation’s lowest.

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?Housing Markets Will Roar Back in 2009?

Constantine von Hoffman — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:07:52 +0000

At dire times like these, we can all use a laugh or two. So our thanks to the author of the report, ?Housing Markets Will Roar Back in 2009.? At least I?m supposing that it?s brilliant satire because the only other explanation is out and out lunacy. Always hard to tell because as Spinal Tap?s David St. Hubbins said, ?It’s such a fine line between stupid, and clever.?

The nation?s foreclosure hemorrhage has finally slowed and 2009 should see a significant decline in foreclosures as buyers return, pushing home prices up and fueling a real estate recovery, according to the 2009 Outlook from ForeclosureS.com.

?Recovery is underway. Affordable is back in the housing market,? says Alexis McGee, real estate expert, educator, and president of ForeclosureS.com. ?In 2009, housing will not only recover, but we?ll see buyers leap into this market in droves, depleting our housing oversupply, and actually put higher price pressures on the market.?

?With 4.5% fixed mortgage rates, housing prices lower than they were ‘pre-housing bubble’, commodity prices lower, tax credits available for homebuyers, and the government eager to stimulate our economy, for the first time in years I can see prices rising again in 2009? adds McGee. ?This is a great time to buy properties for investors — to buy properties at wholesale prices below today?s already low prices — rent them out for positive cash flow and then sell them for big profits in late 2009 once price appreciation kicks in.?

Let us then ignore two stories in the news: Mortgage applications dip despite low rates and Pending home sales sink to 7-year low

As the song goes, who are you going to believe ? me or your lying eyes?

Given that 77% of Americans blame the media for over-hyping the current economic mess a lot of people do seem to doubt their own eyes.

Post by Constantine von Hoffman, veteran business journalist and author of the blog CollateralDamage.biz, a satirical look at marketing and business.

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Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work

Morgan — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:54:54 +0000

I love this stuff. Hat tip to Jeff, who runs the awesome NADA Guides blog (for you gearheads), for sending this in.

Where are your TARP funds going? And they are yours, you know. Those $700 billion will be financed on your behalf for stuff like this, instead of the school, hospital, roads and lower taxes you were probably hoping for.

From Gawker:

Where is the government’s bank-bailout money going? In part to pay for Wall Street banker Peter Kraus’s $37 million Park Avenue spread.

Kraus had excellent timing. He signed on as a top executive at Merrill Lynch in May, negotiating a $50 million pay package, with much of that guaranteed if the company was sold. He didn’t officially start until September. A couple of days later, Merrill CEO John Thain sold the company to Bank of America for $50 billion, triggering a $25 million payout under Kraus’s contract.

Bank of America got a $25 billion capital injection from the government. Kraus resigned and collected his cash, taking a job as CEO of AllianceBernstein, a money-management firm. And then he bought, for an estimated $37 million, an apartment at 720 Park Avenue from Democratic fundraisers Carl Spielvogel and Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel.

If you haven’t thrown up yet, you can read the rest of it here. Or better check out some of the atrocious interior decorating choices made by the Kraus’s (one below, more in the Gawker article).

Courtesy of Gawker

Now, bankers need bonuses. We need smart people to be incented to work hard to figure this out. However, the people that got us in to this mess should be foregoing any bonuses and rewriting their contracts to take a much more humble salary than what they were used to when they were fleecing investors around the world.

It just amazes me that we can have a bailout package with very little oversight, remember this gem?,

?Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.? ? the Treasury Department?s proposed Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, September 2008.

just doling out billions of dollars to the buddies of Hank Paulson and whomever else is a squeeky-enough wheel. A perfect “Why I hate My Industry”.

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Wondering how much of your money will go towards “fixing” the problem?

Morgan — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:04:18 +0000

A great graph by EconomPicData shows just how much of the cash dolled out by Hank Paulson will actually remain in the system. The bottom line? From the $125 billion handed out to-date to the largest 9 banking institutions a mere $17 billion will go towards recapitalizing the system. The rest? Yup – bonuses and compensation.

My head just exploded.

From EconomPicData via Alternet:

It turns out that the nine banks about to be getting a total equity capital injection of $125 billion, courtesy of Phase I of The Bailout Plan, had reserved $108 billion during the first nine months of 2008 in order to pay for compensation and bonuses.

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They Are Still Selling This Stuff?

Jay Hammond — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:17:51 +0000

Which is more unbelievable: that “How to Get Rich Quick in Real Estate” courses are still actively being marketed or that people might still be buying them?

LEARN FROM THE AUTHORITY IN REAL ESTATE INVESTING

Looking to jump into the realestate market? Don’t know where to turn for help?

Now you can learn from the world’s most TRUSTED NAME in REAL ESTATE EDUCATION…for FREE!

Carleton Sheets, nationally known Real Estate educator, is offering his new online course Real Profit$ in Real Estate – a $250 Value – for FREE!

Since 1983, nearly 3 million people got their start in Real Estate investing thanks to Carleton Sheets. Now he is going to help YOU do the same!

Who are they kidding? And who is falling for it?

Sure, money can be made in down markets, whether it’s real estate or the stock market. BUT not quickly. The individuals and organizations who will ultimately make money in depressed markets are those who can buy and hold properties or securities which will increase in value as the markets recover. Chances are, those individuals already have a solid understanding of the markets, know what properties are undervalued and therefore a good buy/investment and have the financial security to park money in long term investments. That is NOT the description of anyone responding to such SPAM, direct mail, telemarketing calls or other attempts to sell these types of courses.

Even more frightening, is that there are still people out there who have fallen for these pitches. Back in December 2007, Carleton Sheets was the 10th most popular term entered into online search engines, according to Transactional Marketing Partners (TMP). The last complaint about the program of the 146 listed on infomercialscams.com was posted N

Normally, unsolicted messages

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