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Housing Crisis

Professor Bill Black tells it like it is ... was

Submitted by Roanman on Fri, 03/23/2012 - 17:27

 

The following is Professor William Black's testimony to the House Financial Services Committee's hearing on the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Professor Black's qualifications which are about as long as your right arm, can be found here.

 

 

The following is an interview with Professor Black on the street in New York City during the Occupy Wall Street happening this past fall wherein he discusses having put over 1000 banksters in jail during the 1980's Savings and Loan meltdown, and the cause (not causes) of our present issues .....

FRAUD.

Very good stuff, you should watch it.

 

 

If you like Professor Black, here's his interview with Bill Moyers who is one of the only mainstream journalist paying any attention to the pervasive corruption that is Wall Street and Washington DC.

 

Your government at work for the banks ... part 2

Submitted by Roanman on Sat, 01/21/2012 - 16:44

 

This from Reuters who unlike most of the rest of our national media, has recently awakened to the smell of coffee and is now rolling.

Ah well, better late than never.

Not a week goes by that somewhere in my reading somebody doesn't marvel that more than 3 years into this mess nobody is in jail or even under indictment for all of the fraud and basic malfeasance that has taken place at the banks.

Here's your likely answer.

As always click anywhere below for the entire story.

Highly educational.

 

Insight: Top Justice officials connected to mortgage banks

 

 

(Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.

Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn't brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.

The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks' offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.

 

Change you can believe in.

 

The Man Who Busted the Banksters

Submitted by Roanman on Sat, 01/21/2012 - 06:41

 

I had never heard of Ferdinand Pecora.

The fact that his name is never mentioned in anybody's high school government class is a damnable shame.

He should have a day all his own in every government class at every school in every state of this union.

As an aside, his book is presently going for $550.00 at Amazon.

The following excerpt is taken from a short story at Smithsonian.com titled "The Man Who Busted The Banksters.

Click anywhere below for the entire piece.

Way super double highly recommended ..... plus ... and then some.

 

 

Just months before Hoover left office, Pecora was appointed chief counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Banking and Currency.  Assigned to probe the causes of the 1929 crash, he led what became known as the “Pecora commission,” making front-page news when he called Charles Mitchell, the head of the largest bank in America, National City Bank (now Citibank), as his first witness.

“Sunshine Charley” strode into the hearings with a good deal of contempt for both Pecora and his commission.  Though shareholders had taken staggering losses on bank stocks, Mitchell admitted that he and his top officers had set aside millions of dollars from the bank in interest-free loans to themselves.  Mitchell also revealed that despite making more than $1 million in bonuses in 1929, he had paid no taxes due to losses incurred from the sale of diminished National City stock ..... to his wife.  

Pecora revealed that National City had hidden bad loans by packaging them into securities and pawning them off to unwitting investors.  (Ever heard that one before?)  By the time Mitchell’s testimony made the newspapers, he had been disgraced, his career had been ruined, and he would soon be forced into a million-dollar settlement of civil charges of tax evasion.  “Mitchell,” said Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, “more than any 50 men is responsible for this stock crash.”

 

Whoa, a regulator actually doing his job.

As opposed to a regulator spending his time working on his next job.

 

The Median Single Family House Price Revisited

Submitted by Roanman on Fri, 04/22/2011 - 07:57

 

You've seen this one before.

From Chart of the Day, as stated at the top of the chart, this is the chart for the Median single Family Home price (Inflation-Adjusted) from 1970 to the present.

Notice the consolidation going on now at just under $160,000.

Consider the argument that people don't really buy the house that they like as much as they buy the monthly payment on a house that they can afford.

Then consider that interest rates sit at historic lows due to unprecedented efforts by the Treasury Department and the FED to hold the cost of servicing the federal deficit to as low a monthly/yearly number as is possible.

Then consider that when interest rates go up, the monthly interest payment on a new home purchase will also increase, making the monthly payment on the Median Single Family Home more expensive.

Now you now know why I'm calling this a "consolidation of losses" rather than a bottom.

Although, it would please me to no end to be wrong on this one.

As always, click the chart for the entire piece.

 

 

Now remember that good for nothing, smiling, shill Larry Kudlow yammering on and on about "The Wealth Effect" and how you needn't worry about anything and certainly not the economy because housing prices were so strong?

Now you know why, when the revolution comes, and if they're not out there looking for me, I'm goin' looking for him.

Among others.

 

Housing over Gold

Submitted by Roanman on Sat, 03/12/2011 - 14:18

 

We've posted this chart two or three times over the past couple of years.

It's getting no better unless you're invested in Gold rather or in addition to a house.

Click on the chart to go to Chart of the Day's page.

They're going to tell you that it presently takes 120oz of gold to buy the median single family house, in 2001 in took 600oz.

We think we're going to get the double bottom ..... or top, depending on your point of view, and are invested that way. 

 

 

Housing Double Dip

Submitted by Roanman on Wed, 12/01/2010 - 06:11

 

From S&P/Case-Shiller via Clusterstock, the following bad news.

Click on the chart for the 15 softest housing markets.

You're likely to be suprised.

 

The chart (below) depicts the annual returns of the U.S. National, the 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite Home Price Indices. The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which covers all nine U.S. census divisions, recorded a 1.5% decline in the third quarter of 2010 over the third quarter of 2009. In September, the 10-City and 20-City Composites recorded annual returns of +1.6% and +0.6%, respectively.

 


 

Housing/Gold

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 04/25/2010 - 15:55

 

Chart of the Day strikes again.

The following chart presents the median single-family home price divided by the price of one ounce of gold.

This results in the home/gold ratio or the cost of the median single-family home in ounces of gold.

For example, it currently takes 153 ounces of gold to buy the median single-family home.

Considerably less that the 601 ounces it took back in 2001.

When priced in gold, the median single-family home is down 75% from its 2001 peak.

Click on the chart to go to Chart of the Day site.

Recommended.

 

To quote Representative Barney Frank, Fannie Mae hearings September 25, 2003

Submitted by Roanman on Thu, 11/12/2009 - 07:00

 

                                                                                            

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