Bush, House jockey over foreclosure fix

by Moe Bedard · 0 comments

in Home Loan News

Discussion of both plans, at a House Financial Services Committee hearing, highlighted the complex fault lines in the debate over how far the government should go to ease the mortgage crisis. It’s a tough question since there’s plenty of blame to go around: Lenders, brokers, investors, ratings agencies, federal regulators and some homeowners all played a part.

Under the Bush plan, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) would, for the first time, let some borrowers who are behind in their mortgage payments refinance into FHA-insured loans.

Such loans protect lenders in the event the borrower defaults. Borrowers would have to pay a risk-based premium for the insurance.

Currently, the FHA will only insure loans for borrowers who have a history of on-time payments for at least six months before their loans reset to higher rates.

MoneyCNN

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Deanglea Toney April 10, 2008 at 2:57 pm

My name is Deanglea and i recieved my loan from WaMu and i loss one of my jobs we talk and they said that they would help.They ask me to fax a applca. back after waiting to hear back when i did here i saw told that they did’nt recieve it so i fax another one after that i did’nt here anything else until i recieved the foreclosure letter and did’nt know what to do did’t know how to handle it. I was very ashamud and have not told my childrens that we have to move and we don’t even have a place to go.

2 Kevin Lamson April 18, 2008 at 3:58 pm

The blame for this entire “Mortgage Meltdown” can be laid upon the shoulders of all the greedy mortgage loan industry executives and the investment bankers who designed a scheme calculated to make themselves rich. Under the guise of “helping people” to realize the American dream of owning a home, these white collar fraudsters were really only concerned with creating feigned profits by quickly churning mortgage loans into securitized investments which they in turn sold to investors.

Based upon these feigned profits these executives and their cronies were able to extract large bonuses and convert stock options into personal profts. While the investors got stuck holding the proverbial empty bag. Many investors were large national banks. Ironically these same banks would have never loan money to the borrowers who’s notes they were now holding indirectly through their investments in these “mortgage backed securities”. It is now estimated that the losses incurred by these banks may well surpass three hundred billion dollars.

There can be no argument these losses were the result of fraud from top to bottom of the mortgage industry. From mortgage lenders suchs as Countrywide, Washington Mutual, Fieldstone and Option One to secondary mortgage market makers, such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Citicorp, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers etc.

This mortgage fraud created a false demand for housing in the U.S. This false demand caused an increase in home building. Now with the Mortgage Meltdown the U.S. has an over supply of new and existing homes. This over supply of homes has caused serious economic effects through every facet of the U.S. economy. Recovery will take years. The U.S. dollar has also suffered against other currencies. In April of 2003 a Euro could be purchased for $.85. Five years later in April of 2008 it takes $1.60 to purchase a Euro.

Rather than throwing themselves out of their executive office windows when their financial scandal was discovered and the billions in losses started to mount, these white collar crooks simply took early retirmenet or quietly resigned, taking with them the hundreds of millions they had EARNED for their part in the Largest financial scandal in U.S. history.

Americans should be outraged at how this went on unchecked by state or federal authorities.

3 Gary April 20, 2008 at 5:07 pm

this whiffs of socialism.

4 Tom April 20, 2008 at 11:44 pm

When Capitalism goes bust . . .

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