Post by neubarth on Jan 7, 2012 14:33:09 GMT -5
The stage was set for the 2008 wipeout of the global economy with the mortgage refinancing craze that began towards the end of 2001. Sadly, so much of it was totally corrupt and that led to still further corruption that got out of control.
Shortly before that 2001 kick off of the massive corruption program run by the Bush administration the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates to help the economy recover from the 2001 Tech Stock Collapse on Wall Street. Home owners and home buyers jumped at the chance to get "cheap" mortgages and a feeding frenzy ensued.
As a result, mortgage refinancing hit record levels, climbing from $460 billion in 2000 -2001 to a magnificent $2.8 trillion in 2003. The Bankers were impressed and profited tremendously from the business.
This refinancing allowed people to borrow against the equity of their homes and use these borrowed funds to buy televisions, cars, appliances, computers, and whatever other large purchases they had been putting off. I know, because my wife wanted to spend more money than we had, so we took out a home equity loan so she could spend and be happy. When home interest rates fell to 4% about three years ago, I refinanced the home equity loans into the first mortgage, so I was not hurt.
According to the FCIC report, the refinancing mania resulted in home owners taking out well over $2 trillion in equity from their houses in the years between 2001 and 2007. I even remember Alan Greenspan telling the American Public that the best home loans they could get were the variable rate mortgages because the interest rates were so low. The American People were being told to refinance now at a lower interest rate and take money out of your homes for your needs. Who was president and where was the prudent leadership he should have offered when this frenzy was going on?
When house prices came back down, many of these homes were underwater because their owners were profligate spenders.
All this would have been bad enough, but around the same time Wall Street Republiscam Bankers and Controllers figured out a way they could make money—a lot of money—with all of this new debt.
The Republiscam Bankers realized that they could "bundle" debt (particularly mortgages) into fake investments. (Did they know it was illegal? Hell yes!) It was essentially a blanket license to print free money. It allowed Wall Street banks to create credit (money) out of thin air, and the fees from this artificial money-creation simply boggled the imagination. Individual bankers and refinance experts were making a million dollars a month with this scam.
Just like any Ponzi or Madoff scheme, everything worked fine as long as there was a steady stream of new investors. But eventually, the financial house of cards received a nasty blow, around 2007, when some of the underlying sub-prime mortgages and variable interest home equity loans began to default due to interest rate resets.
In addition to all of this Republiscam nonsense:
Rating agencies like Standard & Poors and Moody's participated in a global fraud on the investing public. They had the power to rate what they wanted, any way they wanted. They still do and can trash whole countries in the process. This is like the might of an army that does not have to fire one bullet to win the war.
Federal officials in the Bush administration actually stymied investigations into bank fraud by the states attorneys general. Their reasoning was that if there is no investigation no crime can be said to have been committed. This was so corrupt that it falls into the category of treason.
The Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) blocked investigations of Wachovia, Citibank and other big banks. If you are a Big Banker it helps to have corrupt friends in high places as well as politicians who help you bend the rules for personal tremendous wealth gain. Make 10 Million and retire to the south coast of France or the Spanish Riviera or Mallorca!
The rich SOB’s on the U.S. Supreme Court protected Wall Street bank hustlers from regulators. This satanic evil wave of total corruption went to the very top. That is why I say the Junior Bush administration will go down in the history books as the most corrupt in American history. Worse than Harding and worse than Grant who were both Republiscams.
Total corruption beyond human understanding or imagination. And then we wonder why the kids are protesting in the streets? They know it is all corrupt even if they do not understand how all that corruption works.
Republiscam run banks offered consumers "interest only" loans—and they grew to be 25 percent of the mortgage market in 2005. Unbelievable evil corruption! And those corrupt sons of bitches were all slapping each other on the back while they were waiting for the coming collapse. To buy my house in 1975 I had to have four times my mortgage payment in income. Back then we were required to be prudent in our investment.
That requirement was waved. All you had to do in 2005 was have supposedly documented income that was equal to the payments. There was no requirement that you had to have income sufficient to be able to also buy food, clothing and a car as well as pay taxes and utilities. Nobody really checked. Why should they, when they all knew that this new wave of banking business would eventually completely collapse?
There was a standing joke in the industry. They all knew that it was going to fall. The question was who would take the blame and who would go to prison? As long as Bush was President they figured that they would all get a pass as the Republiscams are used to telling the public that it "was just an economic cycle." Supposedly, you can not prosecute people for "normal cycles in the economy." There was nothing normal about it. It was all corrupt as hell.
Bush needs to be tried for treason. He understood banking and just smiled while his best friends were raping the whole damn country.
Republiscam banks hired "highly educated but totally out of contact with reality" geeks and nerds out of our honored colleges. They labeled their new hires as "mathematical investment geniuses" who convinced naïve investors that bundled debt was safe and secure. “Hell, I come from Yale. You can trust me. These bonds are Triple "A" Rated Folks, and we are selling them at a discount just for you!”
Once the Republiscam Bankers showed the world how it could be done and how all the bankers could get filthy stinking rich, the U.S. housing bubble quickly spread all over the world and threatened the global economy. They copied us! We showed the world how to be corrupt in lavish style and they wanted some of the action, too.
On Wall Street they had an insider code that people greeted each other with, "In a few years, I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone!" It was very prophetic. Many of the investment specialists took their corrupt money and ran to the exits in late 2007 and early 2008. If they had any investments at all, they were short the market, because they knew what their corrupt efforts had caused and would cause.
Why haven't a flood of Wall Street CEO's been charged with high crimes despite evidence of massive, systematic, and unbelievable fraud? Well, that all depends upon who was in power when all of this was going down.
The real estate catastrophic wipe-out that began in 2007 will be remembered as one of the greatest financial disasters in World History—one that continues to threaten the financial survival of millions of hard-working American families to this day.
It's estimated that since the peak of the housing market, U.S. home values have fallen by a staggering Eight Trillion Dollars! Business properties have probably lost even more value.
That loss, in total, is roughly equivalent to the US National Debt. Is there a direct correlation?
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, at least 8 million Americans are at least one month behind on their mortgage payments. How is that for home security in hard times? The banking industry raped America and so far the Fat Cats have smiled all the way to their greedy retirements.
Approximately 10 + percent of all homes in the United States are currently standing vacant, unoccupied while adult children have moved in with their parents and grandparents. I know. I have my children and grandchildren living with me. In some cities the vacant houses are being torn down because they have become vandalized and are causing neighboring home values to decline further. In that regard, the crisis is feeding upon itself.
An all-time record of 2.87 million U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in 2010. We will get the final numbers for 2011 in a few days.
New home sales in the United States are now down 80 percent from the peak in July 2005. You can't put homebuilders back to work until there is a market for more new homes. Construction industry employees make up a large percentage of the unemployed.
If you want to understand how America's banks could have been left holding trillions of dollars of bad real estate debts you need look no further than Florida's artificially overheated housing market in the 2000s. (Bankers playing games in cahoots with crooks.)
According to an investigation by the Herald-Tribune in Sarasota, Fla., in the last 10 years more than 50,000 houses and properties in Florida were "flipped" under "suspicious circumstances."
In these cases, houses, commercial properties and even vacant lots were bought and resold in less than 90 days at a new price that was at least 30 percent higher than the original price.
The crazy housing market made it easy for Republiscam crooks with good credit to buy a house, get a no-questions-asked mortgage and then immediately sell the house for more money to a co-conspirator who could default on the loan or sell at an even higher price to another co-conspirator who could then default. The corruption just goes around and around and on and on with the local banks taking the hit. Any wonder why so many banks have failed. Many of the bank presidents were making so much money off of the refinances they no longer cared about job security. When the bank collapsed they would just take their ill gotten money and run.
In the process, the crooks would use the new, fake price to get another mortgage for more than the house was really worth and split the extra proceeds as quick profit. Not one banker stood up and said, "This is wrong!" They just shook their heads and tried to get in on the action.
The results of all this fraud were toxic investments that were also marketed to investors around the globe. And since the rating agencies “with all those geniuses” working for them, who were supposed to understand what were in these investments, rated them "AAA," naïve investment groups sunk billions of dollars into them.
The consequences of this systematic real estate fraud have been catastrophic. Yet, we are not seeing these crooks put into prison for life where they belong.
As the FCIC accurately reports, "In Colorado fraudulent losses of $11 billion... could cause the Public Employees Retirement Association plan—which covers 450,000 public workers and teachers—to go bust in two decades." As a result the State had to cut retiree benefits to account for the losses. Most State Civil Service Employees do not make that much in the first place. To have their retirements cut is very painful. Many will have to work a job in retirement just to get by. (Retirement, what retirement? Screw the middle class!)
Other states were equally hurt.
Republiscam bankers and brokers got away with fraudulently borrowing millions of dollars in mortgages without investing a single dime. Those scammers used these government-backed mortgages to make millions of dollars from fake transactions., destroying the U.S. economy in the process while putting millions of people out of work. It was NOT just a business cycle.
And now the Republiscams want you to vote them back into the Presidency. We are on the edge of a potential civil war that will result in a rewriting of the constitution to put corrupt bankers and their ilk to death.
We will see if they want to try their tricks then.
Shortly before that 2001 kick off of the massive corruption program run by the Bush administration the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates to help the economy recover from the 2001 Tech Stock Collapse on Wall Street. Home owners and home buyers jumped at the chance to get "cheap" mortgages and a feeding frenzy ensued.
As a result, mortgage refinancing hit record levels, climbing from $460 billion in 2000 -2001 to a magnificent $2.8 trillion in 2003. The Bankers were impressed and profited tremendously from the business.
This refinancing allowed people to borrow against the equity of their homes and use these borrowed funds to buy televisions, cars, appliances, computers, and whatever other large purchases they had been putting off. I know, because my wife wanted to spend more money than we had, so we took out a home equity loan so she could spend and be happy. When home interest rates fell to 4% about three years ago, I refinanced the home equity loans into the first mortgage, so I was not hurt.
According to the FCIC report, the refinancing mania resulted in home owners taking out well over $2 trillion in equity from their houses in the years between 2001 and 2007. I even remember Alan Greenspan telling the American Public that the best home loans they could get were the variable rate mortgages because the interest rates were so low. The American People were being told to refinance now at a lower interest rate and take money out of your homes for your needs. Who was president and where was the prudent leadership he should have offered when this frenzy was going on?
When house prices came back down, many of these homes were underwater because their owners were profligate spenders.
All this would have been bad enough, but around the same time Wall Street Republiscam Bankers and Controllers figured out a way they could make money—a lot of money—with all of this new debt.
The Republiscam Bankers realized that they could "bundle" debt (particularly mortgages) into fake investments. (Did they know it was illegal? Hell yes!) It was essentially a blanket license to print free money. It allowed Wall Street banks to create credit (money) out of thin air, and the fees from this artificial money-creation simply boggled the imagination. Individual bankers and refinance experts were making a million dollars a month with this scam.
Just like any Ponzi or Madoff scheme, everything worked fine as long as there was a steady stream of new investors. But eventually, the financial house of cards received a nasty blow, around 2007, when some of the underlying sub-prime mortgages and variable interest home equity loans began to default due to interest rate resets.
In addition to all of this Republiscam nonsense:
Rating agencies like Standard & Poors and Moody's participated in a global fraud on the investing public. They had the power to rate what they wanted, any way they wanted. They still do and can trash whole countries in the process. This is like the might of an army that does not have to fire one bullet to win the war.
Federal officials in the Bush administration actually stymied investigations into bank fraud by the states attorneys general. Their reasoning was that if there is no investigation no crime can be said to have been committed. This was so corrupt that it falls into the category of treason.
The Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) blocked investigations of Wachovia, Citibank and other big banks. If you are a Big Banker it helps to have corrupt friends in high places as well as politicians who help you bend the rules for personal tremendous wealth gain. Make 10 Million and retire to the south coast of France or the Spanish Riviera or Mallorca!
The rich SOB’s on the U.S. Supreme Court protected Wall Street bank hustlers from regulators. This satanic evil wave of total corruption went to the very top. That is why I say the Junior Bush administration will go down in the history books as the most corrupt in American history. Worse than Harding and worse than Grant who were both Republiscams.
Total corruption beyond human understanding or imagination. And then we wonder why the kids are protesting in the streets? They know it is all corrupt even if they do not understand how all that corruption works.
Republiscam run banks offered consumers "interest only" loans—and they grew to be 25 percent of the mortgage market in 2005. Unbelievable evil corruption! And those corrupt sons of bitches were all slapping each other on the back while they were waiting for the coming collapse. To buy my house in 1975 I had to have four times my mortgage payment in income. Back then we were required to be prudent in our investment.
That requirement was waved. All you had to do in 2005 was have supposedly documented income that was equal to the payments. There was no requirement that you had to have income sufficient to be able to also buy food, clothing and a car as well as pay taxes and utilities. Nobody really checked. Why should they, when they all knew that this new wave of banking business would eventually completely collapse?
There was a standing joke in the industry. They all knew that it was going to fall. The question was who would take the blame and who would go to prison? As long as Bush was President they figured that they would all get a pass as the Republiscams are used to telling the public that it "was just an economic cycle." Supposedly, you can not prosecute people for "normal cycles in the economy." There was nothing normal about it. It was all corrupt as hell.
Bush needs to be tried for treason. He understood banking and just smiled while his best friends were raping the whole damn country.
Republiscam banks hired "highly educated but totally out of contact with reality" geeks and nerds out of our honored colleges. They labeled their new hires as "mathematical investment geniuses" who convinced naïve investors that bundled debt was safe and secure. “Hell, I come from Yale. You can trust me. These bonds are Triple "A" Rated Folks, and we are selling them at a discount just for you!”
Once the Republiscam Bankers showed the world how it could be done and how all the bankers could get filthy stinking rich, the U.S. housing bubble quickly spread all over the world and threatened the global economy. They copied us! We showed the world how to be corrupt in lavish style and they wanted some of the action, too.
On Wall Street they had an insider code that people greeted each other with, "In a few years, I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone!" It was very prophetic. Many of the investment specialists took their corrupt money and ran to the exits in late 2007 and early 2008. If they had any investments at all, they were short the market, because they knew what their corrupt efforts had caused and would cause.
Why haven't a flood of Wall Street CEO's been charged with high crimes despite evidence of massive, systematic, and unbelievable fraud? Well, that all depends upon who was in power when all of this was going down.
The real estate catastrophic wipe-out that began in 2007 will be remembered as one of the greatest financial disasters in World History—one that continues to threaten the financial survival of millions of hard-working American families to this day.
It's estimated that since the peak of the housing market, U.S. home values have fallen by a staggering Eight Trillion Dollars! Business properties have probably lost even more value.
That loss, in total, is roughly equivalent to the US National Debt. Is there a direct correlation?
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, at least 8 million Americans are at least one month behind on their mortgage payments. How is that for home security in hard times? The banking industry raped America and so far the Fat Cats have smiled all the way to their greedy retirements.
Approximately 10 + percent of all homes in the United States are currently standing vacant, unoccupied while adult children have moved in with their parents and grandparents. I know. I have my children and grandchildren living with me. In some cities the vacant houses are being torn down because they have become vandalized and are causing neighboring home values to decline further. In that regard, the crisis is feeding upon itself.
An all-time record of 2.87 million U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in 2010. We will get the final numbers for 2011 in a few days.
New home sales in the United States are now down 80 percent from the peak in July 2005. You can't put homebuilders back to work until there is a market for more new homes. Construction industry employees make up a large percentage of the unemployed.
If you want to understand how America's banks could have been left holding trillions of dollars of bad real estate debts you need look no further than Florida's artificially overheated housing market in the 2000s. (Bankers playing games in cahoots with crooks.)
According to an investigation by the Herald-Tribune in Sarasota, Fla., in the last 10 years more than 50,000 houses and properties in Florida were "flipped" under "suspicious circumstances."
In these cases, houses, commercial properties and even vacant lots were bought and resold in less than 90 days at a new price that was at least 30 percent higher than the original price.
The crazy housing market made it easy for Republiscam crooks with good credit to buy a house, get a no-questions-asked mortgage and then immediately sell the house for more money to a co-conspirator who could default on the loan or sell at an even higher price to another co-conspirator who could then default. The corruption just goes around and around and on and on with the local banks taking the hit. Any wonder why so many banks have failed. Many of the bank presidents were making so much money off of the refinances they no longer cared about job security. When the bank collapsed they would just take their ill gotten money and run.
In the process, the crooks would use the new, fake price to get another mortgage for more than the house was really worth and split the extra proceeds as quick profit. Not one banker stood up and said, "This is wrong!" They just shook their heads and tried to get in on the action.
The results of all this fraud were toxic investments that were also marketed to investors around the globe. And since the rating agencies “with all those geniuses” working for them, who were supposed to understand what were in these investments, rated them "AAA," naïve investment groups sunk billions of dollars into them.
The consequences of this systematic real estate fraud have been catastrophic. Yet, we are not seeing these crooks put into prison for life where they belong.
As the FCIC accurately reports, "In Colorado fraudulent losses of $11 billion... could cause the Public Employees Retirement Association plan—which covers 450,000 public workers and teachers—to go bust in two decades." As a result the State had to cut retiree benefits to account for the losses. Most State Civil Service Employees do not make that much in the first place. To have their retirements cut is very painful. Many will have to work a job in retirement just to get by. (Retirement, what retirement? Screw the middle class!)
Other states were equally hurt.
Republiscam bankers and brokers got away with fraudulently borrowing millions of dollars in mortgages without investing a single dime. Those scammers used these government-backed mortgages to make millions of dollars from fake transactions., destroying the U.S. economy in the process while putting millions of people out of work. It was NOT just a business cycle.
And now the Republiscams want you to vote them back into the Presidency. We are on the edge of a potential civil war that will result in a rewriting of the constitution to put corrupt bankers and their ilk to death.
We will see if they want to try their tricks then.