September 2nd, 2010
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This blog is for people out there who cannot pay their credit card bills. If you have lost your job or possibly have suffered from an illness, whatever the reason and you cannot pay your credit card bills…well this hub is for you.
I’m sure you have already had many a sleepless night wondering what you are going to do, maybe you’ve had good credit your whole life, maybe you’ve already tried credit cardconsolidation and now that you missed a payment or two your interest rate has sky-rocketed, your FICA score has plummeted and you don’t know how you are going to pay your next bill. Well, what I am going to tell you may go against the grain of many but here is my advice…are you ready, hmmm?
If you aren’t working, if you are renting your home or apartment or sleeping on your brother-in-laws couch, if you are barely able to buy food for your kids, DON’T PAY YOUR CREDIT CARD BILLS.
Read more at: HubPages
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{Photography by L.E. MacDonald}
September 2nd, 2010
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Bea Garwood has been bracing for foreclosure since May, but she says she’s been told three times to expect a sheriff’s sale in the next month and it still hasn’t happened.
“We really at this point do not know where we are in the process,” said Garwood, who lives in Pinckney, Mich. with her husband. “We have no clue. We haven’t even heard from Chase bank in three weeks.”
The Garwoods may have had a lucky spin in the game that industry analyst Sean O’Toole calls “Foreclosure Roulette.”
Banks don’t want to recognize losses by having to put homes on the market at foreclosure-sale prices, but they don’t want to encourage borrowers to quit making payments either, so, O’Toole believes, they randomly foreclose on some people to prevent widespread “moral hazard.” The rest are left hanging with the help of the government’s “extend and pretend” approach to the collapse of the housing bubble.
“We just don’t have the political appetite to bail homeowners out,” said O’Toole, CEO of ForeclosureRadar.com. “On the other hand, we don’t have the political appetite to kick them out.”
Read more at: The Huffington Post
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{Photography by Nigel Wilson}
August 29th, 2010
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Amid all the junk mail pouring into your house in recent months, you might have noticed a solicitation or two for a “professional card,” otherwise known as a small-business or corporate credit card.
If so, watch out. While Capital One Financial Corp.’s World MasterCard, Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank CitiBusiness/AAdvantage Mastercard and the others might look like typical plastic, they are anything but.
Professional cards aren’t covered under the Credit Card Accountability and Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, or Card Act for short. Among other things, the law prohibits issuers from controversial billing practices such as hair-trigger interest rate increases, shortened payment cycles and inactivity fees—but it doesn’t apply to professional cards …
Read more at: The Wall Street Journal
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{Photography by Mike Baird}
August 24th, 2010
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Sales of previously occupied homes plunged last month to the lowest level in 15 years, despite the lowest mortgage rates in decades and bargain prices in many areas.
July’s sales fell by more than 27 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. It was the largest monthly drop on records dating back to 1968, and sharp declines were recorded in all regions of the country.
Read more at: Huffington Post
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{Photography by Feathered Tar}
August 24th, 2010
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Adapting to Tighter Rules After Collapse, Scammers Turn to More Complex Plots
New data suggests that mortgage fraud—which got tougher to pull off after the collapse of the U.S. real estate market—is returning in a big way.
Data prepared for The Wall Street Journal by research firm CoreLogic, examining about seven million home loans made by hundreds of lenders, show that losses from mortgage fraud—ranging from falsified credit reports to identity theft—rose 17% last year after declining 57% in the two years after its 2006 peak.
In 2009, $14 billion in loans, or about 0.7% of all mortgage loans made in the U.S., were originated with fraudulent application data.
Read more at: Wall Street Journal
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{Photography by Micky}
August 24th, 2010
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Housing will eventually recover from its great swoon. But many real estate experts now believe that home ownership will never again yield rewards like those enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century, when houses not only provided shelter but also a plump nest egg.
The wealth generated by housing in those decades, particularly on the coasts, did more than assure the owners a comfortable retirement. It powered the economy, paying for the education of children and grandchildren, keeping the cruise ships and golf courses full and the restaurants humming.
More than likely, that era is gone for good.
“There is no iron law that real estate must appreciate,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist for the real estate site Zillow. “All those theories advanced during the boom about why housing is special — that more people are choosing to spend more on housing, that more people are moving to the coasts, that we were running out of usable land — didn’t hold up.”
Read more at: The New York Times
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{Photography by Symo0}
August 15th, 2010
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Could Wall Street be about to crash again?
This week’s bone-rattlers may be making you wonder.
I don’t make predictions. That’s a sucker’s game. And I’m certainly not doing so now.
But way too many people are way too complacent this summer. Here are 10 reasons to watch out.
1. The market is already expensive. Stocks are about 20 times cyclically-adjusted earnings, according to data compiled by Yale University economics professor Robert Shiller. That’s well above average, which, historically, has been about 16. This ratio has been a powerful predictor of long-term returns. Valuation is by far the most important issue for investors. If you’re getting paid well to take risks, they may make sense. But what if you’re not?
2. The Fed is getting nervous. This week it warned that the economy had weakened, and it unveiled its latest weapon in the war against deflation: using the proceeds from the sale of mortgages to buy Treasury bonds. That should drive down long-term interest rates. Great news for mortgage borrowers. But hardly something one wants to hear when the Dow Jones Industrial Average is already north of 10000.
Read more at: The Wall Street Journal
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{Photography by Davide Galli}
July 31st, 2010
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The New Credit-Card Tricks
Just months after historic legislation banned certain billing practices, card issuers have dreamed up new ones designed to trip up consumers.
Whomever President Barack Obama taps to head the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection could find it difficult to keep ahead of the credit-card industry.
The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, known as the Card Act, was intended to reshape the contours of consumer finance. Among other things, it forces card issuers to give customers more notice about interest-rate increases and restricts certain controversial billing practices such as inactivity fees.
Yet some of the biggest card issuers in the U.S., including Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Discover Financial Services, are already rolling out a slew of fees designed to recapture some of their lost income, in part by skirting the new rules. Some banks may even be violating the law outright, say consumer advocates.
“Card companies are figuring out how to replace old fees with new ones,” says Victor Stango, an associate economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and a professor at the University of California, Davis, who has been analyzing how the Card Act will affect consumer banking. “It’s a race between regulators writing ever-more-complex laws and credit-card companies setting up ever-more-complex fees.”
Read more at: Wall Street Journal
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{Photography by Hunter-Desportes}
July 17th, 2010
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Sometime next week, President Obama will finally sign a financial reform bill. Plenty of banks will have to deal with messy new rules, but one big winner in the “spare me from further regulation” sweepstakes was auto dealers.
Mr. Obama wanted the new consumer financial protection agency to oversee dealers and the loans they arrange for consumers. So did many consumer groups and military organizations, because crooked dealers have taken advantage of many young soldiers.
But the dealers prevailed, winning exemption from oversight by the new agency, in part through the efforts of Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas. Mr. Brownback said in a May statement on his Web site that “auto dealers are a part of Main Street, not Wall Street.” That makes sense as long as you ignore that Wall Street firms bundle into bonds many of the loans that dealers help originate and conveniently forget that lots of dealers are actually owned by publicly traded companies.
Mr. Brownback also noted that “more than 90 percent of auto loans are financed not through the dealer, but through an outside financial institution.” In fact, people apply for their car loans at an auto dealer about 80 percent of the time, according to J. D. Power & Associates.
Read more at: New York Times
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{Photography by Alden Jewell}
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