Hey, we all get our mortgages reduced to 4%????!!! And the banks are still borrowing from the government at 0.000000001%? And homeowners will have billions to spend to help get us out of the recession?

What is wrong with this picture? Banks will have to write off tons of future revenues because 4% loans give them less money than 7%, 12% or 15% mortgages. So banks will become insolvent again. They will need billions to offset those losses, which will just happen to be somewhat more than what the homeowners are ‘saving’ by having a 4% mortgage rate. How will the government pay for this new bailout? Maybe Obama can eliminate the home-interest tax deduction. I mean liberals have been calling for cutting subsidies….

….and if that money is given to a red-white-and-blue bank, it is a rescue not a subsidy.

OT: MERS foreclosure process DEAD in NY state

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/kaboom-ny-appellate-division-bank-ny-v-silverberg-mers-does-not-have-right-foreclose-mortgag

In case you missed it, BofA/Countrywide is already dead. MERS mortgages in New York are not valid for purposes of foreclosure.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/kaboom-ny-appellate-division-bank-ny-v-silverberg-mers-does-not-have-right-foreclose-mortgag

I recently lost my job when my private-equity owned employer decided not to pay back the pension fund money it had borrowed to buy the company at an inflated price. I am currently trying to find new health insurance.

If I buy a policy as a small business through Costco/Aetna ($35/$2,500,70%), the cost of that policy for a family of four is around $1,291 per month. Given there are about 20.5 work days per month, at 8 hours per day, that means $7.87 per hour of every paid hour is going for healthcare (and that does not include any doctor visits or prescriptions). Minimum wage in California is $8.00/hour.

I know that no one is going to give a __________ about my situation in terms of paying for healthcare, but we should at least tie the minimum wage to the price of health care, say at 110% of this policy so the poor can pay for insurance and at least pay for FICA — even if they can’t afford food or shelter?

Someone should have the guts to say that we already exceeded the debt limit last week…

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/total-us-debt-now-officially-above-ceiling

When are we going to wake up and realize that these Governors are effectively on a political suicide mission for their masters? They throw a 4 year monkey wrench into the political machinery we call democracy, and we will have to spend 10 years undoing. In the meantime, they will all migrate to fat ‘industry’ jobs that will emphasize the retirement arts of golf and portfolio gazing. The only effective response is recall or government shut down a la Jasmine Revolution.

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,752272,00.html

It is ironic that the U.S. soldiers all have cameras attached to their helmets, and then the commanders are shocked when there are photographs of atrocities and war crimes.

Fuk U American Nuclear Society!

Iceland has figured out how to make the banks nervous and responsive. Iceland was one of the first countries hit by the financial crisis. The government has decided to allow the population vote on whether, as a nation, they are going to agree to bailout the European investors in their banking system. I guess Iceland has not learned the benefits of unlimited campaign spending in choosing their government leaders. Could you imagine what would happen if such a vote occurred here?

Thigpen’s primary concern relates to recent court rulings in Arkansas, Kansas, Maine and Missouri questioning MERS legal standing in home foreclosures and suits challenging that MERS filings may be fraudulent. “If MERS filings are false statements, there are laws that say if you decrease the money that you pay for a service through using those false statements then you can get damages. The legal term is “unjust enrichment”. Thigpen wants to explore unjust enrichment and other options related to recovery of lost revenue.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/nc-register-deeds-jeff-thigpen-takes-mers-questions-if-county-owed-millions-titles-compromis

In the meantime, Fannie Mae’s attorneys just had a Florida foreclosure case dismissed with prejudice due to FRAUD (judge’s words, not mine).

http://hbgary.com/

As if the momentum against Mubarak Bank of America and the others could be stopped. Every open minded commentator, website and consumer has more than enough frustration to keep the reputations of the banks from being restored. The only reason they are in business today is because the biggest banks form an oligopoly and there is little other choice.

Banks should be just as worried about videos like this as Glenn Greenwald’s support for free flow of information. So, even if they were to stop Glenn, the revolution will continue.

I wonder if he is tying future aid to Mubarak promising not to loot all of the gold in Egypt’s strategic reserves?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/egypt-proactively-preparing-tunisian-style-rioting-airport-intercepts-59-outbound-gold-shipm

I wonder if Clinton is worried that the Mubaraks have been smuggling gold out of the country?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/egypt-proactively-preparing-tunisian-style-rioting-airport-intercepts-59-outbound-gold-shipm

Mrs. Mubarak arrived in London last night.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/104960/20110125/suzanne-mubarak-of-egypt-has-fled-to-heathrow-airport-in-london-unconfirmed-reports.htm

We don’t have time for this! We Americans are still trying to figure out how the CIA, military, and others were unable to predict the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989!

great cartoon.

David,

You missed the juiciest part: BearSterns (now JPM) then began to short the stocks of banks that purchased the Ambac-insured loans — with the full expectation that the bad mortgage pools would sink the insurer and therefore the banks would also lose significant market value. This is the mega-fraud case of the financial crisis!

And just think, JPM is one of the principal bank owners of the Federal Reserve. They were betting against the financial solvency of the banking system. In some lands, this would be called treason. Here it is called smart business.

Here is the most creative solution they have come up with wrt the mortgage document mess:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/mortgage-lenders-seeking-court-permission-destroy-22100-boxes-original-loan-documents

Back in college during the early 1980s, after having lived in Europe, I was surprised that the United States was relatively a safe place, with no reported incidents of terrorism. That was, I was surprised until I learned that domestic terrorism was not a category that was tracked because there was few if any classifications of “terrorism”.