Posted on 02/19/2009 6:07:46 PM PST by Publius
You’re right, he IS the anti-Reagan—unlike RWR, he thinks “I’m from the government, I’m here to help” is a sacred prayer.
This is a great thread, lots of information I didn’t know about. Thanks to all who’ve posted and to Publius who started it; I love learning and I’ve been really absorbed with all of these informative posts like yours, Kennard.
30-year mortgages drive prices up. Shorter-term mortgages would be nice. Definitely don’t want 150-year Japanese mortgages.
If you want to get a loan on a farm in the US, you have to put down 35%, and you have to provide years (plural) of tax returns, etc.
In the future, no mortgage should require any less than 20% down.
What’s your opinion of Stephen Harper? How involved is he with financial issues?
In case everyone is still asleep from an overdoze of moralizing, the whole point is the private mortgage insurers *blew out* when everybody defaulted at once. They did not have the capital to take a 25% hit for a tenth of the entire real estate market, never have, never could have.
For our banks to get stuck with losses on foreclosed property, all of the following had to default, and did -
The original homeowners
The loan originators
The loan servicing companies
The mortgage insurers
The mortgage backed security funds and hedge funds
Other, less sound banks and investment houses
Fannie and Freddie
Bond reinsurance CDS's, aka AIG
That, and not reckless anything, is how the banks got stuck with losses from the present epidemic of deadbeats and failure. Why everyone pretends if Lady Hamilton's virtue had been locked up a little tighter, everything would be sound, is a mystery of populist navel gazing.
It was a $10-20 trillion bubble. *Nobody* has that kind of money to just lose. Ergo, *everybody* gets hosed, and nothing anyone could have done about it. Tiny $30,000 mistakes you can fix by requiring insurance. $15 trillion mistakes you can't fix, full stop.
25 or 30 year amortization, 5-year term is typical
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This means rates get re-negotiated every five years on a 25 year contract?
The Dems in Congress were right on that but Bill Clinton pushed repeal of Glass Steagle and Bob Rubin (head of Treasury) and Lawrence Summers pushed it real hard
Bob Rubin is hard wired into Wall St and did their bidding
I remember it was all about modernizing and keeping competitive with the rest of the world. Even Ron Paul failed to vote against it.
Stephen Harper, like Phil Gram, is an economist by training. If I had to generalize, I would say that ge is a follower of the Austrian school. Some of his earlier writings have driven the Canadian left to distraction. Now he keeps his views under his hat, but we know that he is one of us. His mini-Porkulus was, IMO, brilliant. It touched all the socialist bases, but was one-quarter the size. Plus, Harper will be in charge of the spending. We are in good hands, as long as he can keep the opposition leader, Ignatieff, under his wing in this quasi-coalition. Igantieff is telling private fundraisers that he will bring down the government in September when unemployment is highest. A Liberal friend who attended was dissapointed in Iggy for this. “I thought they were supposed to work together.” Exactly. Iggy is coming across as a jerk. I repeat this story at every opportunity, trying to do my bit.
That feels like a hearing a wolf say the world needs more sheep.
Soo... insurance pays now?
PMI???
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