Government announces new program to help ‘underwater’ homeowners
Posted by admin in Housing Market on October 24th, 2011
By Zachary A. Goldfarb, WashingtonPost.com Updated: Monday, October 24, 8:32 AM
The federal government on Monday announced new rules that would allow many more struggling borrowers to refinance their mortgages at today’s ultra-low rates, reducing monthly payments for some homeowners and potentially providing a modest boost to the economy.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency, working with the Obama administration, said that up to 1 million “underwater” borrowers might benefit from an expanded program that targets homeowners who owe more than their properties are worth.
But the program might not have a major impact on the economy. There are about 11 million underwater borrowers in the country. And under an illustrative example provided by FHFA, borrowers might reduce their payments by just $26 per month; the Obama administration is touting savings of up to $200 per month. It will depend on the fees charged to borrowers for taking part in the program.
President Obama is planning to tout the expanded program during a visit with homeowners in hard-hit Nevada, as part of a new “We Can’t Wait” campaign. The president called for additional help in underwater borrowers in his speech to a joint session of Congress in September. The president is planning to cite the effort as an example of something being done to boost the economy while Congress refuses to take more dramatic action to reduce unemployment.
“We’re doing everything we can do to get the economy moving while we continue to pressure Congress and congressional Republicans in particular to step up and pass the American Jobs Act,” the president’s $447 billion proposal, said Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director. Obama will propose executive actions to reduce student loan costs on Wednesday in Denver.
Mortgage rates are at a near rock bottom of 4.11 percent. But most underwater borrowers, who have not been permitted to refinance or face significant barriers in refinancing, pay rates far above that. According to research firm CoreLogic, more than 40 percent of borrowers who owe more than 125 percent than their properties are worth pay rates above 6 percent.
The regulators are revising an existing program, the Home Affordable Refinance Program, which has fallen far short of expectations since being rolled out in early 2009. At the time, officials said it might reach 5 million borrowers. To date, it’s reached 822,000, less than a tenth of whom have been significantly underwater borrowers.
“We know that there are many homeowners who are eligible to refinance under HARP, and those are the borrowers we want to reach,” FHFA Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco said.
The FHFA’s new rules slash fees for borrowers looking to refinance. And while in the past only borrowers who owed up to 25 percent more than their properties were worth could take part in the program, now there will be no cap on how much a borrower can owe.
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Five years after peak, still no bottom seen in housing market
Posted by admin in Housing Market on September 21st, 2011
By: Roland JonesSept. 21, 2011
MSNBC.COM
Five years after U.S. home prices peaked, overall expectations for the nation’s housing market are still dim, according to a survey of economists, real estate experts and investment strategists.
Although some local real estate markets are stable or strong, more broadly, fundamentals in the U.S. housing market remain very weak, despite record-low interest rates, according to the results of the September 2011 home price expectations survey, issued by financial technology company MacroMarkets LLC.
The report, compiled from 111 responses of a diverse group of economists and other experts, found that home prices are expected to grow at a mere 1.1 percent nominal average annual rate through 2015. The findings are based upon the projected path of the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index over the coming five years.
The gloomy outlook for national home prices has also been impacted by other factors that are shaking economic confidence globally.
“Markets and government institutions are visibly struggling to respond consistently to an unprecedented rash of crises and conflicts,” Robert Shiller, MacroMarkets cofounder and Yale University professor of economics explained. “These struggles diminish confidence, which compounds the underlying economic stresses and lowers expectations.”
Companies where employees are losing hope
By: Douglas A. Mcintyre Sept. 21, 2011 8:00 AM
24/7wallst.com
Some companies become so badly damaged because of changes in the competitive markets or due to poor management decisions that their employees lose hope. This may be due to the fact that they believe the corporations that they work for have little future, or that they will be laid off as their employers try to save these corporations.
This loss of hope is exacerbated by the state of the economy. A person who is fired now likely will find it extremely hard to find new work. Nearly 6 million Americans have been out of a job for more than half a year, which means that work is scarce either because companies have never recovered from the recession or because firms are concerned that a new recession has started to choke the economy.
It is impossible to know whether the employees at a very badly run company have completely hope in their situations. However, this is highly likely certain corporations. Layoffs have already started at many of these companies, sales have fallen, or Wall St. has passed a verdict they have faltered badly or failed.
24/7 Wall St. has compiled a list of companies that are in deep trouble. This is based on share prices, layoffs, analysts’ reports about the futures of these firms and the extent to which they have missed Wall St. predictions about earnings-per-share or are likely to in future.
1. Best Buy recently released earnings and they were much worse than Wall St. expected. Net income fell to $177 million, or EPS of $0.47, for the quarter ended Aug. 27, down from $254 million, or EPS of $0.60, last year. Analysts expected EPS of $0.52, according to a survey by FactSet. Best Buy dropped its forecast for the balance of the year. It took the action because of concerns about TV and phone sales, along with worry about the economy. Best Buy has had a string of earnings failures, due primarily to its failure to do well online. Best Buy recently said its website would carry items from third-party stores to expand its attraction to shoppers. This did nothing to improve the perception that investors have of the company. Fitch downgraded Best Buy in June. The company’s shares are off 30% in the last year. Shares of rival Amazon are higher by 60% for the same period.
2. Research In Motion posted earnings recently that show its sharp decline has accelerated. Several analysts now believe the RIM BlackBerry smartphone will be no more than a “niche” product in a market it controlled almost completely four years ago. The bad earnings news took shares down from $29.54 to $23.93 in one day. RIM’s stock is off almost 50% in the past year, while shares in rival Apple are higher by more than 40%. RIM shipped only 200,000 units of its PlayBook tablet PC last quarter. Expectations had been for a number more than three times that. RIM revenue fell by 10% in the most recent period to $4.2 billion — a horrible situation for a company that was one of the most well-known growth stories for five years. EPS fell to $0.63 from $1.46. The consensus among the media and Wall St. is that RIM has almost no chance to recover. The company has already started to cut costs. It said in July it would lay off 10.5% of its workforce.
3. Talbots shares traded above $17 in May a year ago. They now trade at $3 after dipping to $2.25 recently. After the company released earnings two weeks ago, research firm Sterne Agee downgraded the stock to “neutral” from “buy.” And the retailer posted results that were worse than expected. The corporation’s quarterly loss from continuing operations was $37.4 million, or $0.54 per share, compared to last year’s income from continuing operations of half a million, or $0.01 per share. The failing retailer said it expects to close about 110 stores in total, including 15 to 20 consolidations, through fiscal 2013. The corporation’s chief creative officer, Michael Smaldone, was fired as earnings were announced. Oddly, Talbots did not have a replacement when it took this action.
4. Hewlett-Packard announced earnings on August 18 and its shares promptly dropped to a 5-year low. HP also revised earnings forecasts down. Management said it may spin off the firm’s PC division, the largest in the world. So far, there are no takers. HP also discontinued it Palm operating system, which it bought only a year ago, and its tablet PC product. Investors believe, almost universally, that CEO Léo Apotheker does not have the strengths of his predecessor Mark V. Hurd, who was pushed out for ethical lapses. Wall St. seems certain that HP will lay off more people in addition to the sharp cuts it made in 2009 and 2010. It is generally accepted by analysts who cover the company that it has begun to lose the battles against Dell, Oracle, and SAP.
5. The U.S. Postal Service may be more troubled than any large public company in America. The organization said it may lose as much as $10 billion this year. It teeters on the brink of insolvency. Its workers’ compensation liability is more than $12 billion. The USPS management has suggested it shutter thousands of individual post offices, layoff as many as 200,000 workers, and close over 250 service centers. Another suggestion by management is that delivery be cut to five days a week. The rise of the use of e-mail and private air freight companies Fedex and UPS has doomed the old post office model. No one should expect that the suggestions of executives at USPS will go unchallenged. The American Postal Workers Union most likely will strike to fight the job cuts. Individual Congresspersons will press to keep offices open in their districts.
Floyd Mayweather Goes Nuclear on Sportscaster After Fight
MasterCard Gives Sneak Peek Into Mobile Payments Future
by Marc Ferranti, IDG NEWS – Sept. 15, 2011
PCWorld.com
MasterCard on Thursday gave a sneak peek into the near future of mobile payment systems and said that the Google Wallet application is within weeks of being rolled out commercially.
Google Wallet, announced in May, lets mobile phone users pay for purchases in stores by tapping their phones against point-of-sale terminals. At the tail end of a media and analyst day in New York, MasterCard demonstrated the application as well as other, future mobile payments systems.
Initially, Google Wallet will work only on Nexus S phones, made by Samsung, on the Sprint network. Nexus S phones now on the market incorporate Near Field Communication (NFC) technology on an embedded chip, which allows for payment information to be transmitted via the tapping technique.
Google Wallet will work on PayPass terminals already deployed in stores, though some of the terminals will need an upgrade to work with the applications, according to officials at the demonstration. In the U.S., there are about 150,000 retail locations equipped with PayPass terminals, according to Kathleen Reilly, vice president and senior business leader at MasterCard, who said the Google Wallet application will be rolled out “within weeks.”
How It Works
Up to now, the PayPass terminals have worked with NFC chips embedded in cards or special stickers placed on the outside of mobile devices. However, chips embedded in mobile phones offer big advantages, according to Mario Shiliaski, senior vice president of Innovative Platforms.
“A big advantage is that the chips are embedded in secure elements in the hardware, and if they are compromised they are designed to self-destruct,” Shiliaski said.
In addition, there will be a range of complementary applications for the technology that users will be able to download, Shiliaski noted. Google Wallets will initially offer the ability to store electronic coupons that can be redeemed at retail outlets, he said. Later this year, MasterCard’s inControl will be available for download, he added. InControl is designed to let parents or employers establish parameters for when, where and how their cards are used. Users will get text messages, for example, when certain limits are met.
Major retailers including Macy’s, Walgreens, Subway, Noah’s Bagels, American Eagle, Bloomingdale’s, Peet’s Coffee and Toys ‘R’ Us have signed up to work with Google Wallet.
MasterCard also opened the kimono on a number of projects cooked up by the MasterCard Labs, established after the financial services giant acquired Dublin-based OrbisComm in 2009.
The projects demonstrated Thursday focused on the company’s QkR platform, technology that embraces motion and audio signals as well as touch to allow for a range of applications. One application demonstrated Thursday allowed a phone user to scan a rebate coupon and share it via Facebook or Twitter.
“This allows for a different type of viral marketing, where people using this technology and sharing information with friends can get additional rebates,” said Garry Lyons, chief innovation officer at MasterCard.
The social-network sharing technology is working now in a pilot with more than a hundred users, Lyons said. A more futuristic application involves audio signal technology. In one demonstration, audio signals embedded in a TV commercial were detected by a mobile phone application that a person could then use to download coupons related to the advertisement.
QkR technology goes beyond mobile phones, however. Lyons showed off one application where users could input payment information via the Xbox Kinect, using gesture recognition to select items and go through a checkout process.
Joe Arpaio Birther Posse Probes President Obama’s Birth Certificate
Posted by admin in Political Mix on September 19th, 2011
by SteLemons – Sept. 19, 2011 9:12 AM
New Times – Phoenix
In a bizarre new stab at courting conspiracy nuts who believe President Barack Obama is a Kenyan, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has empowered a “birther posse” to look into claims by wackadoodles such as World Net Daily’s Jerome Corsi that Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii is a forgery.
Yes, I know, it’s hard to believe, but even after the president made the unprecedented move earlier this year of having his original, long form birth certificate from Hawaii released to the public, there is still a stubborn passel of flat-Earther lunatics who refuse to accept that Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, and thus qualified to hold the highest office in the land.
Ironically, as CNN has reported at length, it’s actually the computer-generated short form certification of live birth which is a legal document, and Obama’s people made that document public during the 2008 campaign, in hopes of quashing the kookery.
But, of course, that wasn’t enough for the crazies. Neither were public statements made by Republican Chiyome Fukino, the now-former Director of the Hawaii Department of Health, that Obama’s original, long form birth certificate was in the state’s possession, that she had examined it, and that, yes indeed, Obama was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.
So earlier this year, Obama petitioned to have his long form certificate of live birth released, thus shutting up pseudo-birthers such as Donald Trump who’d been using the issue as political fodder to cast doubt on Obama’s legitimacy.
But as with the 9/11 “truth” movement, which believed that the 9/11 terror attacks were an “inside job” by the George W. Bush White House, there’s no amount of evidence that can convince a devoted conspiracy nut. So now the birthers claim that the long form is a fake, a claim that is thoroughly dealt with by the birther-debunking Web site the Fogbow.
Ever attuned to new ways of garnering media, even if it makes his office and by extension all of Arizona a laughingstock, Sheriff Joe played host last month to birther king Corsi and members of the Surprise Tea Party. That meeting has now borne fruit, as Arpaio has promised that his until-recently-defunct Cold Case Posse will take on the birther cause and do its own investigation.
The online wingnut rag World Net Daily recently reported that “five elite” investigators had been assigned this snark hunt, would report back to Arpaio their findings.
This from WND:
“The Cold Case Posse is a good place to put this investigation,” Arpaio said. “The individuals on this posse have been sworn in by me and I have granted them the authority required to conduct this investigation.”
Arpaio explained to WND that in the final analysis, all decisions stop with him.
