Friday, February 6, 2015

Ditching Detroit

Sorry to cop out on you today.

"Last-ditch foreclosure hearings draw many Detroit homeowners" Associated Press  January 30, 2015

DETROIT — Hundreds of Detroit homeowners in danger of losing their properties flocked Thursday to hearings that offered a last-ditch chance to avoid foreclosure and to keep the houses from adding to the city’s already huge glut of vacant dwellings.

The homeowners nearly filled a long conference room in Detroit’s Cobo Center while waiting for their cases to be heard. Many hoped to work out payment plans to ease their tax debts under new laws signed this month by Governor Rick Snyder.

‘‘Everybody does have a story. Most of them are probably true, because you couldn’t make them up if you try,’’ said Eric Sabree, Wayne County’s deputy treasurer of land management. 

I resent the implication by the vampiric government puke that average citizens are somehow shifty liars, not the banking scum and corporate swill that stole their homes and destroyed lives.

Officials expect more than 14,000 property owners to seek help during seven days of hearings that run through Feb. 6.

‘‘We have to collect taxes by law . . . but we definitely do not want to take the property,’’ Sabree said. ‘‘We want to show options that people have to save their properties.’’ 

I once believed that.

More than 60,000 of the county’s 76,000 foreclosed properties are in Detroit, threatening neighborhoods that have yet to recover from the national mortgage crisis.

What? First I've seen of such a thing in my Globe. It's been housing good, economy good for the most part.

Some laws signed this month allow homeowners facing financial hardship to seek a payment plan.

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Just pretend you don't see the tents. 

Better "bundle up" because it's cold out there.

"Subprime bonds are back, with a new name" Bloomberg News  January 29, 2015

NEW YORK — The business of bundling riskier mortgages into bonds without government backing is gearing up for a comeback. Just don’t call them subprime.

What more is there to say, readers? they are back to the same looting schemes that enriched themselves and destroyed the world economy. Dodd-Frank has done nothing.

Seer Capital Management, Angel Oak Capital, and Macquarie Group are among those buying up loans to borrowers who can’t qualify for conventional mortgages because of low credit scores, foreclosures, or hard-to-document income. They plan to pool the mortgages into securities of varying risk and sell some to investors. JPMorgan Chase & Co. predicts as much as $5 billion worth of such deals this year.

Investment firms are looking to revive the market without repeating mistakes that fueled the US housing collapse and global economic crisis last decade. They’ll retain the riskiest stakes in the deals. Before the crisis, Wall Street banks shifted most of the dangers to others. Now, Seer Capital and Angel Oak use the term ‘‘nonprime’’ for lending that used to be known as subprime. While ‘‘subprime is a dirty word’’ these days, ‘‘what everyone is seeing is the credit box has shrunk so much that there’s a lot of good potential borrowers out there not being served,’’ said John Hsu, at Angel Oak.

Reopening this corner of the bond market may lower consumer costs and expand lending, aiding the housing recovery. The most dangerous slices created from the securitization of loans are also the highest-yielding, offering private-equity firms, real estate investment trusts, and others a way to increase returns while interest rates are low....

Looks like the same old $hit to me.

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What's next, rent-bundled securities?

"Standard & Poor’s is paying about $1.38 billion to settle government allegations that it knowingly inflated its ratings of risky mortgage investments, which helped trigger the financial crisis of 2008. The McGraw Hill Financial subsidiary reached a settlement with the Justice Department over ratings issued from 2004 through 2007. The settlement also resolves lawsuits filed by the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and 19 states, but not including Massachusetts. The Justice Department filed civil fraud charges against S&P two years ago this week. It accused the company of failing to warn investors that the housing market was collapsing in 2006 because doing so would hurt its ratings business." 

Is anybody taking their "opinions" seriously anymore?