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Top 10 tax sweeteners in the bailout bill
The following are some of the top tax sweeteners in the Senate passed Bailout Bill. Not all the provisions are per se outrageous, but collectively are intended to help Congressional leadership get final passage of the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.
1. Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children
2. Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility
3. Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
4. Sec. 301. Extension and modification of research credit
5. Sec. 504. Income averaging for amounts received in connection with the Exxon Valdez litigation
6. Sec. 601. Secure rural schools and community self-determination program.
7. Sec. 201. Deduction for state and local sales taxes
8. Sec 502. Provisions related to film and television productions
9. Sec. 325. Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products; wool research fund; wool duty refunds
10. Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa
[End of excerpt]
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Descriptions of provisions and more examples available at link.
By Taxpayers for Common Sense
Image by flickr user Skrewtape
http://www.flickr.com/photos/skrewtape/1346406880/
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en The following are some of the top tax sweeteners in the Senate passed Bailout Bill. Not all the provisions are per se outrageous, but ... more -
Rep Sherman: Marshall law threatened over bailout
From CSPAN....Rep Sherman said on House floor Thursday evening that House Representatives were told on Monday that if they voted NO on the bailout that there would be Marshall Law in America.
The statement is approximately 40 seconds into the video.
If the above link does not work, you can use the link below if you slide all the way down, close to the bottom of the page, where it says "Mr. Sherman" (click on his name)
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77539&am...#
Sherman's Web site
http://www.house.gov/sherman/
Rep for 27th District
Sherman Oaks, CA From CSPAN....Rep Sherman said on House floor Thursday evening that House Representatives were told on Monday that if they voted NO on... more -
Foreclosure City
This video was a shocker to my senses since I live in the Inland Empire where the video was filmed and I've seen the foreclosure signs everywhere. I've always wonder how this people could afford this homes and the life style they were carrying. Seeing the American dream thrown in the dumpster is truly sad. And to think that is going to get worse when those adjustable mortgages recast in the coming months. Lisa Ling did a fabulous job on this piece as usual, top notch. This video was a shocker to my senses since I live in the Inland Empire where the video was filmed and I've seen the foreclosure ... more
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Bailout Boondoggle puts the Cart before the Horse in Upside Down Mortgages
The bail-out boondoggle is based on an upside down view of the problem that puts the cart before the horse. The key to understanding the economic problem and solution is that the real estate market tanked, and that is why the loans are upside down, or not worth face value, not the other way around. Say in 2005 a house price was $250,000, and lots of folks rushed to get a $200,000 or $250,000 loan, because the rates were low, the economy, jobs, income was booming, lots of upward mobility, and prices were rising, as they always had in real estate, so it seemed like a good bet... then the FED got scared about inflation, so raised the rates ... every month for about a year and a half, until the real estate market screached to a halt, then hack politicians like Schumer started scapegoating and threatening lenders using a few examples of ignorant borrowers swindled by mortgage hucksters., a story as old as used car salesmen and crooked lawyers. But this go around. the banks became the bad-guys for lending money, especiially when wallstreet speculators wanted the casino to make good on thier lost bets, turning home mortgages from the safest investment in the world to toxic waste.... so what did Banks do? the Banks stopped lending. this is what caused the real estate market to really melt down, so the $250,000 house is now worth $100,000 and the homeowner/borrower is begging the bank to take it back, so they can buy the same house next door and cut thier mortgage payments in half, which they must do because thier jobs and incomes have also fallen. On top of all this other housing expenses - taxes, utlities, and homeowner insurance spiked over the same time frame, exactly when household incomes and wealth/equity were dropping. Home equity is the main form of household wealth, so america is now poorer, thus spending less, while burnded by higher housing and gas costs, with little disposible income left over, this is spiraling down demand, employment and incomes - this is the key to our sluggish economy.
The FED tried too little too late to get the banks to lend by giving them a really low discount rate, below 2%, but the banks instead borrow billions and speculate on wallstreet, just as other wallstreet invstors migrated out of mortgage back securities to driving up the price of commodities, like Oil futures, causing gas prices and inflation to rise.
The answer to this problem is very simple. Instead of bailing out Goldman Sacs executives, and thier kind, fund FHA to lend directly to homeowners at very low rates, similar to the 2% the banks already borrow at. This costs little, because the fed is already lending banks bazillions at these low rates, but the discount window 'tool' is futile if banks do not in turn lend as intended. We can eliminate the middle men and go directly to FHA mortgage loans and fix the problem. Allow homeowners to refi at the short sale value of thier home so they can keep thier home instead of buying the house next door. The effect will be to reduce the mortgage and housing costs of the middle class under the FHA umbrella. This will immediately restore household incomes, the housing market, home equity, wealth, and employment to the middle class.. The bail-out boondoggle is based on an upside down view of the problem that puts the cart before the horse. The key to understanding t... more -
The Bailout Reader by Mises.org
The events taking place in the financial market offer an illustration of the soundness of the Austrian theory of money, banking, and credit cycles, and Mises.org is your source not only for analysis of these events but also the economic theory that helps explain what is happening and what to do about it. There are many thousands of articles available, and also the full text of thousands of books as well as journal articles. It is impossible to draw attention to the full range of literature one can use to understand the crisis.
However, below we offer a brief look into the topics most discussed in these times, with extended treatments of each in the sidebar. Mises.org also offers both a blog and a community forum for reading and discussing them all.
It's never been more important to spread a sound view of money and banking, not only as a protection against the fallacies of "stabilization" and "reflation" but also as way to see what kind of reforms are essential now.
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(Articles and texts available at link and are divided in the following categories: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, The Housing Bubble, Inflationary Finance, Community Reinvestment Act, Short Selling, The Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle, Who Predicted This?, What To Do and Books to Distribute) The events taking place in the financial market offer an illustration of the soundness of the Austrian theory of money, banking, and c... more -
U.S. Mortgage Meltdown Video
U.S. Mortgage Meltdown Reported on CBS!!!!
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House Of Cards: The Mortgage Mess,
Since last summer, Americans have seen their investments shrink and their property values plummet. At the heart of the problem is something called the subprime mortgage crisis, which began back then and continues to ricochet through the economy.
It sounds complicated, but it's really fairly simple: banks lent hundreds of billions of dollars to homebuyers who can't pay them back. Wall Street took the risky debt, dressed it up as fancy securities, and sold it around the world as safe investments. If it sounds like a shell game or Ponzi scheme, in some ways it was a house of cards rife with corruption, greed, and negligence.
Real estate agent Kevin Moran gave Kroft a tour of the wreckage in one subdivision called "Weston Ranch," with block after block of vacant and abandoned houses.
"If you see a 'for sale' sign in this neighborhood that probably is a sign of distress, right?" Kroft asks.
"I would say that, yeah. Two out of three of all the sales are probably foreclosed properties, and/or people who are in distress," Moran explains.
The "for sale" signs and the overgrown lawns in Weston Ranch only show part of the picture. To get a real overview, you need to look at a map from Sean O’Toole's Web site, foreclosureradar.com, which tracks distressed properties in Stockton and other California communities.
"The light blue circles are folks that have gone into default. And that means that's the first step of the foreclosure process," O'Toole says, explaining how his maps color-code properties. "The dark blue is auction properties. And the red icons are properties that were sold at auction, had no bid, and therefore went back to the lender."
As of last week, there were 4,200 Stockton homes either in default or foreclosure; $1.4 billion in bad loans in just one California community, and it is far from over.
"Two months from now, what's this map gonna look like? How many of those light blues are gonna be red?" Kroft asks O'Toole.
"We'll probably see at least 60, 70 percent of these light blues turn red. And we'll see at least this many light blues again," O'Toole predicts.
Banks are auctioning off houses all over California and in South Florida, in Nevada, and in parts of Ohio and Texas, the result of a huge real estate bubble that began forming in Stockton back in 2003, when people priced out of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley discovered that you could buy a four-bedroom home there for just $230,000.
Developers started turning asparagus fields into subdivisions, and lenders handed out free money to anyone who wanted to buy.
"What do you mean by free money?" Kroft asks Jim Grant, the editor of "Grant's Interest Rate Observer" and one the country's foremost experts on credit markets.
"I mean free money. I mean you had to apply not to get a loan, almost. Sometimes you have to apply to get a loan, you almost had to apply not to get one," Grant says.
"When you opened your mailbox in 2004, 2005, you could barely -- people were pressing on you, if you were not institutionalized, all matters of schemes in which to expand your personal debt and mortgage debt. You could, and people did, borrow more than 100 percent of the price of a house with the most fragile of financial bonafides," Grant explains. Since last summer, Americans have seen their investments shrink and their property values plummet. At the heart of the problem is some... more -
McCain dined at opulent hotel while negotiators struck bailout deal
What was more important, lunch at a fancy restaurant or working on the bail out deal? For McCain, lunch was more important!
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Obama's Stance on Bailout
Obama was on Face the Nation this morning to discuss the bailout.
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America needs a new New Deal
Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Eric Schlosser argue that what American really needs is a Roosevelt style new New Deal that invests strongly in programs that will help the regular citizens such as a national health care system, an investment in renewable energy products, and a program to help the nearly 4 million people facing eviction. How would you like to spend $700 billion? Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Eric Schlosser argue that what American really needs is a Roosevelt style new New Deal that invests strongly... more
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Bailout Bill: Save the Homeowners Too!
If we have to rescue Wall Street with a $700 Billion bailout, we better make sure homeowners get some guarantees of help, too. This video tells the story of the grand daddy of all predatory lenders, Ameriquest, and shows why it’s wrong to blame all the borrowers. Hear how many homeowners dealing with foreclosures ended up there and hear the troubling revelations of employees who were on the front line convincing borrowers they were getting a good deal. Visit www.consumerwarningnetwork.com to learn more. If we have to rescue Wall Street with a $700 Billion bailout, we better make sure homeowners get some guarantees of help, too. This v... more
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The $700 Billion Questions: "Wake Up America"
The $700 Billion Questions
Monday 22 September 2008
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by: David Sirota, In These Times
"Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson whispers to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The two men appear to be the architects for the largest ever government bailout of private business. (Photo: Mark Wilson / Getty Images)
Using the shock doctrine, Wall Street and Washington's wrecking crew aim to get the most expensive free lunch in American history.
If a museum in the next superpower nation ever commemorates the decline of the last great superpower, it will make the two-and-a-half page bill introduced this week the center of the display.
Just as they do today at the National Archives' Declaration of Independence exhibit, tourists in the future-perhaps in Beijing, perhaps somewhere else-will line up to see a framed draft of this week's White House legislation demanding Congress surrender its power of the purse, and give an unelected appointee-in this case, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson-the power to hand over $700 billion of taxpayer money to "any financial institution," "without limitation...on such terms and conditions as determined by [him]." In a nation priding itself on separating powers between the branches of government, the bill explicitly states that decisions by Paulson may not even "be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
Whether the bill passes or not, the drafting of it-even the mere thinking of it-is the single most clear sign that all of the major tenets of American democracy are on the auction block these days: from constitutional checks and balances, to legislative and judicial oversight to electoral accountability itself.
In the immediate aftermath of what could be the starting gun of a second Great Depression, the public this week will face a wave of propaganda from Washington. Using the same playbook that succeeded in passing the Patriot Act and the Iraq War authorization with almost no questions, politicians will inevitably invoke love of country, fear, loathing and red-alert emergency-all designed to ram this bill into law as fast as possible, with as little scrutiny as possible. Put in book terms, we will see Thomas Frank's wrecking crew using Naomi Klein's shock doctrine to justify a bigger free lunch than David Cay Johnston ever imagined.
Here are five key questions we should all be asking: 1) What will prevent the bill from allowing both parties to use the guise of purchasing worthless mortgages to further enrich their largest campaign donors? 2) How are Americans and investors supposed to feel confident that the crisis will be solved, if the very people who engineered the crisis are being relied on to solve it? 3) How is this meltdown a failure of "oversight" if it has almost nothing to do with illegality? 4) When did a crisis suddenly mean that giving away taxpayer cash to campaign donors is laudably apolitical, but spending taxpayer money on taxpayers is inappropriately "political?"5) How are we going to pay for this?" See full article at link above The $700 Billion Questions Monday 22 September 2008 » by: David Sirota, In These Times ... more -
Politics complicates financial bailout
Threat of collapse forces Democrats to work fast with GOP
Democrats began the week with a you-break-it-you-buy-it approach to the financial crisis: It's President George W. Bush's fault, let him fix it.
But disarray approached a meltdown and possible collapse of the entire economy. Only then did the Democrats, who control Congress, and presidential candidate Barack Obama pledge to work with Republicans on a bailout that the Bush administration puts at $700 billion.
They also are seeking help for the unemployed and people who are at risk of losing their homes. Bush is admonishing them that "the cleaner the better" for legislation he hopes Congress approves in the week ahead. Threat of collapse forces Democrats to work fast with GOP ... more -
Losing your home ... and your vote?
As if the mortgage crisis weren't bad enough already, voters who lost their homes to foreclosure last year may be disenfranchised in the November election. A CBS News report this summer explained how voters with outdated addresses on file may face hurdles when they go to cast their ballots this November.
Vote "caging" poses one problem for voters who recently lost their homes. These caging operations send mail to registered voters, usually in low-income and minority communities, and compile lists of the people whose mail is returned as undeliverable. With this information, they challenge those voters at the polls. Voters have to prove their identity, either on the spot or after the election. In the past, these vote-challenge efforts have suppressed turnout by intimidating voters and slowing down lines.
In addition, because voters may only vote at the polling place for the precinct in which they live, voters who show up at their old polling place may have to wait in line, sometimes for hours, only to be told to go to a different site. Or, poll workers may give provisional ballots to some voters whose names don't appear on the polling place rolls. In some states, these ballots will be discarded if the voter did not cast them in the right precinct, even if the voter was entitled to vote in the county.
Election officials should take proactive steps to make sure voters who have moved since the last election--because of a home foreclosure or for other reasons--have updated registrations and know where their polling places are. Lawmakers should also simplify the procedures for re-registration and should require that election officials count provisional ballots cast by eligible voters, regardless of whether the ballot was cast in the correct precinct. Everyone deserves to have her vote counted, and in the immediate future it's important to make sure that those most directly affected by the mortgage crisis have a say in this election. As if the mortgage crisis weren't bad enough already, voters who lost their homes to foreclosure last year may be disenfranchised... more -
Survey: only 7% of US voters back bailouts
93% of US voters realize, they aren't bailing out ordinary Americans, they are bailing out the crooks who caused the problem. SAD! SAD! SAD! They wont be held accountable, they will be rewarded. Its an "Assault on Reason"!
Phoenix Business Journal - by Mike Sunnucks
There is little public support for the federal bailouts of Wall Street investment and insurance firms and growing worries the U.S. is headed for another Great Depression, according to new national poll by Rasmussen Reports.
Rasmussen said only 7 percent of U.S. voters surveyed supported the federal financial bailouts with 65 percent saying they'd prefer letting the firms go under or deal with bankruptcy filings and restructuring.
The Federal Reserve is helping insurance giant American International Group with an $85 billion bailout. The federal government has taken over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and promised to assume as much as $30 billion in Bears Stearns assets earlier this year to help with JPMorgan Chase's acquisition of the investment house.
The federal government has not yet acted in regard to Lehman Brothers Chapter 11 filing or Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch.
Congress is also looking at massive loans for General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler to help the struggling U.S. auto industry.
Presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama have begrudgingly backed the financial bailouts and also back federal loans to car makers.
McCain likes a $25 billion plan while Obama supports a $50 billion auto industry bailout.
The Rasmuseen poll also showed 45 percent of U.S. voters say it is at least somewhat likely the economy could face another Great Depression, up from 38 percent who thought that in March. Forty-eight percent think a depression is unlikely.
Rasmussen surveyed 1,000 adults Sept. 15 and 16. 93% of US voters realize, they aren't bailing out ordinary Americans, they are bailing out the crooks who caused the problem. SA... more -
US bailout: why we all will suffer
Not just the speculators the imprudent and the financial titans … everyone.
And why do we all need to suffer?
Simple… To ensure that Wall Street billionaires can continue to be driven in their Bentley’s to and from their New York offices and their Hamptons Mansions while career politicians continue to wield their seemingly unchecked powers.
How ironic it is that it’s been just a little over a year since the federal government passed sweeping new bankruptcy reforms that dramatically limited the average Americans abilities to seek shelter during personal financial trauma.
Now average Americans are being FORCED to bailout the very same elites that lobbied hard for strong bankruptcy controls and would have NEVER given a single American facing financial distress a break.
All the while, the traditional media is airing self congratulatory interviews with key politicians and Bullish propaganda about the “infinite congressional balance sheet” all under the theme of “Hope is on the horizon”.
This is a sick, disgusting and disgraceful failure… The American system in its current form is a farce and history will surely bare that fact out. Not just the speculators the imprudent and the financial titans … everyone. And why do we all need to suffer? ... more -
Foreclosure mess could be linked to West Nile virus
Nassau County officials are looking at what might seem like an improbable link between the mortgage foreclosure mess and the surge in West Nile virus this year in the central area of the county.
County health department officials say they are still evaluating the data. But they are looking at whether the incidence of the virus is higher in central Nassau because it is being spread by mosquitoes breeding in stagnant water, including untended backyard swimming pools, in the homes there under foreclosure.
David Pimentel, professor of entomology at Cornell University in Ithaca, said there was no doubt of the link between foreclosed homes and West Nile.
"Definitely. There is no doubt. The problem is going to occur where you have stagnant water, and that's what you're going to find around foreclosed homes, unattended for months at a time," Pimentel said.
Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito Photo The number of West Nile cases recently prompted the county to do aerial pesticide spraying on a broad swath of central Nassau. The decision provoked outrage from environmentalists and breast cancer advocates.
The spraying was conducted over a 50,000-acre section between the Long Island Expressway and the Southern State, and from the Queens border to the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway -- the same area where foreclosures have hit the county hardest.
"Clearly, the vast majority of abandoned, decrepit properties as a result of the foreclosure crisis are in central Nassau," Legis. David Mejias, chairman of the Health Committee, said at a meeting Monday. Nassau County officials are looking at what might seem like an improbable link between the mortgage foreclosure mess and the surge in ... more -
Wall Street Socialists
The financial crisis gripping the U.S. has the largest banks and insurance companies begging for massive government bailouts. The banking, investment, finance and insurance industries, long the foes of taxation, now need money from working-class taxpayers to stay alive. Taxpayers should be in the driver’s seat now. Instead, decisions that will cost people for decades are being made behind closed doors, by the wealthy, by the regulators and by those they have failed to regulate.
Tuesday, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department agreed to a massive, $85-billion bailout of AIG, the insurance giant. This follows the abrupt bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old investment bank; the distressed sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America; the bailout of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the collapse of retail bank IndyMac; and the federally guaranteed buyout of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase. AIG was deemed “too big to fail,” with 103,000 employees and more than $1 trillion in assets. According to regulators, an unruly collapse could cause global financial turmoil. U.S. taxpayers now own close to 80 percent of AIG, so the orderly sale of AIG will allow the taxpayers to recoup their money, the theory goes.
It’s not so easy.
The financial crisis will most likely deepen. More banks and giant financial institutions could collapse. Millions of people bought houses with shady subprime mortgages and have already lost or will soon lose their homes. The financiers packaged these mortgages into complex “mortgage-backed securities” and other derivative investment schemes. Investors went hog-wild, buying these derivatives with more and more borrowed money.
Nomi Prins used to run the European analytics group at Bear Stearns and also worked at Lehman Brothers. “AIG was acting not simply as an insurance company,” she told me. “It was acting as a speculative investment bank/hedge fund, as was Bear Stearns, as was Lehman Brothers, as is what will become Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. So you have a situation where it’s [the U.S. government] ... taking on the risk of items it cannot even begin to understand.”
She went on: “It’s about taking on too much leverage and borrowing to take on the risk and borrowing again and borrowing again, 25 to 30 times the amount of capital. ... They had to basically back the borrowing that they were doing. ... There was no transparency to the Fed, to the SEC, to the Treasury, to anyone who would have even bothered to look as to how much of a catastrophe was being created, so that when anything fell, whether it was the subprime mortgage or whether it was a credit complex security, it was all below a pile of immense interlocked, incestuous borrowing, and that’s what is bringing down the entire banking system.”
As these high-rolling gamblers are losing all their banks’ money, it comes to the taxpayer to bail them out. A better use of the money, says Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an economic adviser to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, would be to “save these 4 million homeowners from defaulting and being kicked out of their houses. Now they’re going to be kicked out of the houses. The houses will be vacant. The cities are going to [lose] property taxes, they’re going to have to cut back local expenditures, local infrastructure. The economy is being sacrificed to pay the gamblers.”
Prins elaborated: “You’re nationalizing the worst portion of the banking system. ... You’re taking on risk you won’t be able to understand. So it’s even more dangerous.” I asked Prins, in light of all this nationalization, to comment on the prospect of nationalizing health care into a single-payer system. She responded, “You could actually put some money into something that pre-empts a problem happening and helps people get health care.” The financial crisis gripping the U.S. has the largest banks and insurance companies begging for massive government bailouts. The bank... more -
Record corporate bailout reveals the bankruptcy of American capitalism
By Barry Grey
13/09/08 "WSWS" -- - The US government takeover of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has dealt a shattering blow to the ideology of market capitalism, which has been used for decades to justify a relentless assault on the working class and a vast transfer of wealth to the American ruling elite.
The endless invocations of the virtues of private enterprise, individual entrepreneurship and self-reliance, used to demonize socialism and defend a system that exploits the vast majority for the benefit of a financial elite, have been exposed as frauds. When it comes to big capital, losses are socialized. Only profits remain private.
The same forces who year after year have inveighed against “big government” in order to justify the removal of all legal impediments to the accumulation of corporate profits and private fortunes, and carry out the destruction of social safeguards for the working class, have engineered a massive expansion of government power to safeguard the interests of the financial elite.
The bailout has as well exposed the real relations of political power and influence behind the façade of American democracy. The largest government bailout of private companies in world history—whose ultimate cost to taxpayers is likely to reach hundreds of billions—was sanctioned in advance by the Democratic Congress and given instant approval by the leadership of both parties and both of their presidential candidates.
There have been no investigations into the greatest financial scandal in world history. Neither party has any interest in bringing to light the swindling and skullduggery of the Wall Street moguls, because they are both bound hand and foot to those responsible for the financial debacle.
What has been revealed is the existence in the United States, behind the increasingly tattered veneer of democratic institutions, of a plutocracy—the political rule of the rich. When it comes to the basic interests of the financial aristocracy, both parties and all of the official institutions of society snap to attention and do the bidding of their Wall Street masters.
The bailout of the two mortgage giants—which account for 80 percent of new home mortgages in the US—is a demonstration of the historic failure of American capitalism and the profit system on a global scale. It was precipitated by the deepest economic crisis since the Depression of the 1930s, whose epicenter is the United States. The Bush administration moved to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under conditions of a rapid erosion of international confidence in the solvency of not only these two companies, but of the United States government itself.
Over the past several months, global investors, including central banks and government investment funds, primarily in Asia and Russia, have been dumping their vast holdings in mortgage-backed securities issued by the US government-sponsored firms. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a combined liability of $5.3 trillion in mortgage-backed securities which they own or guarantee. The run on their assets has not only intensified the crisis of the two companies, which are massively leveraged and have suffered billions of dollars in losses as a result of the collapse of the US housing market, it has thrown into question the status of all US government debt, including US Treasury bonds. By Barry Grey ... more -
The loss of an American Dream
We are one income family who bought into the dream of owning our own home where our young children would be able to grow up and have some security. We invested our entire net worth of $100,000 dollars down on a home with the frame of mind that as long as we worked hard, payed our bills on time, and participated in our community we would be safe, secure. We don't have much money my husband has to work between 50 and 70 hours a week in order to provide for us. My children do not go to private school, and our extra cirricluar activities amount to being heavily involved in both the girl and boy sccouting programs.
We are unable to have any life insurance due to medical issues. I am unable to work due to health problems, we have no 401K, no stocks bonds or other such back up. We had the investment in our home. Wich we are now $200,000 dollars upsidedown in. If something happens to my husband I am going to live with my children in a one bedroom apartment somewhere and my options will be to apply for state aide, foodstamps etc. The only peace of mind I had was that we had an investment in our home.
We have done everything by the rules, and yet we are about to loose are home. When the arms come due the extra mortgage will be coming out of the gorcery money.
In todays current economic climate we will be taking almost a $20,000 cut in pay from an $86,000 dollar salary. I am so stressed out I am now on blood pressure medication along with the other 7 medications I have to take.
Who do you talk to ? Who knows the new rules? Who can you trust to guide you through this nightmare? How does a family hang on? I am lost, Where are the resources to contact in this great country of ours. They can bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they can bail out the airline industry, and spend billions of dollars in Iraq everyday while millions of Americans are being kicked to the curb.
I have to tell my self that due to recent cut backs the light at the end of my tunnel has been turned off. We are one income family who bought into the dream of owning our own home where our young children would be able to grow up and have s... more
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Mortgage Crisis
