FedUpUSA

Archive for the ‘Mortgage Modificaton’ Category

If anyone would know, it would be Bill Black.  Here he discusses how Obama’s new housing plan helps the BANKS at the cost of the taxpayers.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 MSNBC Video

How better to corral restive underwater debt-serfs than to herd them into accepting a new, “better” set of lifelong servitude shackles?

President Obama is taking credit for a new government plan to “save homeowners.” That is of course pure propaganda to mask the plan’s true goal: the perfection of debt-serfdom.  The basic thrust of the plan is straightforward: encourage “underwater” homeowners whose mortgages exceed the value of their homes to re-finance at lower rates.

The stated incentive (i.e. the PR pitch) is to lower homeowners’ monthly payments via lower interest rates.

This is the Federal Reserve’s entire game plan in a nutshell:don’t write off any debt, as that would reveal the banking sector’s insolvency, but play extend-and-pretend with crushing debtloads by lowering the cost of servicing the debt.

The key purpose of this “plan” is to leave the principle owed to banks on their books at full value while ensnaring the hapless debt-serf (the “homeowner”) into permanent servitude to the banks.

If the net worth of your home is a negative number, then what exactly do you own? You have the right to occupy the shelter, and you own the debt. So how is this any different from a lease? There is no equity, and no equity being built: there is a monthly payment in return for the right to occupy the dwelling.

The difference is the leaseholder can move at the end of the lease with no debt obligations.The underwater “homeowner” debt-serf is trapped by his/her mortgage into what amounts to lifetime servitude to the holders of the mortgage.

All the plan does is perfect this debt-serfdom.In a truly capitalist, transparent, free-market economy in which assets were always marked to market, then mortgages that are grossly misaligned with the market value of the house would be written down and the mortgage holders forced to book the loss.

Over-leveraged lenders, i.e. the “too big to fail” banks which dominate the U.S. mortgage market, would see their capital reduced to zero by the writedowns. They would be declared insolvent and liquidated. Their shareholders and bondholders would book losses.

But these losses are unacceptable in our crony-capitalist/cartel-capitalist Status Quo,so the “solution” to systemic insolvency is to manipulate the debt-serfs to keep paying, and thus keep the unicorn-and-pixies valuations of  real estate on the banks’ books at full value.

This is the same game that Japan’s lenders and Central State have played for two decades,and it remains the heart of their failed policies and decaying economy.  In Japan, lenders papered over their bad debts with all sorts of back-door machinations: they extended new loans to debtors so the debtors could continue to make interest payments, they created zombie accounts  filled with delinquent loans that were still kept on the books at full value, they wrote new loans at near-zero rates so interest payments were lowered, and so on–the same ploys and games being played by the Federal Reserve, the Federal government’s housing lenders (Fannie and Freddie) and the banks.

The propaganda machine is running at full throttle, of course, with the usual parade of toadies and lackeys trotted out to say what a great and wonderful thing this plan is for poor homeowners.  But industry analyst Ken Rosen inadvertently revealed the real motivation for the plan: to keep underwater homeowners from “walking away” in so-called “strategic defaults.”underwater homeowners thrown lifeline by Obama(Mercury News).

Why is strategic default anathema to the Status Quo? Because the abandoned house will eventually have to be sold on the market, and at that point its true value revealed. The mortgage holder will then be forced to book a stupendous loss, and the inflated-paper “asset” on the books vanishes.

The Big Lie here is implicit: “your house will someday come back in value, so hang in there, debt-serf.” No, it won’t.  The bubble has popped, and the mania has left town. Housing will retrace to pre-bubble valuations circa 1996-98.

As usual, the Plan is all about managing perceptions and political theater:we’re here to help the little guy, the struggling homeowner; we are in charge, we have a plan, we’re competent, this will fix the housing market.

Too bad they’re all lies.Perception management is not the same as actually solving the underlying problem, yet perception management is the Status Quo’s response to every problem.

The perfection of debt-serfdom is now complete. First, make student loans “necessary” for the “good life” and then make that debt permanent and unbreakable. In other words, institutionalize debt-serfdom and lifelong servitude to the financial sector.

The re-fi “plan” herds potentially rebellious mortgage debt-serfs into new corrals, with the incentive of slightly lower interest rates. The lifetime of servitude to financial Overlords remains firmly in place. That’s the “plan.”

The Plan has other flaws as well:

Got A Hundred Bucks? Buy A Home (Or Virtually Anything Else) Using 2,000x Non Recourse Leverage(Zero Hedge)

On the Administration’s Latest Potemkin Help Struggling Homeowners Plan (Naked Capitalism)

Charles Hugh Smith – Of Two Minds

Obama and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan See Eye To Eye

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is introducing a new program on Monday designed to lower monthly mortgage payments for more troubled homeowners.

But a key new condition in the plan would shift the financial liability for refinanced loans from Wall Street banks to the American taxpayer. And by focusing on lower payments, the program does not confront what housing experts view as the core problem in the foreclosure crisis — borrower debt that exceeds the value of one’s home.

Faced with the weak response to the Home Affordable Refinance Program, the Obama administration is planning to open up the program to all borrowers who owe more on their mortgage than their homes’ worth, commonly dubbed being underwater, and have not missed a mortgage payment. HARP had been limited to borrowers who owed up to 25 percent more than their home is worth. More than 22 percent of all home mortgages — or 10.9 million homes — are currently underwater, according to CoreLogic data. Fewer than 900,000 borrowers have elected to go through HARP to date.

The revised program also eliminates several fees associated with refinancing that can make the decision to refinance uneconomical for borrowers. But the potential benefit of the eliminated fees could be relatively small: If a few thousand dollars worth of fees made refinancing a bad deal for underwater borrowers, the ultimate benefits that refinancing can pose would remain limited.

On a conference call with reporters, White House National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling referred to the HARP expansion as “a win-win policy” that will result in “less defaults” and “fewer foreclosures.” But one of the program’s new terms will benefit private-sector Wall Street banks, potentially at the expense of taxpayers.

The newly expanded program would expunge legal liabilities associated with mortgages refinanced through the program for the original lenders of the mortgages. Each time a bank sent a loan to Fannie and Freddie, it certified that the loan met Fannie and Freddie’s safe lending criteria. But many loans sent to the mortgage giants did not, in fact, meet those criteria. Currently, when borrowers default on those ineligible loans, the mortgage giants can “put back” the resulting losses onto the banks that pushed the loans.

Under the modified plan, “put back” liability at banks will be erased for any underwater mortgage that is refinanced through HARP, eliminating Fannie and Freddie’s ability to sack lenders with losses in the event that the mortgage does not pan out.

If borrowers go through HARP, but decide after several months that the modest monthly savings do not outweigh owing tens of thousands of dollars more than their home is worth, taxpayer-owned Fannie and Freddie will have to take the full loss. Even if the original loan was sent to Fannie and Freddie with false or fraudulent guarantees from the bank — promises that may directly be tied to the borrower’s current financial problems — banks will be immune from liability. Fannie and Freddie plan to charge banks “a modest fee” to extinguish this liability, but the administration has yet to determine what that fee will be.

While the revised program seeks to lower mortgage payments for underwater homeowners, the program does nothing to address the core problem — owing more than the home is worth. Though borrowers may save hundreds of dollars a month in lower payments by refinancing, they routinely owe tens of thousands of dollars more than their homes are worth, even after receiving aid.

“In most cases people would probably be better off walking,” said economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research.

During a conference call with reporters, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan acknowledged that negative equity is a problem, and said the administration hopes to address the issue on other fronts. Donovan cited settlement negotiations with big banks over widespread allegations of foreclosure fraud and initiatives under the Home Affordable Modification Program, a separate Obama foreclosure-relief plan administered by banks, as key initiatives.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden have both objected to the foreclosure fraud settlement talks on the grounds that they give away too much to banks without investigating the scope of fraud problems in the system. The Home Affordable Modification Program has been a hotbed for the kind of borrower abuses that the administration is pressuring lenders to settle over.

Zach Carter – Huff Po

For me, the most significant development from the Fed’s announcement is a change in policy where the Fed will re-invest proceeds of maturing MBS securities in new issues of Agency MBS paper. Prior to today, the Fed re-invested principal repayments in Treasury bonds.

I wrote about the possibility of a mega mortgage ReFi by Fannie and Freddie (here and here). I (and many readers) pointed to an obvious flaw in the ReFi story. If a Trillion or so of mortgages were rapidly prepaid, then who would buy all of the new (much lower coupon) mortgage paper?

Now we have the answer. The Fed will put the new MBS paper back on its Balance Sheet, $ for $. There will still be many bondholders outside of the Fed who will get prepaid much faster than they had assumed. Most of that is in pension/bond funds. No one cares about them.

I think that Treasury will announce the plans for a Mega Refi in the not too distant future. It could come this weekend or next week. Obama will wait just enough time after the complex Fed decision so that 99% of all people don’t connect these two dots.

In that 1% will be Republicans. They are going to be mad as hens tonight that Bernanke ignored their last minute plea not to play more monetary games. The authors of that letter, McConnell, Boehner, Kyle and Cantor are really going to be peeved. Not only did the Fed step further on the gas, they greased the skids for an Administration’s plan to ReFi mortgages.

It’s not at all clear that the Fed’s latest move are going to accomplish a thing. I’m not sure that the Big ReFi is going to be such a success either. But that doesn’t matter.

What’s important about this is that the Republicans will respond. They will not give Obama another leg up with his one-year stimulus program. Any chance of that went up in smoke with the Fed’s VERY political decision on MBS today. Can you say, “Collusion”?

This is a real circus now. In this one the bears aren’t dancing. They’re fighting. The claws are out and it’s going to get bloody.

.

The banking gears of housing – Bank of America sells mortgage servicing rights on large loan pool to Fannie Mae.  400,000 loans shifted to Fannie Mae with $73 billion in unpaid principal.

Things just seem to get more perplexing with the housing market.  Back in August the Wall Street Journal discussed a deal between Fannie Mae and Bank of America.  The deal is odd even for the current banking system we have in place.  It was reported that Fannie Mae purchased the servicing rights to 400,000 loans for the grand total of $500 million.  Why would this be an issue you may ask?  Well first, Fannie Mae being a GSE does not specifically service mortgages so buying a pool of loans with unpaid principal of $73 billion seems out of place.  It also makes you wonder why a bank that has faced some troubles during the financial crisis would unload so many loans back to the government.  This concern clearly does not go unnoticed and a Representative from the housing battered state of California sent a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) asking for more details on the deal.

The letter from Representative Darrell Issa

Source:  Oversight Committee

In the letter, it is noted that the bank decided to sell the portfolio for a loss because the value of the loans were expected to deteriorate even further:

“The loans have a 13% delinquency rate, and more than half of the loans are in troubled U.S. real estate markets.”

Is this another form of bailout going on here?  Why would the bank sell such a large loan portfolio back to Fannie Mae which is now under conservatorship?  The pool of mortgages are already showing an unusually high default rate.  The housing market is unlikely to bounce back soon and to the contrary, is already showing signs of a further correction ahead.

Read the rest at My Budget 360