Many parents have plundered kids’ savings accounts during the recession. Read more…
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Archive for December, 2009
Morgan Stanley (MS) is walking away from five office buildings it bought two years ago at the height of the market for $6.5 billion (that’s “B”… not “M”), which have since lost as much as 50% in value. The reason, says a corporate spokeswoman, “This isn’t a default or foreclosure situation… we are going to give (the lender) the properties to get out of the loan obligation.”So let me get this straight….Even as Banks were getting rewarded with billions in bailouts for pumping up the industry I work in to feed my family… so that they could profit on both the way up and especially on the way down by using trades that paid off with leverage when everything collapsed… I myself have gone on record, actually branding consumers and homeowners as “punks,” for strategically defaulting on loans that they realistically still have the means to continue paying.And all the while the banks have been spewing out rhetoric about how morally reprehensible it is to damage the fabric of our society by turning our backs on these contracts tthat underpin our agreements. So Read more…
A Credit problem such as Bank overdraft charges is quite prevalent now. If you have ever been hit with shockingly high overdraft charges, you know how skilled banks have become at ripping off everyday people. They make their millions by charging absorbent overdraft charges when someone makes a small mistake such as bouncing a cheque. Rather than reflecting the reasonable expense the bank is out when these problems occur, banks are now charging customers as much as £25. Plus, some customers are being charged £25 each time the overdraft charges escalate and another £35 for every bounced cheque! While we did win a small battle when it was ruled that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) could conduct an official investigation into the fairness of such policies that was quickly overturned when a few big banks got together and appealed. The appeal was successful and it was stated that the OFT had no business deciding the fairness of unauthorized overdraft charges. Cu
No one likes closing costs. When you’re purchasing a home that often costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, few things are more annoying than the feeling that you’re mortgage lender is nickel-and-diming you for every fee they can think of. Of course getting a loan will never be free and lenders should be compensated for the work they do and the risk they take, but minimizing closing costs should be a priority in every mortgage process. Most buyers don’t realize that many of the items included in the final closing costs are either unnecessary or negotiable.
A recent survey showed that the average closing costs are highest in the states of New York, Texas, and Florida. North Carolina was found to have the lowest closing costs on average, replacing Indiana from 2008 in the survey. The variation in average closing costs can be blamed on a combination of taxes and fees that vary as the home-buying process differs from state to state. Here
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Dec
Dec
The Men of the Broken Decade
As this will be my last column before the decade ends, and given that Time magazine has chosen to anoint Ben Bernanke as its Person of the Year, I thought I would share my opinion on the subject.
First of all, Bernanke’s selection is an intriguing bookend to the Fed’s decade. A little more than 10 years ago, in February 1999, his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, appeared on Time’s cover as a member of “The Committee to Save the World.”
With Greenspan were Robert Rubin — another financial operator who seemed to have little actual understanding of the financial system, as he was paid tens of millions of dollars to help preside over Citigroup’s (C, news, msgs) destruction — and Larry Summers, then deputy Treasury secretary and now a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama.