The number of homeowners seeking help after falling behind with their mortgage payments soared by more than 50 per cent over the past three months, according to figures from a leading debt charity.

Global Financial Help is a free site providing non biased financial information on topics such as Mutual Funds, The Stock Market, Loans, Insurance, Credit Cards, Mortgages, and Debt Relief. We help people with their financial situations. We provide a new frame of mind for thinking about money.

Here’s Obama’s response to McCain’s mortgage buy-back proposal:

Senator McCain and I had a chance to talk about this the other night in Nashville. Some of you may have seen it. In that debate, he offered what he said was a new idea to help deal with the financial crisis, and that was to have the government – meaning taxpayers – buy up bad mortgages in America.

Well, the idea wasn’t particularly new. The authority for the Secretary of Treasury to buy and renegotiate bad mortgages is part of the financial rescue plan we just passed. In fact, I proposed it myself because, if it’s properly done and limited in scope, such buybacks can be one tool to help innocent homeowners stay in their homes on terms they can afford.

But I also said at the time that this should not be a vehicle to reward banks and lending institutions that recklessly wrote bad loans. It should not be a bailout for the high-rolling real estate speculators who took those loans to make a quick buck.

We have to act to fix our broken economy and restore the credit markets. But taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to pick up the tab for the very folks who helped create this crisis.

And that’s the problem with Senator McCain’s risky idea. On Tuesday night, his campaign said that he would ask the banks to absorb some of the cost by selling the bad mortgages to the government at a discount. Then, by Wednesday morning, he’d changed his mind and was proposing to bail out banks and lenders with taxpayer money.

Senator McCain actually wants the government to pay the full face value of mortgages on the books, even though they’re not worth that much anymore. It’s a plan that would guarantee that American taxpayers lose by handing over $300 billion to underwrite the kind of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street that got us into this mess.

But it’s not just that the McCain bailout rewards irresponsible lenders, it’s that his bailout would make it more likely that those lenders keep up their bad behavior. Just yesterday, Countrywide, one of the nation’s largest lenders, reached an agreement to help homeowners refinance their mortgages. Under Senator McCain’s plan, lenders like Countrywide wouldn’t have any incentive to come forward and help homeowners – because they could just wait for the government to bail them out.

Now, this is just the latest in a series of shifting positions that Senator McCain has taken on this issue. His first response to this crisis in March was that homeowners shouldn’t get any help at all. Then, a few weeks ago, he put out a plan that basically ignored homeowners. And now, in the course of 12 hours, he’s ended up with a plan that punishes taxpayers, rewards banks, and won’t solve our housing crisis.

Well, I don’t think we can afford that kind of erratic and uncertain leadership in these uncertain times.

The whole thing will be up here in a few days, I assume. [Tags: obama mccain mortgage ]

Topics in this episode include: McCain Names Names, BJ calls James from Jail, The Barack / Acorn connection and illegal aliens got home loans with fake Social Security Numbers.

Author: wrightroadradio Keywords: barack obama mccain sarah palin acorn mortgage crisis conservative liberal Added: October 10, 2008

JOHN MCKEATON5 MCCAIN OUTRAGEOUSLY VOTED AGAINST THE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN PROTECTION ACT TWICE AND JOHN MCLIAR MCCAIN DID VOTE AGAINST THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT WHOS TO FLAME FOR GAS PRICES, UNEMPLOYMENT HIGHEST IN 5 YEARS (DURING BUSHS TERM), WORLD DISRESPECTING THE USA, AND YES FORECLOSURES - HERE IS WHY IT IS THE REPUBLICANS FAULT.. MCCAINS HISTORY: S&L SCANDAL - MCCAIN - KEATON CONTRIBUTIONS - 1987 MORTGAGE MELTDOWN - AMERIQUEST CONTRIBUTIONS - 2005 WALLSTREET BAILOUT - 2008 Here is how you got stuck paying the BAILOUT bill courtesy of Bush and McCain MCCAIN RECEIVED MONTHLY CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE AMERIQUEST MORTGAGE PRESIDENT FOR DEREGULATIONS FOR THE PRIVATE LENDER AND TO INCREASE PROFIT BY INCREASING INTEREST RATES ON EXISTING LOANS IN 2005. WOW BUSH MCCAIN SCANDAL TIMELINE: -THE MORTGAGE MELTDOWN WAS NOT THE DEMOCRATS, CONSUMER, OR HOMEOWNERS FAULT, IT WAS THE POOR NAÃVE GREEDY AND FAIL REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP WITH REPUBLICAN SUPPORT -BUSH/MCCAIN BOTH HAVE A LONGTERM RELATIONSHIP WITH AMERIQUEST PRESIDENT ROLAND E. ARNALL -BUSHS NAÃVITY & GREED WANTED TO RAISE INTEREST RATES TO INCREASE BANK REVENUE LIKE OUR GAS PRICES - BANKS WERENT MAKING ENOUGH ON 3-5% INTEREST ONLY AND ADJUSTABLE ARM RATE LOANS -GREENSPAN REFUSED TO RAISE INTEREST RATES BECAUSE GREENSPAN KNEW IT WOULD OVER LOAD HOMEOWNERS BUDGETS AND TIGHTEN OUR ECONOMY FLOW. -BUSH THEN REPLACED GREENSPAN ON JANUARY 31, 2006 FOR A YES MAN (like McCain and palin) WITH BEN BERNANKE. -BEN BERNANKE THEN FOLLOWS BUSH ORDERS AND RAISES INTEREST RATES ON EXIST LOANS - YOUR MORTGAGE PAYMENT CONVENIENTLY GOES UP EVERY MONTH AND WHEN MOST ARMS WERE ABOUT TO EXPIRE -NOW WITH THE HIGHER INTEREST RATES LESS PEOPLE CAN AFFORD YOUR HOUSE BECAUSE MONEY IS MORE EXPENSIVE TO BORROW FROM LENDERS -MOST INTEREST ONLY AND ARM MORTGAGES WERE FROM PRIVATE LENDERS LIKE BUSH AND MCCAINS BUDDY THE PRESIDENT OF AMERIQUEST (On the same day that the White House announced that President Bush is nominating California billionaire Roland E. Arnall to be ambassador to the Netherlands, the company he controls said it would set aside $325 million for a possible settlement of allegations of predatory lending tactics.) -MCCAIN ALSO HAD A CONTINUED RELATIONSHIP FOR YEARS WITH AMERIQUEST PRESIDENT Roland E. Arnall AND RECEIVED DE-REGULATION MONEY TO VOTE IN AND RALLY OTHER REPUBLICANS TO VOTE FOR GREENSPANS REPLACEMENT, BEN BERNANKE TO FOLLOW BUSH ORDERS WITHOUT BERNANKE INPUT OR CHALLENGE REGARDLESS OF WHAT IT WOULD DO TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. -INTEREST RATES ARE RAISED TOO FAST TO KEEP UP WITH FAMILIES BUDGETS OR EVEN HAVING THE OPTIONS TO SELL BECAUSE NOW LESS PEOPLE CAN QUALIFY FOR MORTGAGE TO PURCHASE YOUR HOME. -IT IS VERY VERY IMPORTANT THAT HOMEOWNERS KNOW - AT A 3-5% INTEREST RATE YOU ARE QUALIFIED FOR YOUR CURRENT OR YOUR PAST FORECLOSED HOME -AT 8% OF COURSE YOU QUALIFY FOR A SMALLER LOAN BECAUSE MONEY IS MORE EXPENSIVE BORROW. -BECAUSE OF THE FAILED AND NAÃVE GREED FROM BUSH WITH THE HELP OF MCCAINS SENATE VOTE TO PUT BEN BERNANKE IN GREENSPANS POSITION WE ARE NOW IN THIS HORRIBLE BAIL-OUT MESS -ONCE THERE ARE LESS BUYERS IN YOUR NEW PRICE RANGE. YOUR HOME STAYS ON THE MARKET LONGER -FORECLOSURES START TO INCREASE AT THIS TIME -NOW YOU HAVE SLOWER SALES AND FORECLOSURES AS COMPS FOR NEW BUYERS WHO ARE TRYING TO QUALIFY FOR LOANS TO PURCHASE YOUR HOME. -THUS LEADS TO THIS MARKET FROM THE CONTINUED INCREASE OF THIS CYCLE OVER AND OVER AGAIN COMPLIMENTS OF BUSH AND 90% MCCAIN - -THANKS BUT NO THANKS - DARN ITS TO LATE FOR THAT -THIS BAILOUT SHOULD HAVE BEEN STARTED FROM HOMEWONERS UP NOT WALLSTREET DOWN OVER TWO YEARS AGO LIKE OBAMA SUGGESTED -THAT WOULD KEEP THE LOANS CURRENT WITH LESS CASUALTIES OF BUSH/MCCAINS CONTINUED POOR DECISIONS AND HORRIBLE NAÃVE MISTAKES NOW HOW IS THIS THE DEMOCRATS FAULT OR THE HOMEOWNERS FAULT WHEN BUSH RAISED THE INTEREST RATES TOO HIGH AND TOO FAST TO RUN STEADY WITH THE MARKET IT IS BUSH/MCCAINS FAULT AND ONLY THEIR FAULT MCCAIN DID THIS BEFORE WITH THE S&L SCANDAL IN 1987 AND THEN CREATED AN ACT THAT MCCAIN DOESNT EVEN FOLLOW HIMSELF AND THE TAXPAYER HAD TO BAIL HIM OUT THEN TOO THIS MELTDOWN IS 8 YEARS OF BUSHS/90%MCCAIN FAILED AND EMBARASSING ATTEMPT TO RUN OUR COUNTRY - WE HAD ENOUGH OF THE EPUBLICAN 6 PACK OF BEER AND PORK ITS TIME TO GET THE DEMOCRATIC SUPLUS THAT BUSH WENT INTO OFFICE IN 2000 AFTER BILL CILNTON, THE DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM DOES NOT WORK WHEN BUSH/90% MCCAIN GREED IS INVOLVED, MOST FORECLOSURES WERE CAUSED BY THE INCREASED INTEREST RATES OF ARM AND INTERST ONLY MORTAGES, NOT THE BLAMED FANNIE AND FREDDIE MAC LIKE THE REPUBLICANS WANT YOU TO BELIEVE - IT IS THEIR FAULT..

Author: SarahJewsForJesus Keywords: gas prices eviction foreclosures mccain animal killer anti jewish palin peta clinton biden obama america Added: October 9, 2008

At the debate Tuesday, John McCain was full of big promises and slick talk. He told us he could fix bad mortgages with a snap of his fingers, fix health care at no net cost, and maintain the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, all while cutting taxes. He tried to reassure us about Osama bin Laden, saying, "I know how to get him." Huh. So where's he been?

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/bu...ld&oref=slogin

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Meltdown of Iceland’s Financial System Quickens

By ERIC PFANNER
REYKJAVIK, Iceland — People go bankrupt all the time. Companies do, too. But countries?
Iceland was on the verge of doing exactly that on Thursday as the government shut down the stock market and seized control of its last major independent bank. That brought trading in the country’s currency to a halt, with foreign banks no longer willing to take Icelandic krona, even at fire-sale rates.
As the meltdown in the Icelandic financial system quickened, with the government seemingly powerless to do anything about it, analysts said there was probably only one realistic option left: for Iceland to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund.

“Iceland is bankrupt,” said Arsaell Valfells, a professor at the University of Iceland. “The Icelandic krona is history. The I.M.F. has to come and rescue us.”

Prime Minister Geir Haarde, who had warned this week of the threat of “national bankruptcy,” said Thursday that Iceland’s finance minister, Arni Mathiesen, would be in Washington this weekend for the autumn International Monetary Fund/World Bank meetings. He declined to say whether Iceland was seeking a rescue package from the international lender.

“We will certainly keep this option open, but we have not yet made a decision,” Mr. Haarde said Thursday at a news conference.

The I.M.F. managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said in Washington that he had activated an emergency financing system, last used during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, to help countries in crisis. Though not mentioning Iceland by name, he said: “We are ready to answer any demand by countries facing problems.”

Iceland has approached Russia about a 4 billion euro, or $5.5 billion, loan to help see it through the crisis, but Mr. Haarde said no agreement had been reached.

An I.M.F. intervention in Iceland, which would necessarily involve accepting a series of harsh measures to restore fiscal and monetary stability, would underline the extraordinary reversal in the country’s fortunes after a decade-long, debt-fueled binge by the country’s banks, businesses and some private citizens. The banks, while avoiding the toxic mortgage securities that have humbled Wall Street, expanded aggressively at home and abroad. When credit tightened and the krona fell this year, they were unable to finance their debts.

In these circumstances, going to the I.M.F. “is probably the only thing Iceland can do,” said Richard Portes, an economist at the London Business School.

Events have moved so fast that the full import of national bankruptcy has yet to sink in here. It has happened before, of course, but in places like Argentina and Thailand, not a country that likes to think of itself as close to Europe.

And on an island raked by icy North Atlantic winds and dotted with volcanoes and geysers, where people live with the threat of earthquakes and maritime disasters, few residents seem to be losing their cool over the financial crisis — yet. But some have suffered deep losses, and others are simply bewildered at how things could have gone so wrong so quickly.

“There is a lot of fear in society and there are people who are losing everything,” Bubbi Morthens, an Icelandic rock favorite, said Wednesday after singing at an impromptu midday concert in central Reykjavik intended to lift people’s spirits.

Like many of his compatriots, Mr. Morthens did well when Iceland was riding high, accumulating considerable wealth. But when the government seized control of Iceland’s third-largest bank, Glitnir, last month, Mr. Morthens said he lost his life savings, which he had invested in the bank’s stock.
On Thursday, the government seized Kaupthing Bank, the country’s largest lender, effectively completing the nationalization of the banking system after the previous takeover of Glitnir and the No. 2 lender, Landsbanki.

Meanwhile trading in the currency froze up Thursday, according to Bloomberg News, citing dealers at Nordea, a big Scandinavian bank. The last trade was made at 340 krona to the euro, Nordea said — less than half what the Icelandic currency was worth at the start of the week.

Mr. Haarde said the Central Bank of Iceland had set up a special system to handle currency transactions, so that Icelandic companies could conduct international business.

“We are gradually moving through this crisis,” he said, sounding surprisingly unworried for the leader of a country facing economic and financial disaster. “There are still a few issues to resolve but that is the nature of these kinds of things.”

Problems with the krona have been at the core of the government’s inability to control the crisis. Without a viable currency, there is no way to support the banks, which have done the bulk of their business in foreign markets. There is also no way to bring down inflation or interest rates, both already in double digits before the crisis intensified in recent days.

Mr. Valfells and Mr. Portes said that once the situation is stabilized, the best way forward would be for Iceland is to give up on the krona and adopt the euro instead.

How could Iceland, which is not even a member of the European Union, adopt the currency?
One option would be to simply “peg” its currency to the euro. In that case, Iceland would also hand over control of monetary policy, including the setting of interest rates, to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

But fixing the currency to the euro could be difficult for Iceland, given that its central bank probably lacks the necessary reserve to defend such a level if the currency were to come under renewed attack, Mr. Portes said.

That leaves another option: applying to join the European Union and adding Iceland to the euro zone. Because Iceland is already part of the European Economic Area, a looser trading bloc, it already abides by many European Union rules.

Still, such a move would be politically challenging. The conservative Independence Party, headed by the prime minister, has been dead set against it. Another member of that party, which is governing in a coalition with the Social Democrats, is the central bank chairman, David Oddsson, a former prime minister.

They are supported by the powerful fishing industry, which mostly wants to stay out of the euro and to keep Europe at a comfortable distance. Fishing has been the focus of many clashes between Iceland and its European neighbors — most heatedly with Britain, in what became known as the Cod Wars of the 1950s to the 70s. The two countries clashed repeatedly over Iceland’s move to extend exclusive fishing rights into waters that had long been trawled by British vessels, too.

Tension with Britain has flared anew during the current crisis. It centers on hundreds of thousands of accounts that Britons hold in online branches of the Icelandic banks; now they fear they will lose their money, and the British government wants Iceland to pay up. The government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain has used powers granted under anti-terrorism laws to freeze British assets of Landsbanki until the standoff is resolved.

“We do not consider this to be a particularly friendly act,” Mr. Haarde said, adding that he had tried to defuse the situation in a telephone call with Mr. Brown on Thursday.

For all the worries, this capital city of 120,000 people still displays the fruits of the decade-long economic boom that followed the deregulation of Iceland’s financial sector in the 1990s — hip cafés, lobster restaurants and stylish shops selling outdoor gear.

But the days when the economy seemed capable of gravity-defying feats are gone. So are the days when investors went on an international buying spree, adding some of the biggest names of the British and American retailing industries to their portfolios. Gone too, are the days when ordinary citizens effortlessly joined in the fun, taking out second mortgages to finance their own trips abroad or at least to the Laugavegur, the main shopping strip in Reykjavik.

“It’s difficult; the landscape is very difficult,” said Franch Michelsen, a watch dealer in central Reykjavik, as he took a break Wednesday from cleaning his shop window.

Some ordinary Icelanders face a similar problem to the one that brought down the banks. In recent months, many mortgages were taken out in foreign currencies — marketed by the banks as a way to benefit from lower interest rates abroad, as rates in Iceland rose into the double digits.

Now, with the Icelandic krona plunging, homeowners suddenly have to pay back far more expensive euro or dollar values of their mortgages. At the same time, house prices are falling.

The Reverend Karl Sigurbjornsson, the bishop of Iceland, who leads the state-sponsored Lutheran church, says he worries about how the prospect of financial suffering will affect a society that “was led to believe that it was unlimited growth forever.”

“What will happen when the dust settles?” he asked. “A lot of people will be very angry. It will be a challenge for our society.”

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Think that CRA, the Community Reinvestment Act, helped lower mortgage lending standards, which in turn led to the so-called- mortgage crisis, the credit crisis, and the dramatic fall in the housing market subsequent to all those foreclosures? Do you believe that threatening lenders with high (...)

coondoggie contributes this snippet from NetworkWorld: "You could probably see this one coming. With all of the confusion and money involved you knew there would be cyber-vultures out there looking to cash in. Well the Federal Trade Commission today issued a warning that indeed such increased phishing activities are taking place. Specifically the FTC said it was urging user caution regarding e-mails that look as if they come from a financial institution that recently acquired a consumer's bank, savings and loan, or mortgage. In many case such emails are only looking to obtain personal information mdash; account numbers, passwords, Social Security numbers mdash; to run up bills or commit other crimes in a consumer's name, the FTC stated."pa href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/10/007201amp;from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=08/10/10/007201"/a/ppa href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/10/007201amp;from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6Ec78MAlGD-k95QvF8wEQXv1O6E/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6Ec78MAlGD-k95QvF8wEQXv1O6E/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/ERtelesSzp4" height="1" width="1"/

The number of people seeking help after falling behind with their mortgages has increased by 50 per cent in a year, according to figures from Citizens Advice. In the three months to the end of September the charity saw a steep increase in the number of inquiries about arrears on mortgages or a secured loan.

img class=face src=http://planet.ubuntu.com/heads/sabdfl.png alt= div class=entrytext pThe term “credit crunch” is very misleading for the current crisis. It suggests that the problem is merely one of confidence, that calm will return if liquidity is introduced to the system./p pMy view, though, is that the real issue is one of solvency. This is the systemic bankruptcy of 2008./p pstrongMortgages are just the beginning./strongbr / At real rates of interest, with real expectations of a reasonable rate of return, many of the deals which have been done since 2003 just do not make economic sense. Thus far, the spotlight has been on one piece of that problem - bad mortgage loans - but I think we’ll see the problem areas expanding rapidly to include a lot of the private equity deals which were done on the basis of free money between 2003-2007. I remember a fatuous statement by some private equity genius that “everybody’s rushing to do the first $100bn deal”. Well, the chickens are coming home to roost. Expect a steady flood of announcements of setbacks, restructurings and bankruptcies as companies that were bought with borrowed money turn out to be unable to service their debt./p pstrongLower interest rates will ease the symptoms only.br / /strongDramatic easing of interest rates will help to slow down the pace at which we have to deal with the bankruptcies, but they won’t change the cold reality of the situation, and they run the very real risk of making things worse by encouraging another round of speculation based on free money. We are once again in a situation where the US discount rate is effectively a negative real rate of interest, as a gift to the banks, but staying there for any length of time puts us back into a state of addiction./p pstrongInterventions must target bank equity and leverage, not liquidity.br / /strongThe latest move from the UK to buy equity stakes is the best response yet, I think. It dramatically improves the capitalisation of those institutions, it keeps the upside of that move in taxpayers hands (they are taking the pain and funding the bailout, it seems right to preserve the upside for them) and it dilutes the existing shareholders who allowed their institutions to become insolvent. Personally, I’d be inclined to do more than dilute those shareholders./p pI don’t see the current $700bn deal making a real difference to US banks. I would expect the US to announce a deal similar to the UK deal soon, but the numbers would have to be larger. Scarily large. Much better for the US to make that move, than to wait for Asian and Middle-eastern sovereign wealth funds to step into the breach./p pstrongDepositors in regulated banks should be protected by the governments that run the regulators. Shareholders not so much. Bondholders... maybe.br / /strongI think the Irish and other countries who have guaranteed the deposits of individual users have done the right thing. Governments setup regulatory authorities, and banks advertise that they are regulated. The people who appoint those regulators need to stand by the approach they take - they should offer a guarantee that they will stand by their product, and when it fails, they will stand by the people who trusted in them. Depositors at banks in the UK really should not have to worry that the bank might fail - such a failure should at most affect the interest rate they receive, not the safety of their capital. Shareholders in those banks, however, should be very worried indeed. There’s an interesting question about bondholders and institutional depositors. By one argument they are sophisticated investors and should be responsible for their bonds. By another argument, they are the very people who can cause massive shifts in funds from bank paper to T-bills, and hence worth keeping pacified. I would lump them in with individual depositors too./p pstrongExecutive compensation should be structured not fixed.br / /strongThere has been a lot of discussion about limiting executive compensation. That’s just an invitation for armies of consultants and lawyers and accountants to work around whatever compensation limits are put in place. And frankly, I’m hard-pressed to understand how politicians, who constantly vote themselves bigger salaries and expense accounts, are qualified to set bank executive salaries. They effectively WERE in charge of Fannie and Freddie executive compensation, and that wasn’t a stellar success./p pWhat I would say, however, is that financial institution earnings should only be recognised over a seven year period, and bonuses based on those earnings should be held in escrow until that seven year period is up. Imagine if we could now tap into the bonuses of investment bank employees over the past seven years in order to shore up the balance sheets of those banks. That would include the bonuses paid to Mr Fuld, Mr Greenberg, and Mr Greenspan. Anybody care to run the numbers? I think it would be material./p pstrongI’m nervous.br / /strongThe big question I’m asking is strongwhich sidelines don’t have landmines?/strong My team and I are fortunate to have stepped out of many markets before the current flood of fear. We stepped right into a few problems, but in large part dodged the cannonballs. So far so good. But what does it mean to have cash in the bank, when banks themselves are failing? What does it mean to hold dollars, when the dollar is being debased in a way that would feel familiar to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe? These are very dangerous times, and nobody should think otherwise./p/div

Barack Obama accused John McCain of backing a mortgage bailout plan that would reward banks responsible for the housing crisis.

In an October 9 New York Times article, Elisabeth Bumiller reported that during an October 8 speech, Sen. John McCain "placed" Sen. Barack Obama "in a prominent role in the narrative of bad mortgages that had been backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." Bumiller then uncritically quoted McCain saying of Obama: "[A]s recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, a good idea. Well, Senator Obama, that good idea has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression." Bumiller did not mention that McCain was, in fact, distorting Obama's comments from September 2007, as several media outlets -- including the Times -- noted when McCain made the same accusation against Obama in an October 6 speech. Indeed, in an October 6 post on the Times blog The Caucus, Bumiller's colleague Larry Rohter wrote of McCain's comment that day: "[T]hat quote is taken out of context and reverses the intent of Mr. Obama's remarks, which were clearly meant primarily as a criticism of practices on Wall Street."

In the September 17, 2007, speech to which McCain referred, Obama did say that "Subprime lending started off as a good idea -- helping Americans buy homes who couldn't previously afford to." But Obama prefaced that remark by comparing the "subprime mortgage fiasco today" to "conflicts of interest" during the "dotcom boom of the 90s" and the "Enron and WorldCom scandals," each as examples of how "[w]e all suffer when we do not ensure that markets are transparent, open and honest." Following the comment McCain cited, Obama went on to state: "But as certain lenders and brokers began to see how much money could be made, they began to lower their standards. Some appraisers began inflating their estimates to get the deals done. Some borrowers started claiming income they didn't have just to qualify for the loans, and some were engaging in irresponsible speculation. But many borrowers were tricked into glossing over the fine print. And ratings agencies began rating bundles of different kinds of these loans as low-risk even though they were very high-risk. Most everyone knew that some of these deals were just too good to be true, but all that money flowing in made it tempting to look the other way and ignore the unscrupulous practice of some bad actors." Obama also said that "the impact on the housing market and wider economy has been so great that some economists are now predicting a possible recession." From Obama's speech:

In fact, the danger with this mentality isn't just that it offends our morals, it's that it endangers our markets. Markets can't thrive without the trust of investors and the public. At a most basic level, capital markets work by steering capital to the place where it is most productive. Without transparency, that cannot happen. If the information is flawed, if there is fraud, or if the risks facing financial institutions are not fully disclosed, people stop investing because they fear they're being had. When the public trust is abused badly enough, it can bring financial markets to their knees. We all suffer when we do not ensure that markets are transparent, open and honest.

We saw this during the dotcom boom of the 90s when conflicts of interest between securities analysts, whose research was supposed to guide investors, and the banks they worked for led investors to doubt the markets in general.

We saw it during the Enron and WorldCom scandals when major public companies artificially pumped up their earnings, disguised their losses and otherwise engaged in accounting fraud to make their profits look better -- a practice that ultimately led investors to question the balance sheets of all companies.

And we cannot help but see some reflections of these practices when we look at the subprime mortgage fiasco today.

Subprime lending started off as a good idea -- helping Americans buy homes who couldn't previously afford to. Financial institutions created new financial instruments that could securitize these loans, slice them into finer and finer risk categories and spread them out among investors around the country and around the world.

In theory, this should have allowed mortgage lending to be less risky and more diversified. But as certain lenders and brokers began to see how much money could be made, they began to lower their standards. Some appraisers began inflating their estimates to get the deals done. Some borrowers started claiming income they didn't have just to qualify for the loans, and some were engaging in irresponsible speculation. But many borrowers were tricked into glossing over the fine print. And ratings agencies began rating bundles of different kinds of these loans as low-risk even though they were very high-risk.

Most everyone knew that some of these deals were just too good to be true, but all that money flowing in made it tempting to look the other way and ignore the unscrupulous practice of some bad actors

And yet, time and again we were warned this could happen. Ned Gramlich, the former Fed governor who sadly passed away two weeks ago, wrote an entire book predicting this very situation. Repeated calls for better disclosure and stronger oversight were met with millions in mortgage industry lobbying. Far too many continued to put their own short-term gain ahead of what they knew the long-term consequences would be when those rates exploded.

Those consequences are now clear: nearly 2.5 million homeowners could lose their homes. Millions more who had nothing to do with this could see the value of their own home decline - with some estimates projecting a cost of nearly $164 billion, primarily in lost home equity. The projected cost to investors is nearly $150 billion worldwide. And the impact on the housing market and wider economy has been so great that some economists are now predicting a possible recession - a prediction all of us hope does not come to pass.

In addition to Rohter's Caucus post, several other media outlets reported that McCain's October 6 statement "distort[ed]" Obama's comments or took them "out of context," including:

• An October 6 McClatchy Newspapers article -- headlined "Out of Bounds! McCain distorts Obama's words on subprime loans" -- reported that "McCain's criticism in this case ignored the context and essence of Obama's remarks." The article also assessed the following "[p]enalty": "Knock McCain's credibility back 15 yards for distorting his opponent's words."

• An October 6 "Fact Check" on the CNN.com blog Political Ticker reported of McCain's October 6 statement, "While the words he quotes are technically accurate, McCain is taking them out of context from a statement that actually was criticizing abuses in the subprime sector." The CNN.com Fact Check gave McCain's assertion a "[v]erdict" of "[m]isleading."

• An October 6 post on the Washington Post blog The Trail reported that McCain's comment "mischaracterized the essence of what Obama was saying in a speech to NASDAQ last September."

Further, in contrast to Bumiller's report, in an October 9 article on McCain's speech, The Los Angeles Times reported that the "context of Obama's quote suggests a different meaning" than McCain suggested:

[McCain] said that Obama had once called the subprime loans that have fueled the housing foreclosure crisis "a good idea."

"Well, Sen. Obama," McCain said, "that 'good idea' has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression."

The context of Obama's quote suggests a different meaning. According to a transcript of a speech Obama gave in September 2007, he said subprime loans "started off as a good idea" -- helping make home ownership more affordable. But lenders, mortgage brokers and appraisers then abused the system in search of higher profits, he went on to say.

From Bumiller's Times article:

Much of Mr. McCain's addresses on the economy are delivered to voters through the prism of his attacks on Mr. Obama. On Wednesday, Mr. McCain got into a relatively lengthy discourse on how the housing crisis started, but soon enough had placed Mr. Obama in a prominent role in the narrative of bad mortgages that had been backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama," Mr. McCain said, adding that "as recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, a good idea. Well, Senator Obama, that good idea has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression."

Mr. McCain also vowed to "confront the $10-trillion-dollar debt that the federal government has run up and balance the federal budget by the end of my term in office," but in a slip of the tongue in Pennsylvania he then added, "this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners."

The prepared text of his remarks had called for him to say "fellow citizens."

Bad Credit Car Dealerships Bad Credit Loan Personal Poor Computer Bad Credit Bad Credit Loan Mortgage Ok Bad Business Credit Financing

Some five million fraudulent home mortgages are in the hands of illegal aliens, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development(social engineering+government+big money= disaster)

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Rates on 30-year mortgages fell from last week, while loan applications grew slightly in the face of turbulence in the banking and finance sectors. pa href="http://rss.cnn.com/~a/rss/money_latest?a=h3hQLF"img src="http://rss.cnn.com/~a/rss/money_latest?i=h3hQLF" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/money_latest/~4/415852523" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/mint_logo.jpg" /Given the U.S. economic crisis, people are looking for new and better ways to get a handle on their personal finances. We recently profiled a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/banking_20_money_management_in_the_cloud.php"10 money management web applications/a that promise to do everything from analyzing your spending behavior to saving you money by negotiating lower rates on credit cards./p pThe proliferation of these types of apps would have you believe there's a big demand for web-based financial tools. But is there really? We would hope so, considering how their advanced technology can provide detailed analysis about your money (or lack thereof). However, we secretly wondered if the only people logging in to sites like Mint.com and the like are the young kids of Gen Y. Do adults with mortgages, credit card debt, and 401Ks even know how to use these tools? /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12117amp;cb=12117' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12117amp;n=12117' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p h2Are Banking 2.0 Users Really That Young?/h2 pTo find out who's using the banking 2.0 tools and why, we started with a href="http://www.mint.com"Mint.com/a, who recently gave us a peek into their company's data. As a href="http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/06/mintcom-users-are-feeling-the-hurt-pinching-pennies/"VentureBeat/a noted, Mint.com's nearly 500,000 users are cutting down on expenses - they've spent an average of $300 less per month in August than in January this year, a 6% drop. However, they believed that early users of this site and those like it were sure to be emyounger/em and more emtech-savvy/em. We believe they are tech-savvy, too, since it does require the use of computer and browser, and we know that a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/obama-campaign.html"not everyone can handle such complications/a. But we wondered: how young are the users really?#160; /p h2Mint.com Is Slowly Aging/h2 pAlthough a href="http://www.mint.com"Mint.com/a doesn't require you to fill out anything more than a zip code and email address in order to sign up, they've conducted multiple user surveys in order to get a grasp on their company's demographic data. The end result of those surveys has given them a good idea of who uses the site. /p pMint.com admits that they, as a web company, did indeed "launch young." In the beginning, their audience was primarily Generation Y. However, over the past year, their user base has been gradually aging. At launch, the average age of the user on the site was 27, the same as their CEO at the time, Aaron Patzer. Today, the average age is 28, only a year higher, a year later. So are they really growing up?/p pMaybe they're not aging overall as a site, but when you look at the breakdowns by age range, you can see that some of the older age groups are trending upwards. Look at the 40-year-olds and up, for example - there is some growth to be seen there. Below, you can see a chart that tracks changes between September, 2007 and July, 2008:/p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/mint_user_chart.png" //p pAnother trend that points to the aging of Mint users is the fact that more users now report owning their primary residence. strongIn December 2007, that number was 39%. Today, 43% report that they own their own home./strong /p h2Why It Works: You Can emActually Save Money/em/h2 pimg align="right" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/money_cash.jpg" /a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mint_launches_site_redesign.php"When we first reported/a Mint.com's announcement that they had saved users over strong$100 million while managing $12 billion in transactions/strong, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mint_launches_site_redesign.php#comment-64014"some of yo