Into the Void

No hope for help… | Oddly Enough | Reuters

“I have a message for every homeowner worried about rising mortgage payments: The best you can do for your family is to call 1-800-995-HOPE,”

… Bush said after a White House meeting with administration officials and lenders on a new plan to help.

Unfortunately he was a couple digits off, it is actually 1-888-995-HOPE(4673) . That gets you through to the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit group which offers free housing counseling for homeowners.

The article above gave me a giggle.

The “subprime mortgage” problem is being beaten to death on the news, and I have no intention of beating it to death here. If you can’t afford a house, look for a cheaper one. When determining whether you can afford a house, you don’t count future increases in income or expected appreciation of the property into the equation. And if you’re a bank buying mortgage notes from mortgage brokers, please check the financials of every single mortgagee before you use my savings to buy it.

Simple.

It’s the American dream, again. Anyone can be a homeowner.

Never mind the incalculably bad political decisions that have led to this situation. Let’s see: unemployment is up, salaries aren’t increasing, making it difficult to adjust to balloon payments. The value of houses is dropping, evaporating home equity.

And now, foreign investors are pulling their money out of the whole industry. The public debt? That’s owned by foreign investors. It increases every time a bank forecloses on a mortgage - the bank can only get pennies on the dollar in a sheriff’s sale. The investors are pulling their money out, destabilizing the stock market. Our money is worth much less in the world market, giving many Americans the mistaken impression that everyone in the world is greedily charging us more for things like oil and clothes. It’s not greed, folks. It’s called the “Exchange Rate.”

We are so screwed, even those of us who aren’t on the verge of losing a house we shouldn’t have been allowed to buy in the first place.

Mr. Ratan N. Tata, Chairman of the Tata Group and Tata Motors, today unveiled the Tata ‘NANO’ - The People’s Car from Tata Motors that India and the world have been looking forward to. A development, which signifies a first for the global automobile industry, the People’s Car brings the comfort and safety of a car within the reach of thousands of families. The People’s Car will be launched in India later in 2008.

“I observed families riding on two-wheelers - the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family. Tata Motors’ engineers and designers gave their all for about four years to realise this goal. Today, we indeed have a People’s Car, which is affordable and yet built to meet safety requirements and emission norms, to be fuel efficient and low on emissions. We are happy to present the People’s Car to India and we hope it brings the joy, pride and utility of owning a car to many families who need personal mobility.”
– Mr. Ratan N. Tata, Chairman of the Tata Group and Tata Motors, speaking at the unveiling ceremony at the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi.

technical info to follow…