Housing Crisis Numbers

Browsing through the Worcester Sunday Telegram I came across some interesting numbers on how the home foreclosure crisis is effecting Worcester County. Every week the paper lists all property transactions and from whom to whom. This is just a sampling of some of the real estate transactions in this little corner of Massachusetts so it had me wondering how bad things really are across the nation?

There was a total of 207 transactions and of those 84 were listed as a bank transfer. That works out to 40.57% of possible foreclosures for the entire county. Then I looked at the transactions by city and town and the probability of predatory lending sneaks out.

Fitchburg 5 transactions 4 for the banks or 80%
Gardner 3 transactions 3 for the banks or 100%
Grafton 4 transactions 2 for the banks or 50%
Marlboro 7 transactions 4 for the banks or 57.14%
Milford 8 transactions 4 for the banks or 50%
Oxford 4 transactions 2 for the banks or 50%
Ware 2 transactions 2 for the banks or 100%
Winch. 4 transactions 4 for the banks or 100%
Worcester 45 transactions 33 for the banks or 73.3%

Just some numbers to think about. Have a nice day…

Papamoka

Cross posted at Bring It On! and To the Center

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Big Bank Buyout

There is a probable solution to our nations banking crisis that started out with all of those bad loans that then turned into millions of foreclosures. Keep in mind you have to think like a wheeler and dealer like billionaire’ Donald Trump or Warren Buffet to make this proposition work.

If Bear Sterns could be bought for $2 per share then I think it’s possible for this blogger to enter the high finance games of Wall Street. First off you have to read this piece over at Reuters…

Goldman, Lehman outlooks cut to "negative" by S&P
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc's and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc's credit rating outlooks were cut on Friday by Standard & Poor's, which said volatile markets could result in lower profit and revenue.

S&P revised its outlook to "negative" from "stable" on Goldman's "AA-minus" and Lehman's "A-plus" long-term credit ratings, suggesting a possible downgrade in one to two years.

(Snip)

Banks have suffered from lower earnings and share prices as the housing crisis, a slowing economy and worries about credit quality led investors to stop buying a wide range of riskier securities. This has cut into revenue from trading, arranging debt offerings, and advising on mergers.

Several banks have also been cutting jobs, and Bear Stearns Cos agreed last Sunday to a $2-per-share buyout by JPMorgan Chase & Co after a cash crisis.

S&P still has a negative outlook on Merrill Lynch & Co's "A-plus" credit rating, and expects to decide within 30 days whether to downgrade Morgan Stanley's "AA-minus" rating. The credit rating agency said net revenue in the industry may decline 20 percent to 30 percent this year. - Reuters

Keep in mind that my plan to buyout one of the nations largest investment banks will involve a little principal I like to call the meek shall inherit the earth. In this case I’m talking about all of us that have been victims to bad loans, poor decisions and foreclosure on our homes. Believe it or not we all hang out at the local diner sipping coffee and blaming Wall Street for our lot in life. For the sake of argument lets assume that there are ten million of us. It’s a big diner!

All we need to buyout Goldman Sach’s and Lehmans is fifty-one percent of the shares so right off the bat we have a 49% discount. All of the members of our little club have to contribute to the plan for this to work so here goes. Below is my top secret plan for us to finance our plan. Remember this is top secret so don’t tell anyone.

We’ve all gotten those flyers in the mail that you get $25 if you open a new savings account, we each open an account and pool the results. Then we look for all the banks offering free toasters and we open an account and sell the ill gotten toasters on Ebay for $50 each. (Really nice top of the line toasters with the assumption that there will be a bidding war for all ten million of them.) Again pooling all of the money. Seeing that we are all going to be high finance bankers we are going to need reliable transportation to get to Wall Street. We each buy a new car and pool the $1000 cash rebate. Before we give the dealer our old clunker of a car we each find $10 in spare change in it. We need a Green side to this buy out so everyone has to collect $100 worth of bottle and can deposits from the side of the road. Since we are going to be dealing with stocks and bonds we are all going to need new computers so we each buy a top of the line computer with a $400 rebate on the computer and a $100 rebate on all of the software.

This is the really creative part of the financing… We each sign up for that beta testing for tracking emails that Microsoft is undertaking. That should pay each of us $2000 and Bill Gates will thank each and everyone of us for helping him out. Next up, we each email back all of those crooked bankers in Africa that have $30,000,000.00 sitting in dead men’s checking accounts.

If my math is correct it looks like out little group of dead beat losers has to much money now. That’s a nice problem to have. It looks like we can take Goldman Sach’s and Lehman private at $4 per share. Oh, I almost forgot, we each have a $1 off coupon! With the change we have left over it looks like we can buy Canada and rent it back to them.

The Donald will be so proud of us…

Papamoka

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Cross posted at MichaelLinnJones.com

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Somebody Wake FDR From the Dead!

When the banks start listing billions of losses in one quarter then it is time to say for a fact that we are in a recession. President Bush is waiting for a milk carton to actually tell him that his economy is missing. I’m going onto the Wall Street Journal and buying the White House a prescription for the next year. Maybe if the President is lining the bird cage that is his advisor on the economy lives in he might absorb through osmosis the fact that our economy is past broken.

Articles and facts like this one on Bank of America writing off $5.26 Billion is not a good sign for our economy. Higher ATM fees will not cover this kind of short fall at BOA. Maybe if they raise the fee for a bounced check to $250,000 it might help. Don’t even think about stealing one of those pens chained to the deposit slip counter. That will cost you a billion in fines and the price of your printed checks go up to $100,000 for 200 of them.

Over at the New York Times they have this on the mismanagement of Bank of America and the latest loss statement…

Profit Off 95% at Bank of America

By JULIE CRESWELL
Published: January 22, 2008

Bank of America said Tuesday that its fourth-quarter profit tumbled 95 percent because of huge write-downs of mortgage-related securities and higher provisions for future losses in credit card and home equity loans.

Net income was $268 million, or 5 cents a share, compared with $5.26 billion, or $1.16 a share, in the period a year earlier.

Like other banking giants around the world, which have written down billions of dollars worth of mortgage-related securities as prices for those assets have plunged in recent months, Bank of America, based in Charlotte, N.C., wrote down $5.28 billion worth of mortgage-related securities in the quarter. - NY Times

Maybe the CEO, Kenneth D. Lewis can help his bank out and take a cut in pay. Then again maybe he could go back to school and learn what banking is really all about. Share holders of Bank of America should be screaming for his resignation! Common sense is in the banks favor when you ask for a loan and apparently that was tossed to the wind at Bank of America and the full responsibility of the record loss rests solely at the CEO’s desk. Then again let’s see what kind of bonus check or stock options he gets to cash this quarter.

This will not be the first or the last large bank to write off billions and the next quarter is just three months away. Who will be stepping up to the table next to declare the bank stock crap? Meanwhile the boys in the executive lounge are selling their stock options off by the millions of shares. No guts, no faith, no glory. Shame and larger than life checking accounts not in Bank of America will be their guilt. In the end they walk away clean and the stock holders pay for it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a banker to know when to get out from under a house on fire with tons of explosives in the basement.

Ken Lewis can retire a rich man or he could pop up somewhere else where all of the bankers move over one chair. I’d prefer that he be prosecuted for negligence but the current White House and the Congress have no teeth. From the banking industry will come the largest OOOPS since the savings and loan crisis. Past mistakes of Kenny Lewis will be forgotten and the opportunity of screwing the customer that more provocative somewhere else will open up. One thing is certain, there is no bank in America that can just write off these kind of losses without paying it forward to the consumer.

Bank of America will survive simply because they are so huge but all the small town banks that invested in home loan bundles will have a vast difference of outcome. Huge difference!

This all comes down to a free market without rules and regulations that are adhered too. If the money was there to be raped and pillaged then guys like Ken Lewis did it and his reward for doing it is much the same as many businesses across our nation. Huge pay checks for screwing the nation over was good for him and bad for you. Long term repercussions just didn’t figure into the bonus checks. Check cashed, where is the opportunity to get the next big check is all that they looked at.

Tar and feathering should make a come back and we should start with the sell out of America on Wall Street! The street lined with gold if you can afford the entrance fee. Middle class and poor need not apply you disgusting infidels of America.

Common sense is not dead, it just has no place in the board room of corporate America.

Papamoka

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Cross posted on Michaellinnjones.com

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