Loanowners across the country are deeply underwater, and they have been offered numerous bailouts in the form of loan modifications and assistance programs, refinance opportunities, and interest rate subsidies, plus plenty of lip service from politicians who feel their pain. This has all been a ruse, a diversion from the government’s real efforts to save the banks. Today’s featured article is about the poor loanowners who are still $1 trillion underwater. Some are so hopelessly underwater that they won’t see equity again in their lifetimes. They are renting from the bank with a feeble hope of equity in some far [Read More...]

When Congress took on the task of regulating the excesses of the mortgage industry, it ostensibly wanted to prevent a recurrence of the housing bubble. To that end, they passed the Dodd-Frank finance reform. One of the provisions of Dodd-Frank was to establish a “qualified mortgage” that establishes the parameters of what constitutes a “safe” mortgage product unlikely to cause another housing bubble. To this end, they solicited advice from various sources to come up with an appropriate set of standards. In Preventing the Next Housing Bubble, the final chapter of the book, I addressed what it would take to [Read More...]