This week, we look at an interesting proposal to help victims of the foreclosure crisis. H.R. 1548, the Right to Rent Act sponsored by Congressman Raul Grijalva essentially gives homeowners facing foreclosure the opportunity to continue living in their home as a renter. The idea behind this being that companies would want to avoid becoming landlords, and would thus work harder with homeowners to find a reasonable agreement.
Tag: foreclosure crisis
Sep 06 2010
Sunday Train: Sustaining Our Suburbs
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
As Dean Baker reported on the (bookmark worthy) Real World Economics Review Blog, new home sales figures for July are out, and they are exactly as would have been expected when the Mortgage Brokers Association reported a slump in mortgage applications in May.
The stronger figures earlier in this year, in other words, included more than a normal rebound from a recession:
People who might have bought in the second half of 2010 or even 2011 instead bought their home before the tax credit expired. Now that the credit has expired, there is less demand than ever, leaving the market open for another plunge in prices. The support the tax credit gave to the housing market was only temporary
This does not mean that all policy response is futile: what it does mean is that the policy response must address the problem we are experiencing, not the problem we wish we were experiencing.
Apr 21 2010
Another bank goes bust. This time, it’s personal.
Crossposted at Orange
On a few occasions in recent years, I’ve written about my mother’s death, the horrific relationship I had with my brother, and commented in various diaries about the status of healthcare, the financial meltdown, the state of the economy, etc. In all of this, one common thread linking this has been my heartfelt relief that my mother died before the crash, before we had to rely on the sale of devaluing assets to care for her. But she was not the only sick member of the family.
The recent news of the SEC’s fraud case against Goldman Sachs coincided with other news of a much more personal nature. The bank she invested in was taken over by the FDIC this past Friday, April 16, 2010. Today, my estranged brother died of lung cancer. He was 59, a longtime smoker.
Oct 01 2008
A Beautiful Financial Rescue Package
So, Monday a bail-out package described by opponents a excrement on toast went down to defeat because after getting compromises to make it, in my view, worse, the Republican leadership could not then deliver enough Republican votes to get the thing passed “on a bipartisan basis”.
Like they are unwilling to take unpopular votes to protect business interests? What was more than a decade of votes against the Minimum Wage about, then?
So, the first step is to see if the non-finance sector business lobby has been on the phone with the Rebel Replicants, cursing them a blue streak for screwing the pooch so badly before the Christmas shopping season. Perhaps they are, and so perhaps they will toe the line.
And if not, then the Democrats can turn to putting together a Beautiful Financial Rescue Package that the caucus can support. So, what would that look like?