Although many laissez-faire proponents continue to argue against any government intervention into the housing & mortgage crises in favor of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" letting free markets create their own solutions, some historians are pointing to the Great Depression, when moratoriums on foreclosures sometimes lasted many years. From a New York Times story:The Bush administration recently announced a plan to delay foreclosures for some troubled homeowners for 30 days. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, has called for a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures.But two state legislators have been quietly pushing for an even longer reprieve for homeowners in New York State: a one-year moratorium...The measure would allow residents to rema
In a complete reversal of his earlier fighting stance of not accepting a pardon, disgraced former President Joseph Estrada applied for “full, free and unconditional” pardon from President Arroyo.
From having his spokespersons demand an “all-encompassing” amnesty, Estrada now had his lawyers withdraw his motion for reconsideration with the Sandiganbayan for his September 12 guilty verdict on two counts of plunder.
While insisting to bowing on the “wisdom of my lawyers” after realizing that “I don’t really stand a chance with the justice system that we have…,” Estrada also justifies his change of tack by saying that this would “start a healing process” for the “sharply divided nation” and that he can do something better for the country if he was free.
The long and short of it, he claims, is he was doing it with “the highest national interest” in mind.
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418 Closed-End Second Lien RMBS Classes Downgraded by Standard & Poor's - 7/19/07 snip:...S&P Ratings Services today lowered its credit ratings on 418 classes of U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) backed by U.S. closed-end second-lien mortgage collateral issued from the beginning of January 2005 through the end of January 2007. Standard & Poor's is taking these actions because it believes that losses on U.S. RMBS backed by closed-end second-lien collateral will significantly exceed historical precedent and our original assumptions. We believe that this poor performance results from a combination of factors including, but not limited to, an environment of looser underwriting standards; pressure on home prices; speculative borrowing behavior; risk layering (the combination of several risk elements for one single borrower); very high combined loan-to-values (CLTVs); financial pressure on borrowers resulting from payment increases on first-lien mortgages; and question
Reading TwoTone’s discussion inspires the Regal Renter to mention something about setting the correct precedent.
You see, the Regal Renter is a happy renter. Regal has rented her entire adult life. She likes to travel and have her mind on other things, so she has never wanted the responsibility of owning her own place. Instead, she’s more than happy to let someone else take on that responsibility.
In most cases, Regal has gotten along just fine with her managers. Setting the proper precedent is one of her number techniques. When someone really wants an apartment, they’re often willing to do whatever it takes to get it. They put their best foot forward, act exceptionally nice, advertise how accommodating they are, etc. If they see a problem when looking at the apartment for the first time, they often imply no sense of urgency in having the item repaired. After all, they don’t want the manager or landlord to think that their too fussy.
Making a good impression of
The FA have set their precedent – now they have to follow it
Why does it always seem that as soon as Arsenal are involved in anything controversial the whole world seems to jump on them? Ever since the end of the Carling Cup Final Sky Sports News have been baying for blood, Alan Green thinks that Chelski were innocent bystanders, Alan Hansen thinks that Flampard is a saint and last night on Radio Five Live, the presenter Russell Fuller actually asked people to email/text in if they had felt compelled to turn of their tv sets in order to protect their children!
Let’s get something straight, Kolo’s response was wrong but understandable. Not to the media, they couldn’t care less but the fact remains as soon as the Chavs got 2-1 up they used every dark art they could find. Shevchenko, well versed in cheating from his days in
Italy twice dragged back Arsenal players within a minute, on each occasion the ball was kicked away. Now I thought a blat
One of the more prominent stories to come to my attention while I’ve been playing catch up is the whole Shoemoney, MyBlogLog, banning, hack baiting, reinstating fiasco.
As I’ve read through maybe 20 articles on this (Google Blog search), I’ve been swayed back and forth by numerous opinions, but one thing that has stuck like a piece of broken glass in the back of my throat was that Shoemoney has essentially come off as the “injured party” in all of this.
Andy wrote a damn good post covering the entire debacle, and pretty much hits the nail on the head.
Rex, while maybe not as eloquent, says it in a way that any red blooded beer guzzler can understand:
Technically Speaking, Shoe screwed Shoe. If he was really concerned about security, he could have reported it to the MBL crew asap via proper channels. What is that? He could have messaged Rafer, Eric or anyone else at the MBL staff. He chose to make more money for Shoe, and for that Shoe, you got b
Remember when New York banned smoking is restaurants? Anybody who says laws do not set precedents for other laws are ignorant. Guess what they want to ban now?
THE PROPOSAL: New York City health officials want to stop restaurants from using artificial trans fatty acids, commonly listed on food labels as partially hydrogenated oil. …read the rest here.
This is a SMALL example of why we need less laws, less regulations, rather than more. Governments who want to control how you live your life will not stop at the small things.
