The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is attempting to throw another prophylactic over the al-ready shrink-wrapped big-swinging mortgage industry (yes, that was a dick joke). New regulations will provide stricter rules on loans with teaser rates, negative amortization, and a world of other features that basically no one does anymore. They will also be offering a legal “safe harbor” that will bar any consumer lawsuits against the banks writing these loans so long as they are compliant.
You hear that? If we play by Uncle Sam’s new rules you can’t sue us. It’ll be like mooning the lions at the zoo. They want to maul us but the bullet-proof 6-inch-thick plexiglass says otherwise. And those dumb, furry cats thought they were at the top of the food chain. Invent an iPhone and we’ll talk, Puddy-Tats.
For nine straight months, home prices have been moving up. And the moves appear to be getting bigger and bigger. Am I shocked? Nope. Considering home values have been a drag on the economy for quite some time now, it’s about time my industry started adding to GDP. Stocks have enjoyed a sizable rally since their lows. Global economic health has stabilized and, to this author’s knowledge, no one is trying to nuke anyone else at this time. It’s about damn time that people started realizing the greatest investment on earth is earth itself.
Pretty awesome line? You betcha. And I totally stole it from someone more eloquent than me.
Bank of America (which is the establishment that I am quite sure will serve as the breeding ground for the Anti-Christ) has embraced an 11.6 billion dollar settlement in penance for the misdeeds of the former Countrywide. Evidently arbitrarily deciding African-Americans and Hispanics should pay higher rates than everyone else is for some reason frowned upon. Go figure.
Yes. Massive sarcasm is implied. Racism is stupid. If you legitimately subscribe to that kind of mindset, please promptly unsubscribe and go start playing banjos in the bayou. Hopefully a crocodile eventually has his way with you.
Beyonce lip-synched the national anthem for Barack Obama’s re-inauguration. Clearly when we want to honor this president, a regurgitation of past performances is sufficient.
“Yo Obama, Imma let you finish, but Reagan was the best president evah”- Kanye West totally said this and I am not making this up for the sake of a joke in the slightest, pinky swear times five.
It’s funny because conservatives want to support Reagan but simultaneously hate Kanye. Enjoy the catch 22, right wing.
That being said, WOO-HOO!!! the guy who “took out Osama Bin Laden and passed sweeping health care reform and snatched our economy out of a nosedive and has the middle name ”Hussein” and hasn’t suicide bombed anyone” is back for another four years! I didn’t need my gun anyway! Yay for our country slipping into a totalitarian regime where Uncle Sam not only knows best, he also is the only guy with the ammunition to justify his stance amidst opposition!
By which I mean the zombie apocalypse is coming in the form of democratic regulations and you are totally justified in digging bomb-shelters in your backyards despite the obvious fact that most of Florida has a super-high water table and it’s likely that you’ll drown while awaiting imaginary liberal-government-induced Armageddon.
That was all one sentence.
The current super-duper low rate environment is beginning to show signs of cracking. Every time our federal reserve comes out with a statement that doesn’t support continued ingestion of peyote (OR zero-percent interest rates coupled with massive bond-buying programs… basically the same stuff) then mortgage rates whip-tail higher.
Lemme level with you: what’s happening now is not maintainable. It’s only a matter of time before laissez-faire economics kick in (if you don’t know what it is, look it up) and our interest rate environ-ment reverts back to the rates necessary to draw investor attention. Which are way higher than we have now.
So, please don’t come to me in two years bitching and moaning about how you missed the boat. I told you. I FRIGGIN’ TOLD YOU. I don’t make this stuff up. We are living in an artificial environment right now. And if you have the wherewithal and the capital to seize the opportunity, then mazeltov. If not, then I hope your landlord is a nice person.
Because not all of them are.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Bungee jumping off the fiscal cliff gives me one hell of a rush
In my last exciting installment of newsletter angst I said that congress would come to a half-assed conclusion to the fiscal cliff crisis just before we went over it so that they could all look like they really cared about their political party’s respective platforms while still stopping our communal death-dive.
Well everyone: I was wrong. They didn’t come to a conclusion before we went over: they came to one afterwards. Only in America can we allow our elected officials to let our country fall over a set-in-stone deadline then vote for a baseless and essentially impotent stop-gap measure to prevent tax-mageddon from occurring and then BACKDATE it to retroactively apply BEFORE the deadline because “everyone was too hung over on the 1st of the year to notice anyway”.
Funny, because when my wife discovered that I had made a drunken text to my ex-girlfriend on New Year’s Day and I attempted to verbally “backdate it to before we were married” I did not yield such positive results. Clearly my wife has something to learn from the forgiveness (or ignorance) of Americans.
(Disclaimer: that last joke has been approved by Erin and is a complete fabrication. No hate mail, please. I love my wife and my ex-girlfriend is a terrible person.)
And spending cuts? No mention of ‘em. That’s right: we get to have THAT debate two months from now when we hit our new and improved national debt ceiling, because the last debate about our debt ceiling was so wonderfully productive (it wasn’t).
So the self-imposed deadline our governing body created to force our elected officials to deal with the tough issues just got kicked down the road by two months and turned into a “double or nothing” monstrosity. But I’m sure we’ll deal with the tough issues head on once we get there. It feels a lot like politicians were playing chicken except we’re all duct taped to the grills of their respective hotrods.
Thankfully in a “hey guys, everyone will probably get super-duper pissed off if we actually go through with this” move, Congress managed to deny themselves a raise in the midst of their bickering. Bravo, our fearless and self-sacrificing leaders. Way to demonstrate your commitment to the common man.
Now join our health care system, retirement entitlement system and system of pay where when you’re done working your job you STOP MAKING MONEY FROM SAID JOB. Then we shall applaud your sacrifice.
Can you tell this one seriously ticked me off? Because unless you are immune to sarcasm then I’m being pretty blunt about my opinion on the matter.
During all of these shenanigans, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have been talking openly about stepping down in the foreseeable future. In fact, Tim’s already got one foot out the door. Frankly, I don’t blame them. If I had to deal with the financial aber-rations of recent history WITHOUT the benefit of bourbon (which thank God I didn’t have to do) I would be pretty burnt out by now too.
Speaking of the Fed, my Fed governor buddies decided to come out with a statement hinting at ending their bond buying program (lovingly known as QE3) earlier than expected without any kind of warning at all. Interest rates suffered a noteworthy and abrupt rise in response. While this is certainly not the end of the easy-money strategies that are buoying our economy right now, it does bring us to a sobering moment when we realize that 30 year fixed mortgages with rates in the 3’s will cease to exist soon and permanently.
Tick tock, consumers.
And now on to pop culture: because politics and economics have effectively given me a migraine. Kim Kardashian (pointlessly famous plastic surgery poster child) is pregnant with Kanye West’s baby while still married to that other guy (who’s fifteen minutes of fame just ended). Thankfully she isn’t experiencing any nausea yet (likely because everyone else in America is already vomiting over it).
And our bright-eyed next generation of world leaders has started a new trend dubbed “Cutting for Bieber” where they post pictures of self-mutilation (usually a razor to the wrists) online in order to dissuade pop singer Justin Bieber from smoking marijuana (which no one is entirely sure he actually did). Yup. Some jackass with goofy hair who sings like a girl sparks up a doobie and the entire 9-15 year old demographic busts out knives and Instagram.
And these are the people who will eventually decide which old folks home we get put in. I dunno about you, but I know I’m pretty scared.
Well everyone: I was wrong. They didn’t come to a conclusion before we went over: they came to one afterwards. Only in America can we allow our elected officials to let our country fall over a set-in-stone deadline then vote for a baseless and essentially impotent stop-gap measure to prevent tax-mageddon from occurring and then BACKDATE it to retroactively apply BEFORE the deadline because “everyone was too hung over on the 1st of the year to notice anyway”.
Funny, because when my wife discovered that I had made a drunken text to my ex-girlfriend on New Year’s Day and I attempted to verbally “backdate it to before we were married” I did not yield such positive results. Clearly my wife has something to learn from the forgiveness (or ignorance) of Americans.
(Disclaimer: that last joke has been approved by Erin and is a complete fabrication. No hate mail, please. I love my wife and my ex-girlfriend is a terrible person.)
And spending cuts? No mention of ‘em. That’s right: we get to have THAT debate two months from now when we hit our new and improved national debt ceiling, because the last debate about our debt ceiling was so wonderfully productive (it wasn’t).
So the self-imposed deadline our governing body created to force our elected officials to deal with the tough issues just got kicked down the road by two months and turned into a “double or nothing” monstrosity. But I’m sure we’ll deal with the tough issues head on once we get there. It feels a lot like politicians were playing chicken except we’re all duct taped to the grills of their respective hotrods.
Thankfully in a “hey guys, everyone will probably get super-duper pissed off if we actually go through with this” move, Congress managed to deny themselves a raise in the midst of their bickering. Bravo, our fearless and self-sacrificing leaders. Way to demonstrate your commitment to the common man.
Now join our health care system, retirement entitlement system and system of pay where when you’re done working your job you STOP MAKING MONEY FROM SAID JOB. Then we shall applaud your sacrifice.
Can you tell this one seriously ticked me off? Because unless you are immune to sarcasm then I’m being pretty blunt about my opinion on the matter.
During all of these shenanigans, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have been talking openly about stepping down in the foreseeable future. In fact, Tim’s already got one foot out the door. Frankly, I don’t blame them. If I had to deal with the financial aber-rations of recent history WITHOUT the benefit of bourbon (which thank God I didn’t have to do) I would be pretty burnt out by now too.
Speaking of the Fed, my Fed governor buddies decided to come out with a statement hinting at ending their bond buying program (lovingly known as QE3) earlier than expected without any kind of warning at all. Interest rates suffered a noteworthy and abrupt rise in response. While this is certainly not the end of the easy-money strategies that are buoying our economy right now, it does bring us to a sobering moment when we realize that 30 year fixed mortgages with rates in the 3’s will cease to exist soon and permanently.
Tick tock, consumers.
And now on to pop culture: because politics and economics have effectively given me a migraine. Kim Kardashian (pointlessly famous plastic surgery poster child) is pregnant with Kanye West’s baby while still married to that other guy (who’s fifteen minutes of fame just ended). Thankfully she isn’t experiencing any nausea yet (likely because everyone else in America is already vomiting over it).
And our bright-eyed next generation of world leaders has started a new trend dubbed “Cutting for Bieber” where they post pictures of self-mutilation (usually a razor to the wrists) online in order to dissuade pop singer Justin Bieber from smoking marijuana (which no one is entirely sure he actually did). Yup. Some jackass with goofy hair who sings like a girl sparks up a doobie and the entire 9-15 year old demographic busts out knives and Instagram.
And these are the people who will eventually decide which old folks home we get put in. I dunno about you, but I know I’m pretty scared.
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