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These are extraordinary times and extraordinary times require public and private sector utilization of extraordinary measures to solve societal issues like the housing crisis. This issue cannot be properly addressed piecemeal.
The figures released today by the National Housing Federation make for worrying reading, with home ownership to reach the lowest levels they have been since the 1980s.
If home ownership keeps declining, we'll need to think of way of turning that around - or over time we will all suffer the consequences.
I wanted the book to serve as "a warning, a way of saying that if we don't change course -- and quickly -- that could very well be our future." Well, 12 months on, the paperback version of the book is coming out and, sad to say, almost none of those troubling trends have been reversed.
The ongoing financial saga is morphing into a financial thriller. Makes one wonder. Maybe the "silver lining" in this financial crisis is that the "dirty laundry is coming out in the wash" -- worldwide.
John O'Brien, Registry of Deeds for Southern Essex County in Massachusetts is asking that Tom Miller, Iowa Attorney General, step down. Miller is the lead AG in the controversial settlement with the big banks on mortgage servicing fraud.
We may be a large voting bloc and have tremendous purchasing power, but these have not translated into collective influence. It's now up to each one of us to change that.
A war is currently being waged in Britain. It is one that threatens to tear this sceptered isle in two, turning neighbour against neighbour and friends into enemies.
On Tuesday I got a phone call from my buddy Guillermo. "Hey man," he said, "You should come down to the Attorney General's office this afternoon. Some...
When you think of Ponzi schemes, fraudsters like Bernie Madoff come to mind. However, Ponzi schemes are not always the result of a few crooks; they can also be a common practice used by society to create a short term economic growth spurt.
It is more than a bit infuriating that Senator Kerry and his colleagues are now lecturing the country on the need for hard economic choices. If they could have been bothered to do their jobs just a few years ago, we would not be in this situation today.
The woman was fidgety as she shared her qualms about buying a house. More than once she said, "I know this doesn't make total sense..." as she discussed the reasons for her reluctance.
Here are four current marketplace misconceptions and the realities that will save time and money and reduce the stress-fest.
The FBI's 2010 "Year in Review" mortgage fraud report says the agency has used wiretaps, undercover operatives and "tactical analysis coupled with advanced statistical correlations and computer technologies." Not everyone is impressed.
Hopefully, the ongoing mortgage mess will not cause a test of Too Big To Fail, but after all that Americans have endured these past three years they deserve a lot more than hope from their government.
You don't pay $1.6 million for a three bedroom in Noe Valley only to move a kid named Bob or Sally into the nursery. The roll call at a San Francisco preschool is more apt to include Declan, Keegan, Balthazar, and Poet.
Deficit reduction will hurt those that are most vulnerable: our nation's low-income and lower-middle class families, the backbone of America, living on the precipice of unthinkable loss.
Frankenstein was a "failed artificial life experiment" that went badly wrong. Ours incubated in financial laboratories -- the result of complex "innovative" financial engineering.
We can expect that policymakers will continue to have to periodically step back into the property market with successively tighter administrative controls, continuing to play Whack-a-Mole with China's burgeoning property bubble.
Awhile back, I touted this idea of taking the foreclosed properties owned by government-backed entities -- Fannie, Freddie, etc. -- off of the residential housing market and putting them into the rental market. Looks like it's a go from the White House.