If you have a job that involves building homes, buying homes, selling homes or that is in any way related to the mortgage industry, you might want to start searching for alternate employment. Seriously. Interest rates are starting to rise dramatically, and mortgage lenders such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are all cutting thousands of mortgage-related jobs. Last week, mortgage refinance activity plunged to the lowest level that we have seen since June 2009 and total mortgage activity dropped to the lowest level since October 2008. Unfortunately, this is only the beginning. Mortgage rates closely mirror the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries, the the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries has nearly doubled since early May. But it is still only sitting at about 3 percent right now. As I have written about previously, it has a ton of room to go up before it hits “normal” historical levels, and so do mortgage rates. As I noted the other day, some analysts believe that the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries is going to hit 7 percent eventually. If that happens, mortgage rates will be more than double what they are today. And we have already seen the average rate on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage go from 3.35 percent in May to 4.57 percent last week. If interest rates continue to rise we could be heading for a “housing Armageddon” that will make the last housing crash look like a Sunday picnic. (Read More...)
How Big Banks Can Steal Your Home From You Even If Your Mortgage Is Totally Paid Off
Did you know that the big banks have a way to legally steal your house from you even if you don’t owe a single penny on your mortgage? Big banks and hedge funds are buying billions of dollars worth of tax liens from local governments all over the nation, and they are ruthlessly foreclosing on homeowners when they can’t pay the absolutely ridiculous penalties and legal fees that are tacked on to the original tax bill. As you will see below, one 76-year-old man lost his $197,000 home that he fully owned over a $134 tax bill. A 95-year-old woman lost her $300,000 home over a $44.79 tax bill. This is a very, very dirty way to make money, and the predatory financial institutions that are involved in this business definitely do not want to talk about it. (Read More...)
Deal Or No Deal: John Kerry’s Historic Diplomatic “Mistake” Proves That Obama Does Not Want Peace
When it comes to diplomacy, Russia is playing chess, Syria is playing checkers and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is playing tiddlywinks. On Monday, Kerry said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avoid having his country bombed into oblivion by turning over “every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week.” Of course Kerry just assumed that Assad would never do such a thing, but the Russians immediately pounced on his statement. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov quickly announced that Russia would encourage Syria to turn over their chemical weapons to international control in exchange for a guarantee that the U.S. will not attack, and subsequently Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem stated that his government was prepared for “full cooperation with Russia to remove any pretext for aggression.” Later on Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon indicated that he is thinking about asking the UN Security Council to support such a deal. (Read More...)
The Number Of Private Sector Jobs Fell By 278,000 Last Month But The Economy Is Getting Better?
Have you heard about the “wonderful” employment numbers that were just released? Last month, the unemployment rate declined to 7.3 percent. Somehow this happened even though the percentage of working age Americans with a job actually declined and the number of private sector workers fell by 278,000. So how did the federal government magically produce a drop in the unemployment rate even though less people have jobs? Well, they did it by pretending that more than half a million Americans “dropped out of the labor force” last month. If the government is to be believed, the number of Americans that want to work dropped by an astounding 516,000 in a single month even though the population of our country is constantly increasing. The federal government continues to feed us absolutely absurd numbers month after month, and at this point “the official unemployment rate” is essentially meaningless. (Read More...)
Who Is Going To Buy Our Debt If This War Causes China, Russia And The Rest Of The World To Turn On Us?
Can the U.S. really afford to greatly anger the rest of the world when they are the ones that are paying our bills? What is going to happen if China, Russia and many other large nations stop buying our debt and start rapidly dumping U.S. debt that they already own? If the United States is not very careful, it is going to pay a tremendous economic price for taking military action in Syria. At this point, survey after survey has shown that the American people are overwhelmingly against an attack on Syria, people around the globe are overwhelmingly against an attack on Syria, and it looks like the U.S. Congress is even going to reject it. But Barack Obama is not backing down. In fact, ABC News is reporting that plans are now being made for a “significantly larger” strike on Syria than most experts had expected. (Read More...)
Is The United States Going To Go To War With Syria Over A Natural Gas Pipeline?
Why has the little nation of Qatar spent 3 billion dollars to support the rebels in Syria? Could it be because Qatar is the largest exporter of liquid natural gas in the world and Assad won’t let them build a natural gas pipeline through Syria? Of course. Qatar wants to install a puppet regime in Syria that will allow them to build a pipeline which will enable them to sell lots and lots of natural gas to Europe. Why is Saudi Arabia spending huge amounts of money to help the rebels and why has Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan been “jetting from covert command centers near the Syrian front lines to the Élysée Palace in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, seeking to undermine the Assad regime”? Well, it turns out that Saudi Arabia intends to install their own puppet government in Syria which will allow the Saudis to control the flow of energy through the region. On the other side, Russia very much prefers the Assad regime for a whole bunch of reasons. One of those reasons is that Assad is helping to block the flow of natural gas out of the Persian Gulf into Europe, thus ensuring higher profits for Gazprom. Now the United States is getting directly involved in the conflict. If the U.S. is successful in getting rid of the Assad regime, it will be good for either the Saudis or Qatar (and possibly for both), and it will be really bad for Russia. This is a strategic geopolitical conflict about natural resources, religion and money, and it really has nothing to do with chemical weapons at all. (Read More...)
Russia Has Equipped Syria With Their Most Advanced Anti-Ship Missiles
Russia has sold Syria highly advanced rocket launchers, anti-aircraft missiles and anti-ship missiles. In fact, the P-800 Yakhont anti-ship missiles that Russia has equipped Syria with are the most advanced anti-ship missiles that Russia has. When the United States strikes Syria, they might be quite surprised at how hard Syria can hit back. The Syrian military is the most formidable adversary that the U.S. military has tangled with in the Middle East by far. From Syria, P-800 Yakhont anti-ship missiles can cover much of the eastern Mediterranean and can even reach air bases in Cyprus. If the U.S. Navy is not very careful to stay out of range, we could easily see footage of destroyed U.S. naval vessels sinking into the Mediterranean Sea on the evening news. And once the American people see such footage, it will be impossible to stop a full-blown war between the United States and Syria. (Read More...)
The U.S. Military Does Not Want To Fight For Al-Qaeda Christian Killers In Syria
Why is the Obama administration so determined to have the U.S. military help al-Qaeda win the civil war in Syria? Why are we being told that the U.S. has “no choice” but to help rabid jihadist terrorists that are slaughtering entire Christian villages, brutally raping Christian women and joyfully beheading Christian prisoners? If you are a Christian, you should not want anything to do with these genocidal lunatics. Jabhat al-Nusra is a radical Sunni terror organization affiliated with al-Qaeda that is leading the fight against the Assad regime. If they win, life will be absolute hell for the approximately two million Christians in Syria and other religious minorities. According to Wikipedia, Jabhat al-Nusra intends “to create a Pan-Islamic state under sharia law and aims to reinstate the Islamic Caliphate.” As you will see below, many members of the U.S. military understand this, and they absolutely do not want to fight on the side of al-Qaeda. (Read More...)