If you work in the mortgage industry or for a title insurer, you might not want to make any plans for the next six months. Foreclosure-Gate is about to explode. It is being alleged that many prominent mortgage lenders have been using materially flawed paperwork to evict homeowners. Apparently officials at quite a few of these firms have been signing thousands upon thousands of foreclosure documents without even looking at them. In addition, it is being alleged that much of the documentation for these mortgages that are being foreclosed upon is either “improper” or is actually “missing”. As lawyers start to smell blood in the water, lawsuits challenging these foreclosures have already started springing up from coast to coast. In fact, some are already calling Foreclosure-Gate the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets. JPMorgan Chase, Ally Bank’s GMAC Mortgage and PNC Financial have all suspended foreclosures in the 23 U.S. states where foreclosures must be approved by a judge. Bank of America has actually suspended foreclosures in all 50 states. Now, law enforcement authorities from coast to coast are calling for investigations into this controversy and it could be years before this thing gets unraveled. (Read More...)
More Bad News: 10 Things You Should Know About The Latest Economic Numbers
On Friday, headlines across the United States declared that “unemployment remains unchanged at 9.6%”. Many analysts rejoiced and heralded this announcement as a sign that we have hit bottom and that things will be turning around soon. But is that the truth? A closer look at the unemployment numbers reveals some disturbing facts. For example, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a broader measure of unemployment that includes workers that have stopped looking for work rose sharply to 17.1%. But that is not the only troubling sign from this past week. Agricultural commodities continue to skyrocket, which means that food price increases are on the way. The foreclosure “robo-signing” crisis continues to escalate, and that threatens to throw the entire mortgage industry into a state of absolute turmoil. Meanwhile, the U.S. national debt continues to grow and wealth continues to leave the United States at a dizzying rate. (Read More...)
Federal Reserve Officials: Americans Are Saving Too Much Money So We Need To Purposely Generate More Inflation To Get Them Spending Again
Some top Federal Reserve officials have come up with a really bizarre proposal for stimulating the U.S. economy. As unbelievable as it sounds, what they actually propose to do is to purposely raise the rate of inflation so that Americans will stop saving so much money and will start spending wildly again. The idea behind it is that if inflation rises a couple of percentage points, but consumers are only earning half a percent (or less) on their savings accounts, then there will be an incentive for consumers to spend that money as the value of it deteriorates sitting in the bank. Yes, that is how bizarre things have gotten. It is not as if U.S. consumers are even saving that much money. Several decades ago, Americans typically saved between 8 and 12 percent of their incomes, but over this past decade the personal saving rate got down near zero a number of times as Americans were living far beyond their means. Once the recession hit, Americans very wisely started saving more money, and so now the personal saving rate has been hovering around the 5 to 7 percent range. This is well below historical levels, but the folks at the Fed apparently are eager for Americans to pull that money out and start spending it again. (Read More...)
27 Signs That The Standard Of Living For America’s Middle Class Is Dropping Like A Rock
If you still have a job and you can put food on the table and you still have a warm house to come home to, then you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. The truth is that every single month hundreds of thousands more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. The statistics that you are about to read are incredibly sobering. Household incomes are down from coast to coast. Enrollment in government anti-poverty programs sets new records month after month after month. Home ownership is down, personal bankruptcies are way up and there are not nearly enough jobs to go around. Meanwhile, the price of basics such as food and health care continue to skyrocket. Don’t be fooled by a rising stock market or by record bonuses on Wall Street. The U.S. economy is not getting better. After World War II, the great American economic machine built the largest and most vigorous middle class in the history of the world, but now America’s middle class is disintegrating at a blinding pace. (Read More...)
12 Ominous Signs For World Financial Markets
Can anyone explain the very strange behavior that we are seeing in world financial markets right now? Corporate insiders are bailing out of the U.S. stock market at a very alarming rate. Investors are moving mountains of money into gold and other commodities. In fact, there is such a rush towards gold that shortages are starting to be reported in some areas. Meanwhile, some very, very unusual option activity has started to show up. In particular, someone is making some incredibly large bets that the S&P 500 is going to absolutely tank during the month of October. Central banks around the world have caught a case of “loose money fever” and are apparently hoping that a new flood of paper money will shock the global economy back to life. Meanwhile, the furor over the foreclosure procedure abuses of the major U.S mortgage companies threatens to bring even more turmoil to the U.S. housing industry. (Read More...)
11 Long-Term Trends That Are Absolutely Destroying The U.S. Economy
The U.S. economy is being slowly but surely destroyed and many Americans have no idea that it is happening. That is at least partially due to the fact that most financial news is entirely focused on the short-term. Whenever a key economic statistic goes up the financial markets surge and analysts rejoice. Whenever a key economic statistic goes down the financial markets decline and analysts speak of the potential for a “double-dip” recession. You could literally get whiplash as you watch the financial ping pong ball bounce back and forth between good news and bad news. But focusing on short-term statistics is not the correct way to analyze the U.S. economy. It is the long-term trends that reveal the truth. The reality is that there are certain underlying foundational problems that are destroying the U.S. economy a little bit more every single day. (Read More...)
Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read
Back in 1983, approximately 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the United States. Today, ownership of the news media has been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations. These corporate behemoths control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day. They own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Sadly, most Americans don’t even stop to think about who is feeding them the endless hours of news and entertainment that they constantly ingest. Most Americans don’t really seem to care about who owns the media. But they should. The truth is that each of us is deeply influenced by the messages that are constantly being pounded into our heads by the mainstream media. The average American watches 153 hours of television a month. In fact, most Americans begin to feel physically uncomfortable if they go too long without watching or listening to something. Sadly, most Americans have become absolutely addicted to news and entertainment and the ownership of all that news and entertainment that we crave is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands each year. (Read More...)
Rampant Inflation In 2011? The Monetary Base Is Exploding, Commodity Prices Are Skyrocketing And The Fed Wants To Print Lots More Money
Are you ready for rampant inflation? Well, unfortunately it looks like it might be headed our way. The U.S. monetary base has absolutely exploded over the last couple of years, and all that money is starting to filter through into the hands of consumers. Commodity prices are absolutely skyrocketing, and it is inevitable that those price increases will show up in our stores at some point soon. The U.S. dollar has already been slipping substantially, and now there is every indication that the Fed is hungry to start printing even more money. All of these things are going to cause a rise in inflation. Not that we aren’t already seeing inflation in many sectors of the economy. Airline fares for the holiday season are up 20 to 30 percent above last year’s rates. Double-digit increases in health insurance premiums are being reported from coast to coast. The price of food has been quietly sneaking up even at places like Wal-Mart. Meanwhile the U.S. government insists that the rate of inflation is close to zero. Anyone who actually believes the government inflation numbers is living in a fantasy world. The U.S. government has been openly manipulating official inflation numbers for several decades now. But we really haven’t seen anything yet. As increasingly larger amounts of paper money are dumped into the economy, we are eventually going to see the worst inflation in American history. The only real question is how far down the road are we going to get before it happens. (Read More...)