Via Libby Spencer, this just fucking sucks. I couldn’t get all the way through, too painful. I wish Democrats had done better by people like this.
Whitmire tells a familiar story of how public and private institutions derailed an American’s dream: In 2000, he bought the $40,000 house with no money down and a $620 monthly mortgage. He made every payment. Then, in the fall of 2010, his partially disabled wife lost her state job. “Governor [Mitch] Daniels slashed the budget, and they looked for any excuse to squeeze people out,” Whitmire says. “We got lost in that shuffle—cut adrift.” The Whitmires couldn’t make their payments anymore.
[….]They applied for a trial loan-modification through an Obama administration program, and when it was granted, their monthly bill fell to $473.87. But, like nearly a million others, the modification was canceled. After charging the lower rate for three months, their mortgage lender reinstated the higher fee and billed the family $1,878.88 in back payments. Whitmire didn’t have that kind of cash and couldn’t get it, so he and his wife filed for bankruptcy. His attorney advised him to live in the house until the bank foreclosed, but “I don’t believe in a free lunch,” Whitmire says. He moved out, leaving the keys on the kitchen table. “I thought the bank should have them.”
A year later, City Hall sent him salt for his wounds: a $300 citation for tall grass at 1900 W. 10th St. Telling the story, he swipes dried grass from his jeans and shakes his head. “The city dinged me for tall weeds at my bank’s house.” After another pull from the water bottle, Whitmire kicks a steel-toed boot into the ground he once owned. “You can’t trust anybody or anything anymore.”
I don’t want to start yet another Obot/Firebagger war, but I wish the White House had spent more time thinking about families like this, and less about what David Brooks and Tom Friedman think.
If the destruction of the American middle-class doesn’t make you shrill, partisan, uncivil, unserious, then you’re not any kind of patriot, not in my book.
El Cid
You hate America and want Romney to be President. The End.
Corner Stone
Oh come on DougJ. What else is this going to be?
liberal
Yves Smith (@ NakedCapitalism) has been criticizing these programs intended to help homeowners in trouble for quite some time now.
I don’t think, though, that the problem is one of too much attention to Brooks and Friedman.
liberal
@El Cid:
FIREBAGGER!!1!
edmund dantes
Shit like this is why the “government doesn’t work” the Republicans spew forth always will find fertile ground. Bonus is they also get to be the ones that make it so it doesn’t work.
Third way democrats and blue dogs don’t help us either.
Cermet
As bush and all thugs would loudly crow – Mission Accomplished!
Corner Stone
@edmund dantes:
These were funds and programs completely under the control of the administration. No one needed a by your leave from any Republican or Blue Dog scum to institute situations that could’ve helped people.
liberal
Let’s be honest, though: what’s the real economic loss here?
Guy didn’t put any money down. Presumably the amount of money towards principle was pretty small.
I don’t quite understand why we should feel so bad about folks like this, but not about people who all of a sudden can’t make rent.
Yevgraf
I’ve yet to figure out what ‘tard keeps telling these poor mooks that these loan modifications are going to work – BoA pulls the rug out every time.
I’m inclined to fund a “Guns for the Insolvent” program, donating assault rifles to beleaguered, hysterical men and handing them gasoline vouchers and maps to BoA Directors and Officers homes and to BoA HQ.
liberal
@Corner Stone:
That can’t be true, because Doctrine says it isn’t so.
Screw you, firebagger!!1!
cathyx
The banks own the government.
Corner Stone
@liberal: I don’t think it’s the (amount) loss of principal that is at the core of the issue here.
Mnemosyne
Bored this evening, are we?
@edmund dantes:
This. Republicans actually prefer it when people get screwed by the government because then they can say, “See, we told you that the government doesn’t work right, so you should vote for us since at least we’ll get you a tax cut.”
That’s all a lie, too, but what’s one more in a series for Republicans?
El Cid
@liberal: Am I capturing fire with bags, or am I firing the baggers in the checkout line?
gex
Well, if dudes like this can’t tell the difference between government being the problem and government being told to favor corporations over all else being the problem, there’s little the Democrat in the White House was going to do to change their minds.
I’m going to go back and read the article to see if he talks about his voting habits. But in the clip, I notice the ONLY entity that tried to help was Obama and the government trying to give people a chance to modify their loans. That the banks made that as difficult as possible leads to him blaming government means NOTHING can be done to help people like him. Not until corporations decide they want to be decent to people like him. And they won’t because they answer to shareholders, not voters.
Nope, his attitude got him this. There’s nothing we can do about it. The more help he would have gotten from government, the more he would have hated government for helping other people while refusing to acknowledge the help he got. That, in a nutshell, is the story we’ve been seeing in every article about every hard luck “Real” American with a housing issue since 2008.
pragmatism
@Corner Stone: It’s the principle and not the principal?
liberal
@Corner Stone:
In this type of case, there’s of course the issue of programs that are claimed to help people, but which either don’t help or actually confuse or worsen the situation.
But, again, from 30,000 feet, I still don’t understand the difference between someone thrown out of “his” home for not making a mortgage on a place with almost no equity ever paid in, and someone who is renting who can’t make rent.
liberal
@cathyx:
Last I checked the Executive was part of government…
PurpleGirl
A friend (who’d been out of work for more than 3 years before finally getting a job) and her husband (also unemployed for a while) applied for a mortgage modification. Her bank “lost” the paperwork something like 4 times. They nearly lost the house. It was an older house in an older suburb of Baltimore and by no means an extravagant purchase. But when your income goes zero and then the new job pays about half of the previous job… this is what happens. (Personally, I think the administration should just have given people the money to get up to date on payments and a little more for extra time to get things together; note, my friend disagrees with me on this.)
Corner Stone
@gex: Or maybe government could have used its regulatory authority to force the modifications through and make them stick? Kind of like expected?
General Stuck
Lack of Patriotism is the good news that means nothing. National survival is the watchword for killing the middle class, an institution that has kept us from each others throats for a couple plus centuries now. There is no alternative that doesn’t involve at a minimum, lanterns and pitchforks. and at a maximum, mortars and Hellfire missiles.
Obama could have done more? No doubt. And It would have been easy to have done less. Why spend a second now ruminating about that? We will know when the smoke clears and the war of political attrition for the longer term, is over. And we are in the next battle, right now. For the numbers that mean everything going forward.
taylormattd
Yeah, would hate to start a firebagger war.
Can’t imagine why taking an unsourced, contentless, meaningless swipe at Obama, wherein you accuse him of appeasing David Brooks and Tom Friedman, would summon firebagger trolls . . .
There you go John, now you don’t have to kiss Glenn Greenwald’s ass this week. DougJ has taken care of the firebagger sista souljah quota.
somegayname
@liberal: You can feel bad for both the renter and the homeowner who cannot make ends meet, it isn’t mutually exclusive. As for the ‘no money down’, this guy sounds like the target demographic to help with homeownership. He made 10 years of $620 payments for a rough total of $74400 on a $40k house. The bank made their money, he should have been helped. Not given a free pass, just a helping hand.
Corner Stone
@pragmatism: It’s the principality and the equality of the reclamation and condemnation, nay, the foreclosure nation with which we must justify or pacify and eventually rectify.
Suffern ACE
@Corner Stone: Nope. There was a program that was announced with great fanfare as helpful for people. It was supposed to solve a problem. It was not clear how to receive this help. When people tried to get this help, they were actually harmed. After months of grumbling it would seem that they may have been Harmed by design. If the president doesn’t want to have people complain about this, perhaps he should find someone to run this program so people aren t given false hopes.
cathyx
@liberal: Yes, exactly.
taylormattd
By the way, you forgot the “Obama is worse than Bush, he sold us out!” tag.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@General Stuck:
Yes, and all the more reason that the WH gets that this is about angry middle-class people and not Villagers.
Mnemosyne
Shorter DougJ: “Let’s you and him fight.”
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
There’s been one group – plus Joe Liberman, Ben Nelson, and a few others – that has done this. If you’re going to be angry, it’s about fuckin’ time you pointed it at the right group rather than waving the gun around aimlessly.
ETA: This shit is exactly what happened in 2004 and 2010: It’s easier to go after the people who 95% agree with you than those that disagree.
cathyx
@General Stuck: Yes, look forward, not backward.
pragmatism
@Corner Stone: Shrill and ill. You be shrillin.
taylormattd
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
What does that even mean?
You know, the absolute worst trait of firebaggers (well, other than the fact they loath black people) is that approximately 80% of their time blogging is spent psychoanalyzing the secret motives, thought processes, and suspected political strategies of Barry Obama.
I mean, how is it that you know what the WH “gets” and “doesn’t get”?
Just Some Fuckhead
If he moved out before he was foreclosed on, the house- and the upkeep- was still his. He sounds like a bit of a dumbass.
Arclite
That’s fucked up. Can we get an Outrage tag?
driftglass
Because someone was damnfool enough to mention David Brooks….
The Playboy Man: David Brooks is interviewed by Playboy.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/04/anti-playboy-man.html
Clime Acts
Thank you for that little crumb. I appreciate it.
Hill Dweller
At the end of the day, the government can incentivize banks to modify loans, but they can’t force them to do it.
That’s the root of the problem. Banks don’t want to do mass refinancings, because, ironically, a lot of them would become insolvent.
The Obama admin is loathe to push too hard, because the banks collapsing again will doom the recovery.
They have some control over Fannie/Freddie, but the Bush appointed head is resisting mass refinancings/write downs.
Sadly, it’s a fucked situation with no easy solution.
satby
Pretty much exactly.
As somegayname pointed out above, the man lost his house after paying out over $74K in 10 years, so he certainly had equity at that point. Playing by the “rules”: working, going to college, and trying to acquire a little piece of the American dream is being snatched away from people; to add insult to injury they’re treated as if they deserve the screwing somehow.
Litlebritdifrnt
He should have stayed in the house. We have a client (not divulging any information that is not in the public record) that “inherited” her father’s house. The father and step-mom had taken out a ridiculous mortgage while he was in his 70s (30 year fixed). When he died she just wanted to keep the family home and began making the payments. When the mortgage company began foreclosure proceedings she came to see us. THREE YEARS LATER, we are still going through the modification proceedings and trying to get the house out of the Step-mom’s name and into our clients. Our client lived in the house payment free for two years while we were working this stuff out with the mortgage company.
Once the notice of appeal was filed in the foreclosure proceeding it appears that the mortgage company ran for the hills cause I am sure they knew damn well that the mortgage they gave those old folks was completely and utterly against public policy and I bet you they couldn’t get their hands on the original documents if their life depended on it.
JenJen
I saw Ron Fournier earlier today on Morning Joe, talking about this piece. I was surprised that he’d write anything I’d be interested in reading, but that was a sad, tragic, anger-inducing piece.
Gex
@Corner Stone: Sure. Because we all know how strongly the American public, especially guys like the “government sucks” crowd LOVE regulations. Why, I bet he wasn’t someone who supported any of the Republicans who wanted to deregulate the banking industry, so he probably is the one whiny “government sucks” guy that wanted more regulation and more enforcement of regulations. Why not. You got me.
He is just going to have to wait for corporations to make it better, because if you aren’t going to demand that government do better and instead condemn government, that’s your only option.
General Stuck
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
You know, I think he does. And has remained remarkably calm through a shitstorm of garbage all around, from every direction. We can’t all be lofty critics, somebody has to stay in the trenches and fight for the big picture of the long pol war facing us. We got thirty years of republican clusterfucks deployed in the system, to enrich the rich, and screw everyone else, and they have to be removed one by one, and you have to get and stay elected to do that. And conduct the slog within the sausage maker. Each person has to decide for themselves whether Obama is acting in good faith, or not. And if so, kinda maybe say now and then, we got your back, Mr President. And offer good faith criticism within that framework.
Joe Peeps
@Just Some Fuckhead: His attorney advised him to live in the house until the bank foreclosed, but “I don’t believe in a free lunch,” Whitmire says. He moved out, leaving the keys on the kitchen table. “I thought the bank should have them.”
Yeah, I agree. This working-class guilt has to be erased if the middle class is to thrive again.
Gex
@somegayname: Niiiiice handle.
dollared
https://balloon-juice.com/2012/04/23/i-live-in-a-trailer-now-because-of-a-mortgage-company-and-an-incompetent-government/#comment-3203345 Dude, you’re off your game. You didn’t recognize the Ron Fournier byline? The guy is the Tribble of slanted winger journalism.
Heliopause
I’m so finished with Balloon Juice. I’ve so moved on from Doug J who so used to be good but has so gotten in touch with his inner firebagger. Did I mention that I am so done with BalloonFirebaggerJuice?
Corner Stone
@Gex: Or. We can have a government sponsored program that does what it says it is going to do.
And I don’t give a lily white pile O poop if this one god damned jackass hates Big Govmint with all the tiny Rush inspired neurons he may have left.
Not really even close to the point.
eemom
@driftglass:
Well, there goes that old “I only read it for the articles” excuse.
Haw haw.
Narcissus
This is just the breakdown in the social contract trickling down from our galtian feudal lords to the rest of us.
Corner Stone
@Gex: It was either that or “Happy Rainbow Funpants, Esq.”
Tough call.
arguingwithsignposts
Mickey
lol…another day of “I can’t find anything bad to write about so I think I will blame Obama for something”.
Because you can always blame Obama for something.
lol…stay classy DougJ you useless hack.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@General Stuck:
I think so too.
For me, anyway, the American working class comes first, and the Democratic party is only as good as what it does for the American working class.
kc
Shorter National Journal article: White dude loses house, blames Obama.
eemom
@taylormattd:
Dude. Yer on FIRE.
Careful though, lest the mighty avenging Cole smite you with his CAPS.
kc
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Did you read the article? Now that the bank actually does own the house, he’s doing the lawn maintenance again, ’cause he hopes to buy it back.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: So, I’m curious then, how effective would you consider a paramedic if the fireman keeps breaking all of his tools? Would you get pissed at the paramedic for not saving someone’s life?
gene108
The political will to do more about housing just wasn’t/isn’t there. Obama & Co. tried a bit to stabilize housing, but the mess is deep and they couldn’t get everybody on board with serious mortgage relief, while pushing for FinReg and HCR.
The interesting thing about the protagonists in the article is that (a) he voted for Obama in 2008 and is disillusioned now because (i) Republican government slashed his wife’s state job in 2010 and (ii) construction work dried up and (b) the Republican Congress stymied (i) getting more aid to states to avoid lay offs of state workers like his wife, (ii) infrastructure spending that could spur construction jobs, and (iii) has ground any legislative activity to a halt this session of Congress by refusing to figure out compromises with the Senate and White House on most issues.
The net result is Democrats and Republicans are sharing the blame, as per the article, as people get frustrated with their lot in life.
mainmati
@gex: Yep, you got that right and a lot of the housing crash occurred in places like AZ, NV, and FL that are largely red anyway. Exception being CA, which also got whacked but which is pretty blue these days.
Suffern ACE
@Just Some Fuckhead: Well that too. He abandoned his house, so of course he is fined. Just like if he had left trash lying about or some other place where rats would like to gather. He does not seem like he looks after his personal interests very well, but that doesn’t mean that HAMP isn’t a lousy program.
srv
Doug, don’t let the thugs get to you.
I’m going to compile a list of HH days with wifi for you so I don’t have to choose between +pliny and +puma. Not all of us have the luxury of trolling from 4g and we have to make hard choices.
General Stuck
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Yup, and each one is reciprocal for each depending on one another, to provide policies to keep a healthy middle class and meet their needs, and in turn meet the dem party needs with the votes to stay in power.
The countries turn to conservatism in 1980 has damaged that dynamic, and created weak spots with the dem party trying to stay electable by garnering votes in the past by doing the republican lite thing. And many labor dem types have violated their part in the pact, by voting for republicans over social issues that are conservative, allowing the repubs to then screw these socially conservative labor dems economically. I think the narrative is changing back for both the dem party and our middle class working class. And if you listen to Obama these days, he hammers that all day every day.
kc
@Corner Stone:
The guy looks uncannily like Andrew Breitbart. But I wouldn’t let that influence my thinking . . .
Seriously, I agree, the federal mortgage modification programs have been a freakin’ train wreck. They were weak tea to begin with, and the banks fucked things up further through massive incompetence/bad faith, sometimes both combined.
ant
them numbers seem weird to me.
I just plugged em in to a quick auto loan calc, and at 8% interest, the loan is payed off in 8 years, and 100 dollars a month to spare for tax and insurance.
What interest rate was dude payin?
that’s the story in my mind right there.
arguingwithsignposts
@ant: If he was paying on a 30-year loan, the insurance and taxes would be closer to the amount. Use a mortgage calc instead of an auto calc.
JenJen
@kc: OK, see, now that makes the Ron Fournier byline square. I watched him on Morning Joe earlier and couldn’t figure out his angle, but that makes sense.
ant
@arguingwithsignposts: wut?
insurance and taxes cost what they cost. whatever. how much tax you pay on a 40k house?
arguingwithsignposts
@JenJen: Wait, Ron Fournier, former head of the AP Wash. bureau, is now writing for National Journal? WTF?
arguingwithsignposts
http://www.mortgageloan.com/calculator/
put in 40,000 on a 30-year loan, and standard tax and insurance (which is higher with mortgage interest until you reach 20 percent (?) of the principal or value. This is what I got:
Monthly Principal & Interests $214.73
Monthly Real Estate Taxes $250.00
Monthly Insurance $125.00
Loan To Value Ratio 100.00%
Months With PMI 126
Monthly PMI $16.67
Total Monthly Payments $606.40
JenJen
@arguingwithsignposts: YES. And I’m super-surprised that nobody in this thread had mentioned the byline yet.
And yet no quote about feeling betrayed by Obama. The guy who was screwed by the banksters didn’t say he felt betrayed by Obama, but Fournier cleverly put him in “a group of voters most skeptical of President Obama: noncollege-educated white males.” I’m just sayin’, classic Fournier in an otherwise important and good piece.
Marc
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
I like reading you most of the time Doug. But, christ, vague columns like this are worse than useless. Obama should have done…precisely what? He certainly could have done better in the foreclosure firestorm – but how? What should he have done? All I see is an insinuation that somehow he’s bought and paid for.
I think that bailing out foreclosed people is incredibly unpopular. People have a perception, right or wrong, that bailouts reward gamblers and the people who didn’t gamble end up paying the bills. And, more to the point, a lot of the foreclosures were a product of a housing bubble. (I’m well aware of the fraud aspect, and I wish Obama had done more to nail the sleazy people who made things worse. But fraud alone didn’t do everything.)
More to the point, you actually have to have something concrete to compare with. Otherwise it’s just Duncan Black-style “someone should do something” wankery.
ruemara
I am in this situation right now and I have to say, most of the problem was the credit union. They can chose not to abide by the mortgage renegotiation. They can chose not to participate in most programs. I’m not sure how on this domestic issue, the president is the final, responsible asshole who should be ashamed. I’d like the House to pass the 2nd stimulus bill that might have extended my work hours. I’d like my local government full of democrats to stop whining about pensions and overpaid government workers and notice that they are at the lowest levels of staffing since the 1970s, with an ever increasing population. I will tell you who did help out. Barack Obama. Because when he extended the Bush Tax Cuts under duress, he bought me and my family another year in our home. If the unemployment payment program that came online this year had been active then, it would have made a huge difference. Is he to blame for that? I don’t know. But I do know that for all the people angry at him, and the punditry angry at him, no one else has proposed, negotiated and actively pushed a solution through. So, carry on with the Obot/Firebagger wars at a goddamned time when we can’t afford them. Show me an alternative that has a chance and I’ll spend my free time signing petitions to get support. Otherwise, this is sad and ugly, but you’re just pissing up a rope.
Corner Stone
Shorter criticism of DougJ for posting this:
HERETIC!
ant
@arguingwithsignposts: weird. thats only 50 dollars per month lower than the tax i pay. on a 170k house. It’s also double the amount my insurance is.
My boyfriend’s got a 60k house that he rents to his brother. his payment insurance and taxes all come out to about 300 per month.
Muncie IN shouldn’t be all that high in taxes. I know people that moved and lived there for a while. Couldn’t even get their little girl into kindergarten cause the place is so cheap. Then in first grade, they had to pay out waaaaaay more money every year than we do up here in Wisconsin for books and shit that the kid couldn’t even bring home. The electricity kept going out all the time… and so on. I find it hard to believe that taxes there are that high.
arguingwithsignposts
@ant: I was just pointing out the calculations on a mortgage are different than on an automobile, esp with a 30-year mortgage. Even in Muncie. I’m sure the calculator has some kind of national avgs. built in.
Also, it’s helpful to remember that an auto is a depreciating asset, whereas a house – in theory – should increase in value over time, provided proper maintenance.
And yeah, the Indiana public school system is fucked up with book tuition and shit like that, thanks to Gov. Mitch.
JenJen
@ant: The interest rate had to be through the roof if it was a 30-year. Maybe it was 15? I’m guessing it was, but the article never says.
mclaren
I’ve criticized Obama more than most on this forum, but it’s really really really hard to pin this one on Obama.
Whitmire and guys like him are falling out of the middle class into homelessness and despair (or at best living in a motel or their cars while working minimum-wage jobs) because America’s whole economic system is broken. We spend nearly half of the government’s annual budget (1.2 trillion out of 3 trillion per year) on endless unwinnable wars, and the economists have shown that money spent on the military is far less job-producing that money spent anywhere else in the economy.
To put it bluntly, every dollar you spend on America’s military kills a job somewhere else in the economy.
On top of that, America has been busily offshoring and outsourcing jobs to third-world countries for more than 30 years now in the name of the red-hot-armed Moloch idol called “free trade.” Free trade is today destroying the American middle class, and the more of it we get, the faster the American middle class will disappear. Nobody has done anything about this except wring their hands. No one. This was a problem long before Obama came on the scene — in fact Clinton’s goddamn NAFTA (which promised to create a million jobs and actually destroyed 750,000) was a lot worse for the U.S. middle class than anything Obama’s done.
Then there’s automation + robotics + AI + databases + the internet. Everyone and everything’s getting disintermediated now. That’s a fancy way of saying “jobs are getting destroyed by automation at a record rate.” And they’re not getting replaced by anything. When a driverless car makes deliveries, you don’t need a driver. Period. When a computerized hotel kiosk lets you check in without a hotel clerk, you don’t need hotel clerks. Period. Vast swaths of jobs in America like delivery driver and hotel clerk are on their way out, and this process is increasing at an exponential rate, and it’s crushing the middle class. Obama didn’t start that trend, and he can’t do anything about it.
The problem we’ve got is that capitalism is not designed for this kind of radical disintermediation. Computers + databases are now doing things like using genetic algorithms to design airplanes (no humans needed), the Da Vinci Surgical System is designed the replaced surgeons (no humans needed), and so on.
Instead of blaming Obama, we need to change the fundamental way capitalism works. Otherwise everyone on this forum is going to be Whitmire pretty damn soon.
ant
@arguingwithsignposts: my point is that compound interest works the same. taxes and insurance cost the same no matter what the loan is like. (aside from pmi, as you pointed out)
the guy was getting robbed by the bank. nobody is pointing that out.
JenJen
@ant:
Should be the thrust of the piece. But weirdly, isn’t.
WereBear
Oh yeah great. More of this friggin’ self-sacrificing from the paragons of Amurrica.
I grew up with this crap. The only thing having more morals than Republicans gets you is a slightly higher quality of carpet in the tiny room of Republican-working-class heaven.
Over and over again, this “salt of the earth” stubbornness gets the recipient another one way ticket to Palookaville. Hey jerk, you’ve been ripped off. Stand up and assert your stupid self!
I might be a tad sensitive. As part of the debt consolidation process we are going through due to:
*Us deciding to proceed with an experimental antibiotic therapy for Mr WereBear since NOTHING else was being offered to us regarding his CFIDS.
*The insurance company deciding this ten year old, proven in many cases to be beneficial therapy, was “too experimental” meaning they would not cover the modest costs of the antibiotics.
*Us deciding to charge the drugs on our credit cards because he was doing downhill fast.
Then the credit card companies screwed with our due dates until we had a late payment. Then they jacked up our interest rates. Then they kept racking it up until we cried uncle and went into debt consolidation. Then they gave me a workbook where John and Mary got into financial trouble because they charged fancy ski equipment and a wild vacation to a nearby state.
SCREW YOU A$$h01e!
If this country had adequate health coverage, we wouldn’t be in this fix, would we? I buy work clothes at the local consignment shop: the last purchase, last summer, was $50. Mr WereBear lives in handmedown sweats. The four rescue cats have no clothes at all!
Anyway, it just ticks me off. I didn’t get into this fix because I wanted furs and diamonds. I got into this fix to save his life.
But ah well.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Marc:
I’m with Duncan on his criticism of the mortgage relief program. I think he’s right.
JenJen
@WereBear: Hang in there. Wish more were angry, and if I can have one more wish, I wish more were angry for all the right reasons.
“One way ticket to Palookaville,” indeed. Perfect. Sometimes you better just jump off the train.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s official — Hell is now a ski resort.
mclaren
People keep focusing on the fact that Whitmire got scammed by the bank. But banks are like sharks — when they smell blood in the water, they go for the kill.
The real problem is that Whitmire didn’t have a decent job and his wife lost her job. And that’s happening because middle-class jobs in America are disappearing.
Baud
@WereBear: You have more fight than I would have if I had to deal with everything you’re going through. No one should ever have to face naked cats. :)
ETA: In all seriousness, I usually have to avoid stories like yours because it makes me really angry. I hope everything works out for the best.
JenJen
@mclaren:
For at least thirty years now. It only takes one listen to a Springsteen or Mellancamp record circa 1985 to hear the Zeitgeist.
Of course that’s the most real and urgent problem, but the banks have compounded the problem making it all the more painful, and real. The banks threw a money party to make up for declining prospects and stagnant wages, and that should at the very least be considered in concert with the failure of industry. The “real” problem isn’t so simple.
clayton
This seems a piece of what I hear day in and day out down here in Texas.
People get screwed by a bank (seriously how does one pay $600 plus per month on a mortgage on a $40K house? I bought my house not so long before that guy did and my house was then worth twice that and my mortgage has never been over $800 — and that’s with PMI).
Conservatives/Republicans want people down in the dirt on their knees before they will give them any help — you can’t have a refrigerator, a stove and A/C, much less a computer with an internet connection. You have to have everything you own in a cloth bag on a stick before they think you might need help. But then they turn around and call you lazy and accuse you of stealing from them because they worked hard to get to sit on their asses and tell you how lazy you are.
Count me among those disappointed in DougJ for this pointless post.
WereBear
@JenJen: @Baud: Thanks, ya’ll. The end is in sight.
I’ll finish the workbook “1: The right response is: Pay all my bills and not waste any money on crystal meth.”
Yeah, yeah.
The bedrock assumption that all of this is my fault for not being adopted by a Romney several decades ago. That is what really chaps my shapely behind.
honus
@ant: exactly. On a 20 year mortgage at 10% the payment would be about 300/month. And mortgages have been about half that rate for the last 10 years. 620/month would be the payment on about 80-100k.
Kolohe
In 2000, he bought the $40,000 house with no money down and a $620 monthly mortgage.
This math is weird.
Bob
So all that help from Carter, Clinton, Barney Frank, Ms Waters, Nancy, etc. have really done such a great job of helping the small folks?
Meanwhile they are all living large on YOUR tax money!
The biggest part of incompetent government is we keep electing bigger crooks! just look at the Chicago Thugs in office today!
JenJen
@WereBear:
I once received a “tip” that was written on the back of a dollar bill: “Get a better job and don’t rely on me.”
It was over ten years ago. I still have it. I’ll never forget that guy, same way I won’t ever forget the best and most generous guests, but the good tippers want you to know who they are.
It wasn’t the note that pissed me off, it was the cowardice. He left it on the bar and ran. That’s basically how I feel about all these Habitrails the right gets such a kick out of making people just like them run through. They’re cowards.
@Kolohe: The math is ridiculous!! Thirty year of fifteen? Has to be a fifteen, right?
arguingwithsignposts
@Kolohe: http://www.mortgageloan.com/calculator/
put in 40,000 on a 30-year loan, and standard tax and insurance (which is higher with mortgage interest until you reach 20 percent (?) of the principal or value. This is what I got:
Monthly Principal & Interests$214.73
Monthly Real Estate Taxes$250.00
Monthly Insurance$125.00
Loan To Value Ratio100.00%
Months With PMI126
Monthly PMI$16.67
Total Monthly Payments$606.40
He probably didn’t get a 15-year with no money down. And the prime rate is not the rate a bank is selling this stuff to consumers at (even in the mid-2000s, it was above 6 percent – i don’t know what it was in 2000). I’m just saying the math isn’t that weird at all.
honus
@arguingwithsignposts: insurance and taxes on a 40k house still don’t get you anywhere near 600/month. No way this math is right.
honus
@arguingwithsignposts: those taxes and insurance are way out of whack on a 40k house. Hell, I barely pay pay 250/month tax on a 700k house.
Kolohe
arguingwithsignposts:
$3K a year in real estate taxes on a 40K property? Per this http://www.stats.indiana.edu/dlgf_calculators/2011/Taxcalc2011.asp?county_cd=18 it’s more like 400 dollars a year. Ditto with insurance.
arguingwithsignposts
@honus: what part of “I’m going by the calculator” is hard to understand? Or, “a house is not a car”? The math may not be sound to you or me, but we don’t know all the details of the mortgage, I agree. I’m just saying it’s not like that stuff doesn’t happen in mortgages.
Mnemosyne
@Kolohe:
I’m wondering if there’s a screw-up in the reporting and the house is currently worth $40K. I know several people who are paying off $100K mortgages on what are now $40K houses.
ETA: That is, they took out a $100K mortgage for a house that’s currently valued at less than half of what they paid for it. This happened to a friend of mine in Michigan, and the bank couldn’t care less.
Svensker
@Kolohe:
In 2000 interest rates were at about 7% as I recall. Maybe he didn’t renegotiate the rate. And maybe Muncie has really high property taxes — some places do, with no respect to whether the schools or services are good (see Paterson, NJ).
@honus: We were paying $8K/year on a $300K house. It really depends on where you live.
BruceFromOhio
Sorry, played that in 2002 during the trial run. Now it’s just an unfocused anger that pops up at the damnedest times.
ETA: Still digging the stars & stripes, though. Wish the 1%’ers would quit fucking with it.
Joseph Nobles
@clayton: “how does one pay $600 plus per month on a mortgage on a $40K house?”
That does seem weird. I’m in a $92K condo and I pay $750/month, insurance and taxes included. And I was in a deal where I only needed 3% down.
General Stuck
@mclaren:
I saw this scene, I think, in Village of the Damned, or was it something Bullwinkle once said. Mr Wizzzzzzzzzard!!
jncc
The numbers in that story just do not make any sense.
arguingwithsignposts
@Kolohe: I got $800 tax bill.
honus
@arguingwithsignposts: then your calculator is fucked. You don’t pay 250 month in taxes and 125/month in insurance on a 40k house. Take it from someone who has done this kind of transaction pretty much every day for a living for the last 30 years. If those numbers are right, the guy didn’t get screwed by foreclosure, he was screwed when he bought the house.
The Original Raven
Careful, corvids will nest in your neighborhood yet.
Kolohe
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, that’s seems a very likely explanation.
boss bitch
Get the feck out of here. Simplify much? Jesus.
arguingwithsignposts
@honus:
Clearly, you’ve never lived in an area where they’re trying to get rid of the pig farmers. /snark.
It’s not my calculator, fwiw.
Kolohe
@arguingwithsignposts:
I think selecting ‘homestead’ halves that, but either way is closer to the correct order of magnitude. But I think overall, as said above, the likeliest explanation is the house used to be valued and was purchased at a price a lot higher than today (zillow say currently $45K) and that’s what the mortgage was based on.
JenJen
@Mnemosyne:
Well, there’s that. But then you’d have to write about why the property that was once valued at $100K dropped to $40K, which gets terribly complicated, when it would be easier to write about how this guy got screwed by Obama and institutions and government quite suddenly and now he doesn’t trust them (the subject never says that, but Fournier does). What’s weird is that it’s a much sadder story if one wrote it truthfully. From the beginning.
clayton
@Joseph Nobles: My house was 76K in 1999 and we didn’t pay much down. Probably less than you. On a 30 year loan, we haven’t paid — with insurance, interest, PMI more than $790 or so — it has gone up and down.
I mean this looks more like the guy bought the house on a credit card than a mortgage.
We bought the house because it was actually less than 2 bedroom apartments were renting for. If you buy the house and are paying more for less than you were in rent that is just crazy.
We also went through a first time buyers program that helped a lot. I would have never made the choice this guy did about the property.
kc
@JenJen:
Yeah. Why did the bank just cancel his mortgage modification? The article doesn’t tell us.
Dan
@WereBear: Great comment, WB – and thanks for sharing your experience. Glad to hear things are looking up.
Yves Smith wrote a while back about the kind of punitive, humiliating garbage that people go through in credit counseling – exactly what you describe – and wondered why the banksters didn’t have to go through a similar routine to get their $700 billion. (Can’t find the link, though.)
Thanks again for the great comment.
magurakurin
Aside from everything else, I think that this story goes a long way to destroy the notion that owning a home is always and forever a great financial decision for anyone and everyone.
When I was growing up way back in the 70’s it was more or less conventional wisdom that you didn’t consider buying a home unless you had 10% down. I realize housing prices went stupid, but if this person didn’t have $4000 in disposable savings in 2000 to put down on, what would have to be considered a very modestly priced home for the time, there is no way he should have signed the mortgage. I’m sure the snake oil salesman at the bank or mortgage company fed him a bunch of crap and more or less conned him into signing onto something he wasn’t prepared for and that is fucked.
I see the failure not of Obama or the current government to help this guy, but rather as other factors which really kicked into play after the Reagan Revolution. One would be the fall in wages of the middle class that led to a someone not being able to have enough money for such a down payment. People have been getting squeezed for too long. Another is a lack of financial education and awareness on the part of home buyers and mortgage consumers. And maybe the biggest is the lack of controls on how lenders are allowed to make loans.
There is a whole lot fail here to go around.
Jibeaux
I don’t even understand why his payments were so high to begin with. We put $10k down on a $116k house and our payments with the escrow for the insurance included stayed under $700 in an ARM / 30 yr. Unless this was a 15 year mortgage, the math on that one is weird.
jncc
i will turn of my snark for just a minute about the Zimmerman/Martin shooting …
I saw a story not long after the shooting broke nationally that noted that the foreclosures were particularly bad in Florida and that there were a number of “houses” in the “gated community” where Zimmerman lived that were vacant and had been foreclosed on. (I put those words in quotes because if you look at the area, you’ll see that these are row after row of shared-wall townhouses.
Anyway, one reason advanced for the alleged rash of burglaries in the community was that so many houses were vacant and that people were breaking in to steal appliances, etc. And when that happens in a neighborhood, property values plunge even more because you end up with boarded up houses.
So another lens through which you can view Zimmerman (in addition to him being a stone cold murderer, of course) is that he was one of those guy whose house was probably underwater or close to it, living in a neighborhood where a “gated community” suddenly turned into a lot of abandoned houses, unmowed yards, slipping property values, etc.
That sort of tension and anger and bitterness are going to be expressed somehow.
The unfortunate thing, of course, is that more often than not, those emotions aren’t directed towards the underlying causes. Obama’s remark about people clinging to religion and guns was spot on and its a shame that such truth-telling is impossible in the public sphere.
Mnemosyne
@kc:
Oh, that part I completely believe. I’ve heard way too many horror stories about banks losing payments, agreeing to modifications and then demanding the “late payment,” etc. Lots of people have gone through mortgage modification in good faith only to have it mysteriously reversed with no explanation months later.
Gus
@Heliopause: Is that serious? I can’t tell any more. ‘Cause if you think BJ is insufficiently on Obama’s side, you’re the PUMA of Obots.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Yes, I’ll take two bacon double cheeseburgers, one with swiss and no onions, the other with the works. A single large potato wedge and two shakes; one strawberry and the other cherry. To go.
What? Wrong place? Oops, sorry ’bout that.
gene108
Punched the numbers into my financial calculator and assuming a 30 year fixed mortgage, if the whole 640 only paid the mortgage and no tax, he had a 19% interest rate. If he paid $250 monthly in real estate taxes, the interest was a bit over 11%.
In a nutshell, he put no money down and got stuck with a very high interest rate.
Phil Perspective
@Hill Dweller: Yes the government can force them. Why? Because they were supposed to be offering them monetary incentives to do the mods. But we know what HAMP really was. A backdoor bank bailout.
dcdl
@somegayname: Thank you for pointing that out. Also, when you have more renters than owner’s the landlord can pretty ,such set the price of rent.
The scenario this guy is going or went through is basically what my husband and I went through. We are now renting ourselves and also renting out our house. Two years ago it rented for about $1300 and now we can rent out our house for close to $2000 if we want.
Property insurance can go up. Mine goes up 3% a year. A lot of people are trusting with “experts” thinking the information they are being told is good info. Who knows if the gentleman could even sell his house. Meaning how much it depreciated, paying realtor fees, ect. Sounds like his bank worked like mine on the loan modification with all the “late” fees and all the other fees. We ended up owing $8000 and there went our little savings and 401k. Downward spiral happens fast. Especially when you are trying to do the “ethical” thing.
Phil Perspective
@arguingwithsignposts: Yeah, the same Ron Fournier that loves licking KKKarl Rove’s ass.
Tim I
Doug, fuck you! The fault lies entirely with the Daniels administration. I love in the godforsaken shithole and I know that Mitch and the teabaggers are out to fuck over everyone who lives here.
To expect Obama can bailout everyone who was fucked over by a Republican Governor is bullshit.
Tim I
Doug, fuck you! The fault lies entirely with the Daniels administration. I live in the godforsaken shithole and I know that Mitch and the teabaggers are out to fuck over everyone who lives here.
To expect Obama can bailout everyone who was fucked over by a Republican Governor is bullshit.
FlipYrWhig
What evidence is there that the White House cares what Tom Friedman and David Brooks think? I always had a strong suspicion that worry over what elite pundits would say doomed the Gore campaign in 2000. But I don’t get that sense from this crew at all. Is this part of the deficit reduction/”grand bargain” tea-leaf reading or something?
I mean, yes, the mortgage market is and has been all fucked up for years. And Something Different would have been swell, for some values of Something Different yet to be disclosed, and I’m not an economist and have no bloody idea what it would be. Doing right by people like this should be imperative. But I don’t get how you go from “Obama didn’t do right by these people” to “Obama didn’t do right by these people because something something David Brooks.”
Bruce S
The fact that you’re taking flak for this post says it all about certain brain-dead types here.
I’m working hard on this at the local level, because frankly the administration has shown itself not to give a fuck. Doesn’t mean I’m not also working to re-elect Obama, but the vitriol against anyone who talks about reality as opposed to some childish dipshit obsession with DNC Uber Alles – and claiming that retrograde shit is the core of “serious politics” – is pathetic. FWIW Van Jones currently provides some decent antidote to this cowardly “one-dimensional chess” crap.
And yes, the performance of the administration regarding foreclosures has been shameful – could hardly have been any weaker.
Bruce S
FlipyrWhig – if the fucking state of Nevada – or certain cities like Provincetown – can come up with a better solution to the foreclosure crisis than the administration could when it had the financial industry by the balls involved in criminal robosigning behavior (and I’m not saying the NV solution was perfect, but it’s it’s slowed foreclosures drastically), there’s a problem. Your complacency on this one is disgusting and obviously steeped in total inattention to what’s been going on at the core of the economic crisis – and, yes, it still is a crisis for tens of millions of people.
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce S: Learn to read, dipshit. I didn’t defend Obama on policy one iota. Re-read, then suck it, then re-read again, then suck it harder.
FlipYrWhig
: @Bruce S: I indicated no “complacency.” is this the quality of your “help” on this issue? You don’t listen, don’t understand, pick fights and act obtuse on every issue. Lord have mercy on anyone saddled with your assistance.
Bruce S
I’m obtuse on this issue? Good lord. Get a fucking life! If you haven’t a clue what might have been done better when the DOJ had the industry by the balls with robosigning criminality, you probably don’t measure up to complacency. My bad. Ignorant will do.
You invariably carp whenever the least criticism of the administration is involved. This is just a fact. And you are part of the clown show that abuses anyone who doesn’t toe your pathetic party line.
There’s a pattern here that you are consistently part of. It’s not helpful. Also interesting and typical that you don’t respond on substance, when I referred to specific issues and recourse, but on hurt “feefees.”
@discouraged@
He had a trial modification, not a final modification. They’re usually determined by stated income. While he makes his payments, the banks review submitted documentation and make their determination from that. A trial mod isn’t a guarantee of a permanent mod.
Also, if a loan becomes delinquent and insurance payments aren’t kept up, the bank will jack up the escrow payment with force–placed insurance, which is often 4 times as much as regular insurance. Apparently, many banks sell their own insurance and have been using this as a revenue stream.
It’s wrong to blame Obama. This is purely bank greed and incompetence. It’s a symptom of the world we now live in. Not so long ago, who would have thought companies would be as dishonest as Enron? Now, corporations have got the balls to acknowledge that while, yes, they did mislead their investors, those investors should have been smart enough to figure it out on their own.
Bruce S
“It’s wrong to blame Obama. This is purely bank greed and incompetence.”
This is a straw man formulation. Of course this is bank greed and incompetence. But is it too much to ask of this administration to do something serious about it? There was potential recourse – without a congressional act – for stronger control over the foreclosure process when the robo-signing criminality was being deliberated at the DOJ level. This was a case of blatant, intentional criminality – involving fraud and property crimes that would have sent the average person to jail – and the resulting agreement was weak. It appears to have been deliberately weak – AGs like Harris and Schniederman had to pressure for even modest improvements. Not one of the administration’s finest hours. And hardly a tangential issue – with a quarter of mortgages underwater and the mortgage scams at the heart of the financial meltdown. There are practical approaches to help families being kicked out of their homes , but at the federal level next to nothing has been done to force the banks – or even Fannie and Freddie – to the table or even to abide by basic principles of verifiable documentation of ownership. Compassion for victims of a fraudulent mortgage market that made billions for banksters who got a helping taxpayers’ hand when the bottom fell out, some attempt at fairness in current context and basic legality aside, it’s also a fact that without a broad principal reduction strategy that puts the crisis behind us, economic recovery will stay weak.
samara morgan
dougj, you ignorant slut. BJ has become a 24/7 firebagger blog.
who are you going to vote for?
or or are you staying home with freddie?
samara morgan
and heres some bad news for you DougJ, Leader of Betrayals, and freddie and the rest of the firebagger contingent.
Occupy looks toward political conventions.
I’m sure this will happen because the owwies hate Obama like freddie told us.
and…..i predicted this. Occupy is going to flex its political muscles with an occupy the electorate campaign.
i would army crawl over broken glass and fire ants to vote for Obama. and yeah, those of you that think Obama hasn’t been doing everything in his power are just….well….cudlips.
@discouraged@
Bruce, I don’t disagree with you, but I can’t believe we’d be in a better place if Obama had done what you wanted him to do. Manufactured Republican outrage would have nullified any program he wanted to institute. I look forward to Obama’s statements on modifications when he’s in full campaign mode and can say what he really thinks.
ricky
Reading both the post and the comments it is obvious many cheeto munching basement dwellers are unaware our President does care about people who hate him because their only income was cut off by a Republican governor. He just cares MORE about eating dog.
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce S: You’re a fucking clown. I didn’t defend Obama. I specifically said I would like something better to have been done but didn’t know what it would be because I’m not an expert on economic policy. You understood it as sarcastic or something because you wanted to start a smug, condescending fight with me because of past interactions. You didn’t read what I actually wrote, then you shot your wad in self-congratulation over what you thought I wrote. And it’s not the first time. You’re a sorry specimen.
FlipYrWhig
@Bruce S: Look again, slowly, because after all you’re very helpful and thorough on these vital policy matters. Look what I take issue with in the original post. Notice that it’s the leap to Brooks and Friedman. Then notice your continued self-regard. It’s probably a pathology. Seek help.