Saturday, February 21, 2009

Foreclosure Fix

To help prevent further foreclosures and to stimulate lending, I think taxpayers should buy up parts of shaky mortgages. Here is how it would work. Say, for example, a homeowner with a documented income is unable to pay his or her monthly mortgage in full. For this person, taxpayers (through the federal government) would buy down a part of the mortgage principle to a point where the homeowner would be able to make reasonable monthly payments. Taxpayers would now own part of the homeowner’s home, and the bank or entity that held the original mortgage would immediately receive an infusion of cash from the transaction to be used for future loans.

Here are some suggestions as to how taxpayers would be repaid: If the home were eventually sold for a profit, taxpayers would first receive their original investment and would share in any profit in proportion to the percent of the home they owned. If the home were sold at a loss, taxpayers would receive their original investment, with interest, before the homeowner received anything. If the homeowner eventually paid off the mortgage, then he or she would have to continue to make payments until taxpayers were paid in full, with interest. The homeowner would also have the opportunity to buy back the taxpayers’ share in the home at any time.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

A little known part of the stimulus bill

I was told by a famous writer, artist and teacher (my daughter Cate) not to post long articles.
Here is what Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of the state of New York wrote in Bloomberg about the health care provision of the stimulus bill signed into law by President Obama on February 16, 2009. First, $22 billion will be spent (a bad thing) to put everyone’s medical records on an electronic file (a good thing). Also, a new bureaucracy called the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (NCHIT) will monitor your health care to assure that it is safe, effective (two good things) and cost effective (a very bad thing for geezers). The nation faces a $50 trillion bill for future health care, which will break the economy (a very bad thing). Future health care costs need to be contained (a good thing). This is how it will be accomplished. The cost of each procedure and the age of the geezer will be put into a formula. The higher the cost and age, the less likely the procedure will be paid by Medicare or Medicaid (a very, very bad thing for geezers).
To see the full article; look in the comments section.

You’re out of your element, Tim

On February 9, President Obama promised a clear and decisive plan to fix the economy from Treasury Secretary Geitner. The next day Secretary Geitner unveiled a plan to spend $1.5 trillion over the next few years, but had not the slightest idea as to how he was going to do it. The market tanked 4,57%. That’s what happens when you give some guy who doesn’t know how to do his taxes $1.5 trillion.