Republicans in charge: Bachus warns regulators on Volcker rule

Quote from limitdown:

your logic is falicy...
eliminating the tax preference to home mortgage deductions has and will never have anything to do with national support for the banking industry through the Federal Reserve system...

I didn't say a single word about the mortgage tax deduction.

Not one.

Specifically where is the "falicy"?

perhaps try that thesis in a B-School forum and discuss it amongst prepared equals of similar training and see how poor of an arguement it really is....

There are simpler ways of saying "I don't know".
 
Quote from piezoe:

The number of 30 year loans that go to term is minuscule. These loans roll over about every 7 years on average.

They roll into new subsidized 30 year loans, on average. The mortgage market is distorted beyond any reasonably semblance of reality, it should not be a surprise then that home prices did/do as well.

Ask yourself this - what did mortgages look like before we went down this path? And what sort of home prices did it support?
 
Quote from trefoil:

piezoe: Yeah, but that's actually the point. You're talking about a bond that is callable at any time, and which of course would be called at the worst possible time, from the POV of the person holding the mortgage loan. That's why it's so hard to get someone to buy the things.
This has always been one of the big problems with mortgages. It's why they were pooled in the first place. I'm not sure about this, but I think pools of mortgages just might have been the very first securitized loans: Lew Rainieri over at Salomon, as I recall, invented these things so that the entity buying them could buy it more like a normal bond that matured in a set number of years.

It was also First Boston along with Salomon that started securitizing mortgages, more or less simultaneously, in the 80's. This was a major factor leading ultimately to irresponsible lending, because the securitized mortgages were so much more attractive to investors that within a short time far more mortgage money became available for lending.

I still don't see why a 30-year is irresponsible, from the viewpoint of the originator, relative to say a 15-year. I think Random.Capital is simply wrong on this point.
 
Quote from piezoe:

I still don't see why a 30-year is irresponsible, from the viewpoint of the originator, relative to say a 15-year. I think Random.Capital is simply wrong on this point.

I believe you are not appreciating the scope of the distortion. I agree that a 30 year is not that much worse than a 15 year - the problem is that even the 15 year does not exist without the implied taxpayer backstop.

Prior to government (taxpayer) intrusion into the mortgage markets, a typical mortgage was along the lines of 60-70% down payment with a 5 year term.

60% down, 5 year term.

From that, it's pretty straightforward to work out the implied median home price based on current incomes. The difference between the implied price and the current price is the size of the market distortion - and it is massive.
 
Quote from limitdown:

(email comments "It Speaks For Itself", from Dr. Cordell O'Connor)

Subject: speaks for itself...


Now , after reading this, you will understand what extreme right-wing parties ( i.e. Tea Party (GOP)) are up to . Such as my previous e-mail re; "what the real question should be..."


After The 8 Years Of The Bush/Cheney Disaster, Now You Get Mad?


You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden. You didn't get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city... New Orleans... drown.

You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

You didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.

You didn't get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.

You didn't get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.

Hmmm....You finally got mad when a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.


Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 are all okay with you, but helping fellow Americans who are sick...


Oh, Hell No!!





Yeah, all that, and I would still take Bush as our president over the commie dictator currently occupying the White House. I see you forgot to mention that Obama has spent more tax payer dollars in just eighteen months, then Bush did in his entire eight years. Obama is history in 2012!!!!!! The majority of America has finally woke up, and see what an absolute disaster they put in charge of the country. The economy continues to spiral downward under this clown Obama, but what does he do??? Spends all his time ramming a trillion dollar entitlement (Obamacare) down our throats using the reconciliation process, while letting the economy get worse with each passing day. Oh, but Odumda thought he had all the answers by ramming an $800 billion dollar stimulus bill through. That has worked wonders hasn't it? Not to mention that nearly 60% of the country wants Obamacare repealed!!!!!!!!
But this is what America deserves by using the affrimative'blacktion' process to select it's leaders!!!! Enjoy the Socialist States of America!!!!
 
It helps if you list all the taxpayer backstops. They are:

1 - The Federal Home Loan Banks - provides funding to banks specifically so they can make mortgages. This works so well and is so efficient at its job that most folks barely know it exists. I'm not sure that's a good thing, though, oddly enough.
2 - Fannie and Freddie - more or less keeps the secondary mortgage market alive
3 - The mortgage interest deduction - either the largest or second largest "tax expenditure" out there
4 - The property tax deduction (other local taxes are not deductible against your Federal bill, so that makes this a special subsidy to housing)
5 - The capital gains exclusion on a home sale, which applies as long as you get another house within a certain amount of time from selling the previous one. I don't believe there's any other asset that gets this treatment.

I'm sure there are others. It's a long list. The US housing market simply wouldn't exist in its current form without government support, and that's been true since WWII at least.
 
Quote from Random.Capital:

There is no such thing as making 30 year mortgages "responsibly". Nobody - no individual, no bank, no credit union - nobody - would those kinds of housing loans without a taxpayer backstop...
I can't be sure about this statement because there is the Danish mortgage model that provides transparency and liquidity to the market without government backstop and there has never been a default in 200 years.

Three ways Danish mortgage market trumps U.S.
http://www.realkreditraadet.dk/Admi...Danish+mortgage+market+trumps+U.S._090610.pdf

Structural stability: The U.S. market had a structural defect that made it extremely vulnerable to a contagious loss of confidence. Every individual mortgage security was a stand-alone entity secured by whatever reserves or insurance protections were embedded in that security. If these reserves turned out to be superfluous, as they always were before the crisis, they were paid out to investors who owned a residual claim to them. These were often the firms that had issued the security. While these firms had the right to remove unneeded reserves, they were under no obligation to provide additional reserves if this proved necessary. Since the surpluses on one security were not available to meet deficiencies on others, and since no one was obliged to provide additional reserves if this became necessary, the entire market was a house of cards. When some securities did run into trouble and were downgraded by the credit rating agencies, fears about the status of others ran rampant and the entire house collapsed. In the Danish model, in contrast, every mortgage security is a bond that is a liability of the firm issuing it. The Danish mortgage banks issue multiple bonds, and if one of them experiences a high loss rate, all the resources of the bank are available to deal with it. There has never been a default on a Danish ...
 
Quote from Random.Capital:

I believe you are not appreciating the scope of the distortion. I agree that a 30 year is not that much worse than a 15 year - the problem is that even the 15 year does not exist without the implied taxpayer backstop.

Prior to government (taxpayer) intrusion into the mortgage markets, a typical mortgage was along the lines of 60-70% down payment with a 5 year term.

60% down, 5 year term.

From that, it's pretty straightforward to work out the implied median home price based on current incomes. The difference between the implied price and the current price is the size of the market distortion - and it is massive.

I understand your point of view now. Thank you for clarifying.
 
Quote from piezoe:

I understand your point of view now. Thank you for clarifying.

I'm happy with that. Disagreement from a state of mutual understanding is how we make progress. :)
 
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