Negative Equity Nation for 1 out of 5 Homeowners: The Psychology of the 10 Million American Homeowners with Zero Equity.
Recent data suggests that the number one factor for walking away from a home is negative equity. For us to understand this dynamic, it is important to understand why someone would leave a home with a mortgage. According to the U.S. Census Bureau some 51.6 million owner occupied homes have a mortgage. This is data from late 2007 so we should be getting the updated data in the ACS that comes out in September of 2009. Another third of homeowners have paid off their mortgage. But with 26,000,000 unemployed and underemployed Americans, paying the mortgage has become more challenging.
Bankruptcy Filings up 33 Percent over a 12-month Period: Total 12-month Total of Bankruptcy Filings 1.2 Million. In last Report, Filings up 27 Percent in one month.
Bankruptcy filings are soaring in the United States. In the last data point, we had 134,282 bankruptcy filings for the month of March 2009. Bankruptcy data usually lags 3 or 4 months but the trend is ominous. For the last 12 months some 1.2 million bankruptcy filings have occurred. Much of this is linked to the 26,000,000 unemployed or underemployed Americans being unable to pay their bills or even service their debt. What is more telling is the amount of Chapter 7 bankruptcies occurring since these are straight liquidations and not like a Chapter 13 restructuring.
The Doctrine of Preemptive Bailouts and the Biggest Bailout you haven’t Heard About: The U.S. Treasury Plan C and the $3.5 Trillion You will be Paying.
Last week a story which gained very little traction hit the financial newswires. The U.S. Treasury is working on an internal project informally called “Plan C” which seeks to deal with further problems in the economy before they occur. The anonymous report came out stating the administration is reluctant to commit any additional money especially to the level mentioned in the report. However this is a disturbing new development in our bailout nation since this is one of the first times that the U.S. Treasury will try to preemptively deal with a financial problem.
S&L Crisis Part Two: Are We Repeating Mistakes from the S&L Crisis? Accounting Sleight of Hand and Mortgage Fraud.
During the savings and loan crisis (S&L crisis) of the 1980s and 1990s a total of 745 thrifts failed. If we look at the history of the crisis, total losses were largely saddled to the American taxpayer. It is estimated that some $160.1 billion was the total bill for the crisis with roughly $124.6 billion being paid by the American taxpayer. This crisis accounted for a large part of the early 1990s budget deficits. With our current economic crisis and having 26,000,000 Americans unemployed or underemployed, we are repeating many of the mistakes from that time.