Obama Rewards Sub-prime Borrowers and Society's Deadbeats with Housing Bill

BS. Are you seriously comparing health care with a freaking ferrari? So children who get sick shouldn't get health benefits because they didn't earn it? This is your logic?

 

Hey insane man you're clearly a bitter old man near my father's age. Let me tell you something my father stayed with an old couple in the montrose area paying $50/week rent for a bedroom in their home and got a job the day he showed up in America in the jewelry department at a store downtown. My grandfather was a cab driver in yugoslavia saved up his money along with the help of his brother to send my dad to UH because he had a visa to go to school. My father came went to UH for a year and couldn't afford the second semester so the journey began. Selling hot dogs,janitor,salesman, gas station attendant. He saved up a little money and bought a game room, those were big back in the day. Soon enough he owned 7 or 8 of them and began selling them in exchange for Mcdonald's franchises. All without a college degree, so quit being so bitter about Immigrants! My dad did it the legal way with a visa. He came to the land of opportunity and did seized his opportunity don't be bitter, you should be proud that you're country allowed that unlike yugoslavia at the time. America doesn't offer that same opportunity today and that's what I've been saying we are no longer the land of opportunity.

 

and im saying the reason you may feel like that is actually because of many social, economic and political philosophies that people like you espouse.

we killed unions and hence living a decent middle class lifestyle without a college degree is impossible. any job security is impossible. being able to pay for your kids college is almost impossible.

we started spending billions in imprisoning people for drugs and other nonsense which not only criminalizes petty minor things, but also ensures that they will never be productive members of our society.

we completely killed our social safety nets in the 90s which will create enormous problems for us during this downturn. we made college prohibitively expensive without taking out enormous levels of loans. we have done little to help with the increasing expense by properly adjusting various federal loans and grants.

these are the reasons america isn't what it was to immigrants back in the day. and also the fact that immigrants back in the day in general were a smaller more educated group. its not 'welfare and handouts'.

 

If this is what your father really does, then he's an idiot. The new business is either profitable or not. If it is profitable, he should open it up regardless of whether his tax rate is 38% or 35%. If the new business is not profitable, he's not paying any taxes on it anyway, so a tax cut won't affect him at all.

3% tax cuts shouldn't be affecting his decision to open a new location. What *would* impact his decision is if his customers suddenly had more money to spend at his business. That may change the decision of whether opening up a second location is a profitable business decision.

 

a tax cut on the income from 32 franchised locations.Do the math 3 percent will buy a new spot every year.

 

every mcdonalds makes money regardless of location that's why the wait to get one is years,they're immune to bad times.

 

You are good at slapping those douche in the face, yet they keep coming back for more.

 

That's irrelevant to the business decision itself, though. If the 33rd location is going to be profitable, he'd want to open it up regardless of a tax cut. If it wasn't, he wouldn't.

 

If it is possible to correct you while not defending this idiot allow me to say:

3% is huge for a business, large business even more so. Your statement of he would open it regardless is also false because if I take my business statement to a bank and show a larger income it is more likely I can expand than if it is not as large.

 

And another little scenario that nobody is talking about is the over inflated values of homes that the local tax rate is set against. Local governments have been reaping the benefits of gobs of cash collected from property taxes that have shot up over the last decade due to the housing values artificially ballooning.

Who is going to make up for the difference when the homeowners walk away from the properties and the tax base shrivels up, do you think the tax rates will go down as quickly as they rose? Will government trim back its spending and tighten their budget like Joe Citizen does when times get tough? We all know how much government likes to shrink...

 

Major is correct. You are talking about a personal decision rather than a business decision. Business-wise, the tax cut is not going to change whether it is profitable or not. It is either profitable or it isn't. If he is seriously operating 32 franchised locations, a tax cut is not going to determine the decision to do it or not. The tax cut will make it easier for him financially, though.

 

What is good for the GOOSE [The rich big *ss corporations]
is good for the Gander [ The common poor folx]

Rocket River

 

While 3% may be a significant amount of cash, the 3% isn't going to make a profitable business unprofitable. If the new store would be profitable it would still be profitable.

Either it would be profitable or not profitable, the 3% tax increase to what it was during the Clinton years isn't going to change it.

 

in fact the idea is idiotic. the tax is only on the income after all the expenses. if the mcdonalds has revenues of a million and before tax profits of 100k. a tax hike from 35% to 38% means you're either pocketing 65k or 68k. it has absolutely nothing to do with profitability. it just increases your take home profit by a few percentage points.

 

I would prefer that government sponsored loan modification be done as part of the bankruptcy amendments.

1. It costs the taxpayers ZERO DOLLARS. The courts are there. The judges are there. All the infrastructure is in place.

2. It ensures that the mortgage servicer gets to present their valuation evidence in court rather than an oversight committee making decisions without all evidence.

 

If the government is paying for houses they should buy a house for me as well. I knew I couldn't afford one so I didn't purchase one. Stupid me for being responsible.

 

do you really believe its as simple as irresponsible people who couldn't afford a house buying one? sure, there are people who have done that (including those who bought multiple houses just to flip them and now are stuck), but there are many who are simply victims of the economic downturn who have since run through their credit lines and savings trying to make ends meet.

there are a few people on this board who are so far out of touch with what is going on to millions of hard-working americans right now. it all stems from the misguided belief that ones checkbook necessarily reflects how hard one works.

 

It's called being financially responsible. It's not like every single person who is foreclosing on their home lost their job. Sure a lot of them have, but a lot just simply got mortgages they never could have afforded in the first place. I have no sympathy for people that don't plan their finances and overextend themselves. Don't live beyond your means and you have a damn good chance of avoiding this mess.

 

Dude, I spent 3 years going over budgets with common Americans and trying to help them stay in their homes. Each case is so different that it's really ridiculous to try and place the blame on one person or group of people. We all share the blame for this one. After reading a little bit of the plan, I almost emailed my old buddies to ask how bad they were getting slammed. I'm sure every current borrower in America is calling right now trying to get a loan mod. The plan kind of looks like a mess to me. First, providing refinancing for people whose home values dropped? I understand the concept, but a) it doesn't encourage long term ownership, just more refinancing which is the whirlwind that started this whole mess in my opinion. b) How do you pick who gets to have the low rates? c) Can I refinance my car because that went down in value too? We certainly aren't going to make them refinance when their home value goes back up are we? Because you know they are going to want to so they can take cash out, and get back into a terrible ARM loan. That's just what happens. This whole fiasco is going to be repeated in 10 years. Sheesh. d) What about the millions of good home owners who didn't take out Fannie/Freddie Loans. I just see this as being a disaster. Second, helping out hurting home owners. Not a bad idea. A better idea would just be to make illegal first lien ARM's. I think encouraging loan mods is great. I think paying companies $1000 a mod to do something they are already doing at full tilt is ridiculous. There doesn't seem to be much teeth in any of the other changes that he proposed for stimulating payments, and like I said the reaching owners early idea is not going to work. Why is a mortgage company going to mod a loan that has been performing just to get $1000. They lose more than $1000 by modding the loan. Why not wait until the loan defaults, then do the mod and collect the $1000 bucks. No one is going to mod the current loans. It just doesn't make business sense. Instituting guidelines for loan mods is just going to stop the mods from happening because a lot of people won't be able to qualify. Companies need to be able to do this on their own, not have some stupid regulations from Fannie or Freddie. Modding a Fannie or Freddie loan when I was working was a headache. Third, strengthening confidence in Fannie and Freddie. In my experience, working with those types of loans was a headache because you couldn't do anything creative or that would work. Too many regulations.

The calls that came into to me were more or less in 4 categories:

1) People who lost a job and were trying to get caught back up or find a solution to pay. These were usually easy situations to fix with a mortgage. If you got a job again, we'd go over the numbers and see what kind of loan modification we could get them approved for. If you just couldn't find a job, we'd counsel people to sell and work them through the short sale process.
2) People who were complete idiots with their money. This was probably the largest segment of the group, people who signed up for an interest only loan, or an ARM, people who had good household incomes (usually at least 65K+ ) and got the loans knowing what they were going to do, and simply planned to refinance when the loan adjusted. I'd go through their budgets, and most if not 85% of these people were living beyond their means, too expensive cars, credit cards, HDTV's, trips to Best Buy every week. Some of them were willing to cut their budgets. Those who weren't were not able to keep their homes. Not even if I was able to get a loan mod approved for them.
3) Fixed income disability calls; these were always an easy mod to help people out. I found some of the nicest people in this category and was more than welcome to help them get back on track.
4) Current borrowers who wanted a loan modification. These people are scum, they'd clog up the phone lines, take the longest to explain why they didn't qualify (Me: What's your hardship? A: The economy. Me: How has it affected you? A: Well, it hasn't; but I see you are lowering people's rates. Me: Sir, imagine you are on the scene of a shipwreck. I'm a lifeguard trying to save people from drowning. There are thousands of people in the water. You are on a lifeboat, and you want me to waste my time on a 30 minute call explaining to you that you are on a life boat. If you fall off the lifeboat, call me back. -- About the quickest analogy I had to explain to people why I wasn't going to modify their current loan)