We are now a nation based on entitlements and protection from everything that can harm, with the help of Big Brother. Unfortunately, our profession of Real Estate Brokerage is one of HEAVY entitlements. We are no different than the rank and file of Katrina asking for some of the Dole to bail them out. So what do entitlements, big brother and real estate have in common? Too much, I am afraid.
In regards to the ever growing, not even close to being over, subprime mess (read: world banking debacle), the smoke and mirrors of deception continue at every level of government.
The problem is, we "The People" have elected in to power the largest ruling band of professional and well funded (thanks to us) bureaucrats in our nations history. Our City, State and Federal "Public Servants" are now in control. They now have working for them one crisis after another. Combine the terrorist crisis along with the unfolding banking crisis and you have a perfect storm for a full dose of continued "Government Intervention and Care". For the most part, they have taken over, without having to fire a shot.
Two great quotes worth remembering:
"When the
people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of
the republic."
“Think
what you do when you run into debt; you give another power over your liberty.”
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
Everyone hates beating a dead horse, but the subprime mortgage crisis has visibly begun to unravel and revel to the world what will happen when the lives of many are in the hands of a few. The European Central Bank (read: The Bank Of England) on Tuesday, December 18, opened a line of credit of $500 billion to commercial banks. This is huge, but of course not even front page news here in America? This is Band Aid 101.
Gary North sums it up quite nicely in "The World's Largest Banks Are Now Trapped".
Here at home in Colorado, John Rebchook's blog post proves that the Colorado "Nanny State" is in full swing. In a continued effort to get all the bad guys in the world off the street and therefore making life more blissful for all of us, our public servants are busy crafting further laws, statutes, requirements, regulations for more fees, taxes and penalties. Legislation has been introduced on behalf of Gov. Ritter to stem the foreclosure tide by enacting legislation regarding prepayment penalties written into adjustable-rate mortgages mortgages.
This announcement comes on the heels of Earlier legislation signed in June, The Mortgage Broker Registration Act which included four mortgage-fraud
and foreclosure-prevention bills. These bills are:
· HB 1322 (Marshall/Groff), “Mortgage Fraud Prevention
Act”
· SB 85 (Veiga/Massey), “Protect Consumer Real Estate
Transactions”
· SB 216 (Veiga/Marshall), “Mortgage Loan Acts Practices”
· SB 203 (Groff/Marshall), “Mortgage Broker Licensing”
This Monday, December 17, 2007, based on further concerns of Gov. Ritter, brought forth an emergency rule
restricting prepayment penalties on mortgage loans.
Colorado was one of the few remaining states in the Union that did not regulate or license mortgage brokers. Now we do. Funny, all the states that have had mortgage broker licensing and regulation in place...have as high or higher default mortgage problems as we do. This goes for fraud and all other issues too. What these laws really do is keep the smaller players out so the bigger players are in. After all, Bank Of America pays the big money to Politicians to keep the competition out. So, soon enough, if you are not a Wells Fargo or CitiBank, you will not be running a mortgage company (you will be working for one). But keep in mind that the big boys, just like Washington Mutual, only get away with bigger crimes and have bigger money to pay off their bigger political connections.
Any and all of the recent changes here in Colorado are just treating latent symptoms vs. curing the real cause. The real cause is a world wide money system crafted to enrich a few and enslave the rest of us. As has happened many times before, the Money Cartels are in deep trouble. But, taxpayers are in deeper trouble, because they are the "bail out" cash. According to the GAO, bail out cash from taxpayers during the 1980's S & L debacle was somewhere north of 500 billion and with all the people's assets lost...Trillions!
"The bad news in this report is that the cost of the failure of many
thrift institutions, with interest, approaches half a trillion dollars
and that taxpayer accountability due to bonds issued will continue
through the year 2030," said Representative Jim Leach of Iowa, a
Republican who is the chairman of the House Banking Committee.
Yea, you read that right, 2030 AD. My friends, the fraud being perpetrated through World Centralized Banking Cartels, The FED and The US Treasury is at such high levels, that few, if any, investigations or litigation will ever happen. Instead, elected politicians and their hordes of appointees and attorneys make laws and regulations to criminalize similar activities, on a smaller level, done by regular "street level" greedy people. People who do not have the power to crush them!
Always remember that PONZI schemes are a top down business. You need total and absolute power to operate without prosecution. The Subprime Mortgage Crisis is not just about fraud by some appraiser in Greeley, Colorado. It goes all the way to the top. Here is a great story, written by an lawyer about fraud on a wholesale, world wide level.
Do not be deceived by this latest bureaucratic crisis management folly. It makes good press and appeases the mases of tax paying drones. Their actions are justifying their positions, "the government is saving people form foreclosure", when in fact, the issue should be saving our county as we know it, from foreclosure! What we are seeing is further "false flag", feel good, "I am here to save you" protection postulated by professional bureaucrats. Most of it, far too little and far too late and targeted at the wrong people. Keep in mind that's it's the Bureaucrats or Public Servants at every level that have got us to this moment in history. They have been courted and subdued by the very special interest groups of cooperations, lawyers and power people that will now want forgiveness through even more of your tax dollars, as well as more laws, regulations, more cameras and yes, more fingerprints!
"We are on the cusp of a mammoth financial
crisis, and the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury are trying to
limit the liability of their banking friends under the guise of trying
to help borrowers. At stake is nothing short of the continued existence
of the U.S. banking system".
Yep, Ponzi schemes are a top down business. No one wants to talk about The Fed. No one wants to talk about Wall Street. No one wants to talk about fractional reserve banking. No one wants to talk about the World Bank. No one wants to talk about the real issues at hand. Why, because it's difficult to face and of course there are people that make sure we have the proper politicians in office to keep their systems running. In a post I wrote a few weeks back, it is quite clear where things are heading.
So now we are at Entitlements. We have all become a culture of people wanting their Entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, food stamps). Real Estate Brokers fall flat square in the middle of the entitlement pig pen. FHA, VA, FANNIE MAE, FREDDIE MAC, HUD...that's just the beginning. So all entitlement programs are funded with taxes (OPM-Other people's money). Thus, to legally steal (OPM) from one person and give it to another we need bureaucrats. America uses it's politicians and bureaucrats to do what we can do without being arrested. Steal other peoples money through taxation and try to get some of it for ourselves.
Well sadly enough. I pay the National Association of Realtors buckets of cash to bribe the right people in the Beltway to keep funding the bail out programs, so that I can make a living. In fact, just the other day thanks to NAR, legislation was approved in the Senate
93-1, that would allow the Federal Housing Administration to back refinanced
loans for borrowers who are delinquent on payments because their
mortgages are resetting to sharply higher rates from low initial
"teaser" levels.
The Senate bill raises the
maximum mortgage the FHA can insure in high-cost areas like California
and the Northeast from $362,790 to $417,000 - the same level as loans
backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They are all backed by OPM. We are shifting close to 500M in loans on to the Federal Government (read: Taxpayer).
Sean Olender, from SFGate.com has it nailed:
"The government is trying to accomplish
wide-scale refinancing by tricking bond investors, or by tricking U.S.
taxpayers. Guess who will foot the bill now that the FHA is entering
the fray?
Ultimately, the people in these secret Paulson meetings were
probably less worried about saving the mortgage market than with saving
themselves. Some might be looking at prison time.
As chief of Goldman Sachs, Paulson was involved, to degrees as yet
unrevealed, in the mortgage securitization process during the halcyon
days of mortgage fraud from 2004 to 2006.
Paulson became the U.S. Treasury secretary on July 10, 2006, after
the extent of the debacle was coming into focus for those in the know.
Goldman Sachs achieved recent accolades in the markets for having bet
heavily against the housing market, while Citigroup, Morgan Stanley,
Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch and others got hammered for failing to time
the end of the credit bubble.
Goldman Sachs is the only major investment bank in the United States
that has emerged as yet unscathed from this debacle. The success of its
strategy must have resulted from fairly substantial bets against
housing, mortgage banking and related industries, which also means that
Goldman Sachs saw this coming at the same time they were bundling and
selling these loans."
WOW! Without the US TAXpayer Backed Mortgage programs, I surmise there would be about 250,000 Realtors and not the current 1.3M. Every Realtor is guilty of accepting entitlements and participating in fraud in one shape, form or another. How many Real Estate Brokers do you know that if one mortgage broker would not do the loan, (commit fraud), they would find one that would. Worse yet, Realtors have turned a blind eye to subprime paper that ripped off the consumer. But they got approved, the listing closed and they got a commission. I mean, if they default or can't refi, so what, "they got paid". Not my problem....we will let the Taxpayers pick it up!
Things are going to change. And they will change whether we want them to or not. Real Estate Brokers are stuck in the thick of it all..too much Government, too much debt, too much special interest money, too much dependence on entitlements and bureaucrats. It's really a sad-sick state of affairs.
Special Interest Groups Like NAR only exacerbate the cycle by supporting the current tax and bribe system. They use protection of property rights and home ownership as a badge..but at what cost to the system. When is enough, enough. When will they ask the TOUGH questions.
