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| 12/25 |
| 2008/12/13-17 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:52245 Activity:moderate |
12/13 Mortgage defaults set to increase:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28035238/page/3
"if we have an economy where unemployment gets to 8 or 9 percent,
if that happens the amount of delinquencies is going to be staggering."
Meanwhile...
In terms of job losses, December could be even worse than November,
when 533,000 jobs were lost, according to the Labor Department. That
was the largest monthly loss since December 1974.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/12/news/economy/job_cuts/index.htm
\_ GEORGE BUSH NUMBAH #1!
\_ http://hnn.us/articles/48916.html
61% of historians now rate Bush worst President ever.
\_ I love this link:
Historians rate Bush as success:
2% success
98% failure
\_ I didn't think it would be that high. 2%, huh?
\_ The Bush family has a lot of powerful friends. |
| 12/25 |
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| www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28035238/page/3 Major hurdles remain to foreclosure relief Courtney Scott's effort to save her modest Georgia home is a small example of the problem facing anyone who wants to craft a broad solution to the problem of rising foreclsures. The impact on the millions of American families losing their homes is devastating. But the foreclosure fallout is being felt around the world. As the US slides deeper into recession, foreclosures are the root cause of a downward spiral that threatens to prolong and widen the economic impact: * As the pace of foreclosures rises, the glut of homes on the market pushes home prices lower. That erodes home equity for all homeowners, draining consumer spending power and further weakening the economy. Banks holding mortgage-backed investments hoard cash, creating a credit squeeze that acts as a bigger drag on the economy. Those layoffs put additional homeowners at risk of defaulting on their mortgages, and the cycle repeats. "Foreclosures are going to mount and the negative self-reinforcing cycle will accelerate," said Zandi. "It's already happening, but it will accelerate in a lot more parts of the country." As pay-option ARMs put more homeowners under pressure, other forces are combining to increase the risk of mortgage defaults. As of the end of September, the drop in home prices had left roughly one in five borrowers stuck with a mortgage bigger than their house is worth, according to First American CoreLogic. In a normal market, homeowners who suffer a financial setback can tap some of the equity in their home or sell their home and move on. "That's a big issue," said Mark Fleming, First American CoreLogic's chief economist. "As equity is being destroyed in the housing markets, more and more people are being pushed into a negative equity position. That means that they're not going to have the option for sale or refinance if they hit hard times." your ad here "Negative equity" is also a major roadblock in negotiations between lenders and homeowners trying to modify their loan terms. After over a year of debate in Congress, and private efforts by lenders, no one has come up with the solution to the thorniest part of the problem: Who should take the hit for the trillions of dollars of home equity lost since the credit bubble burst? "(Customers) keep calling and saying With this bailout, this isn't helping me at all,'" said McGarry, who is now working with clients trying modify or refinance their loans. If their lender will not agree to settle for less than they owe -- even though those lenders are on the list of lenders that will work with you -- they still are not working with (the borrower)." It's a monumental undertaking that was never anticipated when servicers took on the task of managing these mortgage portfolios. These companies are already struggling to keep up with the volume of calls, and defaults are projected to keep rising. They're also swamped with calls from desperate homeowners who are falling behind on their monthly payments. Agency chief sees mortgage rates dropping to 4% "We have never seen anything this large before; we make 5 million phone calls a month to reach out to borrowers," said Tom Morano, CEO of Residential Capital, the loan servicing unit of GMAC "The volume of calls that's coming in is much higher than it has ever been, and everybody is struggling with that." Now, as the spiral of falling home prices is exacerbated by rising unemployment, millions of homeowners who were on a solid financial footing when they signed their loan face the prospect of a job loss that would put them at risk of foreclosure. Some servicers say that's the biggest wild card in projecting how many more Americans will lose their homes. "The concern I have is if we have an economy where unemployment gets to 8 or 9 percent," said Morano. "If that happens the amount of delinquencies is going to be staggering." With the latest monthly data showing more than half a million jobs were lost in November, some economists now believe the jobless rate could rise from the current 67 percent to top 10 percent by the end of next year. |
| money.cnn.com/2008/12/12/news/economy/job_cuts/index.htm com) -- The second week of December was another brutal one for jobs, as Bank of America and at least 20 other companies announced more massive cuts. "The recent news does not bode well," said Rich Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research. "This is the reason it's going to be the longest recession we've had in post World War II history." Fortune 500) said it would eliminate 5,000 positions and close 20 plants. In addition, Belgian-based brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev said it would reduce 1,400 positions; British mining company Rio Tinto said it would cut 14,000 jobs worldwide; and SKF, a Swedish manufacturer of bearings, revealed plans to lay off 2,500 workers globally. FCS) said it plans to cut about 1,100 jobs worldwide, or about 12% of its work force, to reduce payroll expenses. All in all, 19 big-name companies announced 81,500 job cuts, according to company reports. That figure is likely larger, however, because it does not reflect layoffs happening at small- and mid-sized businesses. Midway through the month, December's job cut total stands at 115,416. In terms of job losses, December could be even worse than November, when 533,000 jobs were lost, according to the Labor Department. "Generally companies like to make their cuts by the end of the year," explained David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's. As such, he expects there to be many more cuts announced over the rest of the month. Baumohl expects monthly job loses of 550,000 to 600,000, but "it may very well exceed 600,000 too because of the severity and speed this economy is sinking into a recession," he said. In terms of job losses, 2008 is on pace to be the worst since 1982, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But if Baumohl's 600,000+ prediction is accurate, 2008 could show the greatest number of layoffs since 1945, when the economy shed 275 million jobs. "These job-loss announcements are going to impact the job reports in January, February, March and April," said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, because that's when many of the announced layoffs will actually occur. Economists say the unemployment rate, which stands at 67%, will also rise over the course of next year and into 2010. Baumohl said the jobless rate will peak close to 10% by the end of next year or early 2010. "A lot depends on what happens with the auto bailout," Baumohl added. "If that does not come through, then obviously the situation becomes even more dire in terms of layoffs and claims for unemployment insurance." Heroes and Zeros When it comes to money matters, 2008 served up an unusually rich cast of saints and sinners. Here is our highly subjective list of who we love and who we love to hate. Business Leader Council Live Quotes automatically refresh, but individual equities are delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, and 20 minutes for other exchanges. Market indexes are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. |
| hnn.us/articles/48916.html "-- George W Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb10, 2008 A Pew Research Center poll released last week found that the share of the American public that approves of President George W Bush has dropped to a new low of 28 percent. An unscientific poll of professional historians completed the same week produced results far worse for a president clinging to the hope that history will someday take a kinder view of his presidency than does contemporary public opinion. Asked to rank the presidency of George W Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation's history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations. At least two of those who ranked the current president in the 31-41 ranking made it clear that they placed him next-to-last, with only James Buchanan, in their view, being worse. "He is easily one of the 10-worst of all time and--if the magnitude of the challenges and opportunities matter--then probably in the bottom five, alongside Buchanan, Johnson, Fillmore, and Pierce," wrote another historian. The reason for the hesitancy some historians had in categorizing the Bush presidency as the worst ever, which led them to place it instead in the "nearly the worst" group, was well expressed by another historian who said, "It is a bit too early to judge whether Bush's presidency is the worst ever, though it certainly has a shot to take the title. survey of historians I conducted for HNN four years ago, Mr Bush had fared somewhat better, with 19 percent rating his presidency a success and 81 percent classifying it as a failure. More striking is the dramatic increase in the percentage of historians who rate the Bush presidency the worst ever. That conclusion is now reached by nearly six times as large a fraction of historians. There are at least two obvious criticisms of such a survey. The participants are self-selected, although participation was open to all historians. Among those who responded are several of the nation's most respected historians, including Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winners. The second criticism that is often raised of historians making such assessments of a current president is that it is far too early. We do not yet know how the things that Mr Bush has done will work out in the future. As the only respondent who classified the current presidency among the ten best noted, "Any judgment of his success' or lack thereof is premature in that the ultimate effects of his policies are not yet known." Those judgments are always subject to change in light of future developments. The comments that many of the respondents included with their evaluations provide a clear sense of the reasons behind the overwhelming consensus that George W Bush's presidency is among the worst in American history. "No individual president can compare to the second Bush," wrote one. "Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world's goodwill. In short, no other president's faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large." "With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct," said another historian. "When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point--rightly--to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life." One historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors: "the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics." Another classified Bush as "an ideologue who got the nation into a totally unnecessary war, and has broken the Constitution more often than even Nixon. He is not a conservative, nor a Christian, just an immoral man . " Still another remarked that Bush's "denial of any personal responsibility can only be described as silly." "It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush," concluded one respondent. "His domestic policies," another noted, "have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; "George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States," wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. "Bush does only two things well," said one of the most distinguished historians. "He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history." Four years ago I rated George W Bush's presidency as the second worst, a bit above that of James Buchanan. Now, however, like so many other professional historians, I see the administration of the second Bush as clearly the worst in our history. My reasons are similar to those cited by other historians: In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States enjoyed enormous support around the world. President Bush squandered that goodwill by taking the country into an unnecessary war of choice and misleading the American people to gain support for that war. And he failed utterly to have a plan to deal with Iraq after the invasion. He further undermined the international reputation of the United States by justifying torture. Mr Bush inherited a sizable budget surplus and a thriving economy. By pushing through huge tax cuts for the rich while increasing federal spending at a rapid rate, Bush transformed the surplus into a massive deficit. The tax cuts and other policies accelerated the concentration of wealth and income among the very richest Americans. These policies combined with unwavering opposition to necessary government regulations have produced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Then there is the incredible shrinking dollar, the appointment of incompetent cronies, the totally inexcusable failure to react properly to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, the blatant disregard for the Constitution--and on and on. Like a majority of other historians who participated in this poll, my conclusion is that the preponderance of the evidence now indicates that, while this nation has had at least its share of failed presidencies, no previous presidency was as large a failure in so many areas as the current one. |