3/22/2012 - Beginning the Housing Healing Process with HARP 2.0

10/14/2011 - Housing Utopia

5/27/2011 - Loan Disclosure Reform Incomplete without Borrower Education

4/21/2010 - Fixing The Housing Market: A Foreclosure Prevention Alternative

3/16/2010 - What is Right About the Mortgage Industry?

"Competition--You're putting together the cliched conspiracy theory pieces that are misdirectional drivel. Financial bubbles happen because really financially educated but unethical people market an emotional "must have" (housing/education/etc) endorsed by alleged experts and sold with the slickest marketing presentations to lure the many financially uneducated people into speculative borrowing or "investing". Once you build a big enough herd, the financially educated guys..."    View Comment

"NReynolds: I would love to believe regulation is the answer to this quandary, but financial services are way too institutionalized and strong in their lobbying power for regulation to make a real dent in lending abuses. Americans need to reflexively have the ability to identify a speculative scheme before they borrow money to buy into it. Debt is sold on the basis of its emotional ability to provide better education (student loans), the dream of homeownership (mortgages) or bridge a cash gap before..."    View Comment

"Competition: Rates were in the 5% range in 2008. Prices went down. Rates were in the high 4% range in 2009. Prices went down. Rates were in the low 4% range in 2010. Prices dropped into the high 3% range in 2011. Prices dropped. I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time seeing the effect of rate on the effects of appreciation the last four years."    View Comment

"N Reynolds--the answer is in your question. No offense to your sister, but "buy low, sell high" is one of the most basic investing principles there is. Case Shiller graphs have been around for awhile, but my guess is her realtor never showed her the graph before the price of your sister's house was negotiated. A quick glance at the graph would have made it obvious that the pricesin 2006--at 50-80% appreciation levels in less than a decade--were in the "sell high" world. In..."    View Comment

"Wow--here we go round and round again--it was the low interest rates, the CRA requirements, the massive "fraud" that created the magical 14 trillion of alleged derivative debt..blah, blah blah. Low rates don't force people to buy overpriced houses. Community reinvestment doesn't force people to buy houses. I've cited the studies that debunk all that media driven crap in previous posts ad nauseum. Here is what GUARANTEES this happens again and again...the financial illiteracy..."    View Comment