Foreclosure Mess

Gist: President Obama will not pass a bill that both the House and the Senate passed. It is a bill that would require state courts to recognize foreclosure documents that were notarized in other states. This would make it harder to challenge foreclosures when the documents were put together out of state--as they often are.

Furthermore, more than half of the mortgages in this country are in an electronic tracking system called MERS (Mortgage Eletronic Registration System). It was set up by banks who wanted to be able to trade mortgages more easily. MERS' role in the foreclosure process is now in doubt. The legal system will be tested on whether MERS has the authority to foreclose on a home, or not.

Mortgage Companies Review Foreclosures

According to realty market, a research firm, 1 of every 4 houses sold in the 2nd quarter of this year is in some stage of the foreclosure process. J.P. Morgan is stopping the foreclosure process on 50,000 homes to check on paperwork. They say employees may have signed documents that they were not authorized to sign. Other mortgage companies are doing this as well. The review should only take a few weeks and most likely, any errors that may be found will be minor and no one will get their homes back if they were foreclosed on.

(Depending on how long this actually takes and how many mortgage companies do this, could this make the recovery of the property market to take longer than necessary?)

TARP Expires

TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, passed by Congress in late 2008 expired on October 3, 2010. The entire value of TARP was 700 billion dollars. The reason it was created was because mortgages and other bank assets were losing value fast in 2008. The idea was for the government to buy these "toxic" assets from the banks so the banks could have nice, clean balance sheets and would continue doing their job. That is, lending money. In the end, only 475 billion of TARP was used. Also, not all of the TARP money was given to banks. Some was given to the automobile industry and other industries where relief was needed. 

(It seems that a large part of the economic problem right now is that banks are unwilling to lend money. How can TARP be viewed as a success if it did not prevent what it was supposed to prevent?)

Unemployment Effects on the Elections

Gist: As the elections are nearing, many people who are unemployed are much less likely to get out and vote. As a result of this economic recession, the unemployed is a large group of people: 50,000 voters just in Ohio who are part of the working class. With the working class typically voting democrat, this is likely to effect the democrats at the polls.

(I would think that if you are unemployed you would be more motivated to vote.)

The Econonmic Behind The Figures of Construction

Gist: The Commerce Department said that the housing starts were up 10.5 % in August. However, the single family building market somehow doesn’t show very good figures. Builders suffered as the government's home buyer tax credit expired, and people curtailed house-hunting. They seem to be trickling back into the market now, but very slowly. Economist Chris Christopher at IHS Global Insight said that housing often leads the way out of a recession. In fact, construction jobs have actually fallen 10%. The remaining recession helps explain that why the apartment construction is up because there are many people move out their home and into rental apartment. People are not able to pay the property loan. In addition, construction of apartment can also satisfy the demand for young people who is looking for a job and the retiring personnel.

Food pantries to help low income students

The great recession changed a lot of things in our lives. Last week we found out that 40 million people fall below the official poverty line. There is also an increase in demand for food banks. In Utah valley University, enrolment is way up as people out of work are going back to school, but tuition is up too. To help students, the state school is teaming with a local food bank and will open a food pantry funded by private donations. Food pantries exist in other universities as well. A little assistance can make the difference if a student will finish his studies. Richard Knollenberg from the century foundation said that low income student need special support and he hopes the pantries will stay after the economy improves.

Effect on manufacturing in recession

Gist: The effect of recession does seriously on the employees in some manufacturing-focus town. When people in big cities buy a lot less than before, these manufacturers can clearly tell that the economic keeps going down.

When the recession started, people don’t want spend too much money on purchasing. The needs in the market go down, and the supply quantities definitely go down as well. These come with cutting in pay and lay off small percentage of employees. The big time of giving bonus in manufacturer is no longer seen anymore.

Recession changes job expectations for some people

Gist: There are so many unempoly people amoung the unlabor 15 million people heading to a job fair on labor day. And there are still many job opportunities, but not the kind that most people are seeking for.

Most people want to get a traditional nine-to-five job. However, they find that most sale jobs now that pay on commission. Pat Steven is among the 500 people in the job fair in Southern California, said that the commission sale jobs are too risk right now because everybody stops keeping buying things under this economic condition. How are you suppose to convince them to buy things when they do not have the money.
Nevertheless, some people will like to take the chance in those commission sale job since their originnal profession have been fully occupied. Those people try to look outside the box and hope to staet another opportunities in their career.