While I was out running this weekend, it was difficult not to notice all of the new houses for sale in the region, in addition to all of the old houses which have but to be sold after almost a year. I’ve little doubt why these properties have not yet located buyers, as banks are basically not lending to new loan applicants unless they’ve fantastic credit and lots of cash. In a community built on manufacturing jobs, those two circumstances aren’t most likely to be met.
But it was also not surprising to notice that gas is now properly over $3.00 a gallon in the middle of the winter. Of course, the reality that Americans are spending much more of their shrinking supply of dollars on transportation expenses just to get to their increasingly insecure job contributes to the issue of not having sufficient income to pay the bills, let alone save up for a down payment or overcome a financial hardship.
Why is it that the expense of practically every thing important, such as food and oil, has been going up, even as shoppers are saving much less cash and also the economy is slowing down?
Trying to the government, the problem must develop into apparent. As the banks realized just how much bad mortgage debt they held, panic set in. The Federal Reserve bailed out the banks with newly-created money, attempting to inject liquidity into the program. But the banks didn’t use that money to maintain operating and lending, rather using it to bail out underperforming hedge funds or to serve as a reserve for future losses.
In essence, the banks got free cash which will help them ride through the economic slowdown with out getting to create wiser monetary choices to create back their losses. So they will not have to present mortgages to home buyers and create profits from providing a service that can benefit consumers. They are able to just use the inflated money to stop from getting to create good lending choices.
Now the homeowners who’re facing foreclosure are simply getting shut out by big lenders, who refuse to lend them money to refinance or work with them to put together a loan modification or repayment strategy. Using the banking industry bailout, the banks have no incentive to do anything but foreclose on the houses and let them sit until the actual estate market recovers and they are able to make a bigger profit. After all, the funds they would have received from collecting payments on excellent loans has been provided free of any danger by the Federal Reserve.
Why not just do away using the entire lending method altogether? Banks can now start giving out loans to those who can not afford houses at all, then get the money they would have made on a superb loan as a gift from the Fed, and wind up with the real estate, as well.
If this sounds like several mortgage lenders are parasites using homeowners as their hosts, sucking away as much money as possible after which leaving the residence an empty shell immediately after the foreclosure victims are evicted, this analogy might not miss the mark by significantly. It is just more evidence of the “Tapeworm Economy” in action.
Of course, not every homeowner will knowledge this in action, but quite a few will learn just how little their bank cares about them when they begin missing payments. We get emails each day from homeowners trying to stop foreclosure, asking why the bank isn’t accepting their payment any longer, or why they can not get a call back from the bank, even when they want to work out a resolution.
In an economy where the banking industry can do as it pleases, creating loans it knows will by no means be paid by the homeowners, but realizing they will make their money back through inflating the money supply, and end up with the underlying asset, is it any wonder banks would rather make new loans rather than provide service to their existing customers?
It could be exciting to examine how banks would act if they had been not specific that poor decisions would lead to a central government bailout.

















