Jesus is no fun

on today's mortgage fraud indictments

As a 15 year mortgage lending professional, I'm glad that the people who have undermined the credibility of an industry necessary to both the economy and the individual consumer are being forced to reap what they sow. However, it is virtually impossible to prosecute everybody who has been involved in some type of mortgage fraud over the last decade. The reasons are many, but single biggest problem is that the problem is just too pervasive. In addition to "professionals" who should be aware of their actions and their consequences, millions of americans were complicit in mortgage fraud at the consumer level as well. If someone knowingly allowed documents to be altered on their behalf,they committed fraud. If someone intentionally overstated their income they committed fraud. If someone lied about the amount of money they had, made misrepresentations about their relationship to another party in the transaction, or lied about their marital status they committed fraud.

Most of these people did so without any knowledge of the impaact their actions would ultimately have on the system. The people who work within the lending industry, however knew full well what the ultimate result would be when the buying cycle ended and people could no longer pay for their mortgage by tapping into an ever increasing pool of equity. Certainly people must be held accountable for what has happened and I'm sure that we will see more and more indictments in the weeks and months ahead.

The more pressing concerns are how best to deal with the economic damage that has been inflicted and how to prevent another crisis like this in the future. The latter question is a bit easier to answer. Regulation and proper enforcement can alleviate much of the risk going foward. National licensing of loan originators and standard federal fines for misrepresentaion and fraud would certainly be a start. Under the current system, an originator can be barred from originating loans for fraud in New Jersey and simply cross the Hudson river to New York and do it again. Many states require no background checks for the originators of loans although their employers are subject to screening. While national licensing won't solve all of the problems, it is certainly a start.

Saving the American homeowner from the current catastrophe is more complex. As in any economic crisis, it's difficult for the government to intervene on behalf of the people without incurring a cost that will eventually be passed on. While changes to the FHA lending guidlines such as FHA secure and the economic stimulus act have had an impact, that impact helps a a small percentage of people already harmed by the crisis. Federal participation in insuring conventional loans that have traditionally been insured privately in the form of large scale re-insurance or risk mitigation in declining real estate markets could be one solution to help stabilize values in areas that have been the most hard pressed. One justification for assisting the mortgage insurance companies is that these mortgage insurers, such as PMI, Radian, and GE have been largely blameless throughout the recent debacle. They get hurt more than anyone when a note doesn't perform. While this proposal won't help people who are already upside down on their homes or people who do not earn enough money to support their current level of indebtedness, it can help those who have small amounts of equity but are currently unable to refinance due to declining market restrictions.

While today's indictments are a necessary first step in sending a message to Wall Street that someone needs to be held accountable, they are far from adequate to restore the faith of the American people and the American investor in a system that has become both a burden and a source of shame.

Welcome to Hardball

www.youtube.com/watch


For those of you who haven't seen this interview, Chris Matthews does what American journalists should have been doing for a long time. He questions the knowlegde and rationales of his guests. When conservative talk show host Kevin James starts irrationally attacking Barak Obama and saying that his policy of talking with adversaries is tantamount to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazi's in 1938, Matthews does something that we need more of. He follows up by asking exactly what Chamberlain did in '38 (he signed the Munich Agreement which gave Hitler a large portion of Czechoslovakia). James didn't know the answer and proceeded simply to scream Chamberlain was an appeaser for minutes untill finally admitting he didn't know exactly what Chamberlain did. See the video for more

Well, I'll be an Uncle Monkey

That's right, anyone can be a monkey's uncle but I just became Uncle Monkey.

Gabriella Rebecca Hecht was born at 7:02 AM, EDT and was 19" long, weighing in at 6 lb 15oz and 19. Mom and baby are just fine...and my brother sound like the happiest man alive. Pics to be added as they appear.

A speech for our generation

A piece of history could be witnessed this morning by hundreds in Philidelphia and by millions more on YouTube, in blogs, and through the major news ourtlets. What began as a speech of necessity, evolved into a stirring statement of the history of out nation and how its people have perceived each other for generations. It may be the finest piece of oratory that my generation has ever witnessed.

Barak Obama, needing to recover from a potential scandal involving inflammatory remarks by his pastor, chose not to simply embrace or disavow the man, but rather to sieze an opportunity publicly speak to the history and state of racial division in this country in a way that no man has during my lifetime.

He spoke of sentiment in black culture, of anger and frustration at decades of being tacitly relegated to second class status. He spoke of feelings in white culture brought about by fear, conditioning, and ignorance. He condemned neither but rather traced them to their source and expressed his belief that these issues need to be brought out into the light of day so that future generations need not be indoctrinated into a culture of divisiveness as so many have been before.

Senator Obama even spoke of his own family, of his white grandmother who admitted to being afraid while walking in front of a black man and he spoke of the racist words which would come out of his own grandmothers mouth and make him cringe.

His honesty is to be commended regardless of the motivation to give the speech, and in the end he chose not to disavow the man who aided so much in helping himto embrace his faith, but rather to disavow the angry statements and sentiments that Reverand Wright expressed, while at the same time understanding their source

Most importantly, he ackowledge that we are all affected by our attitudes towards others and their attitudes towards us and he acknowledged that these attitudes can not be changed by one election, but rather by a prolonged effort by all Americans to strive to be just a little more understanding of what may motivate those around them.

Some will dismiss the speech as political opportunism or damage control and perhaps that is what motivated it, but when a man speaks to our better angels he deserves our ear.

A poem

There are wounds which cannot mend, but the healing is in the effort.
There are pains that do not vanish, but their lingering memory lets us know pleasure.
Loneliness is simply a gateway to companionship as yet unrealized.
Despair is simply the path we must walk to a happiness yet to come
Embrace your world and all of its struggles.
Pass through the pain.
Enjoy and emerge triumphant