The Back Alley Archives

the ones who suggested families who couldn't provide proof of income to pursue an FHA loan or a 3/1 year adjustable rate mortgage.

or the ones who'd rather sell the 1 million dollar home to a family rather than the $700K home because there's more "juice" in it for them.

how bout the mortgage brokers or better yet...HOW BOUT CONGRESS? how bout the lawmakers who approved of the promoting of Fannie and Freddie mac

HOW BOUT THE POTUS???? is he willing to be paid based on performance??? i'm not asking him to and i'm not suggesting it but would he? should he?

Barney Frank thinks that compensation limits could be placed on all U.S. companies, according to this article I posted in the Madoff whistleblower thread: http://www.financialweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090203/REG/902039977/1003/TOC

What would you use as a metric to pay the POTUS since he doesn't really run anything like a CEO does.

Barney Frank thinks that compensation limits could be placed on all U.S. companies, according to this article I posted in the Madoff whistleblower thread: http://www.financialweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090203/REG/902039977/1003/TOC

This gem is also buried later in the article:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said last month that he might try to extend to all U.S. companies a restriction that prohibits bailout banks from taking a tax deduction of more than $500,000 in pay for each executive.
{. . .}
Mr. Geithner said he would consider “extending at least some of the TARP provisions and features of the $500,000 cap to U.S. companies generally.”

What would you use as a metric to pay the POTUS since he doesn't really run anything like a CEO does.

he runs the country....it's the biggest company in the world.

how bout starting at making improvements in employment or GDP or the deficit? no improvement, no pay.

That's the thing though, he doesn't run the country like a CEO runs a company. He runs the military and other things that have to do with things external to the country. Congress runs the country more than the POTUS does.

That's the thing though, he doesn't run the country like a CEO runs a company. He runs the military and other things that have to do with things external to the country. Congress runs the country more than the POTUS does.

but congress gets their direction from the POTUS

Negative, they take their direction from voters err...lobbyist.

gotcha.

so the POTUS doesn't guide and suggest direction...he doesn't provide leadership on mandates and gov't policy....got it.

When did real estate agents begin writing loans to people who couldn't afford them? Weak.

When did real estate agents begin writing loans to people who couldn't afford them? Weak.

mortgage brokers did...i included them.

I've met a few real estate agents out on the job hunt. Most of them have moved on to other business now that the market has capped their salaries at zero. They didn't go to the government and ask to be bailed out and ask to keep getting paid the high salaries they were making during the bubble, just because they're special people.

they should return that money they 'earned' then.

they 'earned' that money by helping place people in homes they couldn't afford.

Were their firms receiving government welfare at the time they got their commissions and/or bonuses?

no but if the mortgage brokers weren't giving mortgages to them greedy bastids trying to flip homes in 3 months time like they do on the bravo network, we wouldn't be in this mess.

same goes for the lawmakers encouraging the GSEs to loan money to whomever wanted it regardless if they could produce the proof of income...lawmakers weren't getting federal assistance but they were part of the reason why we're in this mess

Maybe I am in the minority but I have never once had a real estate agent or broker come beat on my door and force me to buy another house that I couldn't afford. Apparently, that shit is running ramped because surely it couldn't just be that homebuyers are fucking stupid. I make 15k a year, sure, I can afford a 300k house. Sign me up.

Weak, Rad.

I agree with you Eric...there was a lot of personal responsibility just missing in this whole mess. If I had to blame it on either real estate agents or mortgage brokers, it would definitely fall with the mortgage brokers, but it boggles my mind that people who made around 20K were buying houses for 300K...didn't they even weigh their monthly payment against their salary and realize they couldn't cut it?

I know I'm a simpleton but when Bill and I bought our current house, I looked at what I was paying for the townhouse, added Bill's salary and we figured out what our price range was...found a house in that price range and we were done. Of course, we were buying when houses were being sold at a reasonable rate. The townhouse that I bought for 67K sold for 91K (6 years after buying it)...it was a decent down payment on our current house. But about a year or two after that when prices started skyrocketting, I saw a girl that used to live a few doors down from me at those same townhouses...she sold hers for $190! I couldn't believe it! And then she turned around and bought a house that likely has depreciated in value right now.

Sorry for my babbling. But rad...I don't think Bravo really had a lot of house flipping shows...it was TLC and HGTV for the most part. You would see some real dumbasses on those shows and the evil part of me really hopes they got majorly screwed by trying to flip when they had no idea of what they were doing.

You would see some real dumbasses on those shows and the evil part of me really hopes they got majorly screwed by trying to flip when they had no idea of what they were doing.

oh they did alright.

buying 5 properties with no down payment, enter in a mortgage that would require you to pay little to nothing in the first 2 years then balloon pay via the adjustable rate...but who cares about having to balloon pay anyways right? i'm flipping the house in 9 months anyways.

sad thing is, everybody's hurtin now as a result.

^^^Yeah I know...I feel guilty for watching the shows the be honest. I really watched just to see how to do certain home improvements though. But there was one show (I think on TLC) where it was usually first time house flippers...some of them really didn't know what they were doing. They would get shady contractors to help them and would end up spending WAY more than they could afford. They would usually come out "okay" but if they kept flipping after the market crashed, they definitely would have lost their shirts. I don't feel sorry for them.

Those shows always struck me as strange because those folks had absolutely NO idea what they were doing, yet they always came out ahead.

There was one show that had a hot blond real estate expert who came in and told the flippers what to do and what not to do. And every episode, the flippers NEVER listened to her, but they still made a profit.

I could never understand it at the time and I wondered why those networks never showed the people who failed miserably at it. I suspect it was because at the time, not too many people failed at flipping because access to credit was way too easy for buyers.

^^^THAT was the show I was talking about Doc...there were some that had trouble selling the house and had to eat a lot of their profit in mortgage costs and some only came out ahead a little or almost just broke even. But I saw NONE that lost all together. Did you notice most of those shows were done in California? A few in South Florida too...those are the two areas that have been damaged the most too.