News, Research & Insights for American Homeowners, Patriots & Constitutional Conservatives
A homeowner who retained our services to investigate his mortgage loan just recently scored a major victory in US District Court in Oregon in Barnes v. Chase Home Finance. Our investigation revealed that the borrower, Timothy Barnes, had the extended right to rescind his loan under … [Read More...]
Oh yeah, you read that title right! Can you flippin believe this? Unfortunately I can but my blood boils as my fingers furiously type this! Are you kidding? Nope. These bastards know no limits to their greed and corruption. I hope this pisses you off as much as does me. This isn't a Republican … [Read More...]
This is a fantastic article (below) written by Gregory M. Lemelson and is posted on his blog at amvona.com I like his writing style... this article is a fun read, while somewhat tragic, when you understand what is and has been happening in our country. It is also highly instructive and … [Read More...]
This is my personal rant for the week... I swear these banks and their generally crappy, arrogant and out of touch employees need to be deep-sixed once and for all. The only problem is you and I. We need to pull our accounts, pull our deposits and just seriously put pressure on everyone we know to … [Read More...]
The anointed one thinks he can do anything because he (currently) sits in the White House; including ignoring the First Amendment. He really thinks he can intimidate me and you into silence and to stop exercising our constitutional right to free speech. Ballsy but wrong. He thinks he can rally the … [Read More...]
Martial.
“The president began with a moving tribute to the armed forces and their accomplishments. But as he has done many times now, he celebrated martial virtues not to rally support for the military, but to cover himself in glory — he killed Osama bin Laden! — and to convince the American people that they should [...]
Give or take.
What’s the saddest part of this? That The One is so desperate to demagogue Romney and the GOP as the party of the rich that he’d make a chump-change gambit like this the centerpiece of his budget agenda? Or that liberals are pretending to be impressed? Good lord, I hope they’re pretending. The liberal outfit [...]
The one percent.
Actually, I don’t think that’s what she’s saying here but that headline is simply too sweet to resist. (That was HuffPo’s original headline too before they changed it.) The quote from BuzzFeed: “I realize there are some wealthy individuals – I’m not one of them, but some wealthy individuals who have a lot of stock [...]
"It was Alinsky tactics at their worst."
This should have been Gingrich’s message at the debate last night. Like I said in the preview thread, I thought it would be. He got a second look in South Carolina by venting resentment at Elites on the left (in the persons of Juan Williams and John King), so why not try for a third [...]
"I am usually accused of not being intense enough, too relaxed."
In an interview with Diane Sawyer set to air tonight, the president unsurprisingly downplayed the tarmac tiff with Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer that equally unsurprisingly led to a boost in sales for her book. WaPo reports: The president smiled when Sawyer brought up the photo taken during the exchange and Brewer’s comments in follow-up interviews that Obama was [...]
Obamney.
Via the lefties at Think Progress, a video salute to Mitt’s cavalier assurance at last night’s debate that there’s nothing to get angry about when it comes to health-care mandates. Get ready for a long, long line of liberal attack ads in this vein once it’s clear that he’s the nominee: Even if they end [...]
Unless Greece and its creditors reach a deal in the next few days, Greece has no money to pay €15 Billion or so due to its bondholders in March.
From the start, this has been a crisis of fake legal and economic constraints masking very real political constraints. In 2010, Greece could have restructured its debt quicker than most sovereigns in modern memory -- or it might have been bailed out, had Europe chosen to go the route of fiscal transfers. Neither of these paths was taken because the European Central Bank was unwilling to countenance the sin of debt restructuring, but member states with money were unwilling to pay for the appearance of collective virtue.
Now that the restructuring is inevitable and the virtue bill unpayable, the fake constraints are back. The ECB holds about €50 of Greek debt, which must go into the restructuring to get enough debt and cashflow relief. But the central bank would not take losses, and remains allergic to triggering credit default swaps (which is more likely to happen if it sits out). Worse, its votes might be needed to (credibly threaten to) amend Greek bonds using retrofit Collective Action Clauses. (See latest from Gulati-Zettelmeyer here.)
There seems to be a simple fix: swap the Greek bonds held by the ECB for bonds of the European Financial Stability Facility at a price that does not cause ECB losses. Then have the EFSF go into the exchange and vote the bonds if it needs to. At a minimum, this captures for Greece the discount at which the ECB bought its bonds. If Europe is unwilling to see the EFSF take a loss from the ECB's purchase price, Greece could conceivably make up the difference with a special bond issue for the EFSF on terms that reflect the specialness of the vehicle and the circumstances.
Freshly downgraded, EFSF debt is not exactly in high demand. An ECB swap would not require it to raise money in the markets. Having a fiscal vehicle take the risk (if not the loss) from a Greek restructuring is more honest and institutionally sensible than leaving it with the monetary authority. At a minimum, it would stop the chatter about monetizing the debt--without the optics of a big new package for Greece.As precedent, the operation might be healthy for all involved. An EFSF swap would signal the parameters for any future deals involving ECB-held debt: on the one hand, it is not fully preferred, on the other hand, there is a built-in limit to the haircut. There is even a whiff of harnessing the market. (I once heard a story that Latin American debt managers in pre-Brady days had made up "Capture the Discount" t-shirts.)
More broadly there is a decent argument that the EFSF is sui generis--an ad hoc crisis vehicle that can do what no one else can be expected to do. For example, it has never been encumbered by feckless claims of preferred creditor status, unlike the new treaty-based European Stability Mechanism, due out this summer. This is as close as it gets to a credible "just this once".
There is an argument that under some version of best market practice for CACs, EFSF should not be allowed to vote its Greek bonds in an exchange, because Greece is among its shareholders. I think this objection is surmountable, to the extent the EFSF is not controlled by and does not answer to Greece. Here is some analogous reasoning.
All this to say, wait for the next fake constraint to derail what could be a palatable solution to a horrible situation, followed by more suffering for all.
Obligatory.
You’re going to watch it somewhere online today so you might as well watch it here. In a way, this 10-second teaser is as much a tribute to FBDO’s cultural ubiquity as that two-hour fan re-creation was to Star Wars’s: One man, one line, one two-second snippet of music, and that’s enough for every American [...]
Gingrich was "most loyal to Ronald Reagan."
As I reported yesterday, at least a few former Reagan administration officials say that, in his campaign comments, Newt Gingrich has rewritten the history of his relationship with Ronald Reagan. Today, a number of counterbalancing voices say those officials — and not Gingrich – are the ones who are shading the facts. On Fox News, for [...]
Optimistic.
The foremost funder of Rick Santorum’s Super PAC, says Santorum will be in or near the lead of the GOP primary “very soon.” “I believe Rick Santorum will become one of the front-runners very soon,” Foster Friess, a major donor to the Red White and Blue Fund, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. True, [...]
Character.
So psyched is Team Newt about this spot that they started pushing it to the media this morning before the vid was even done, sending around the script instead. It’s good, but the image of Romney as a ruthless, slippery politician who’ll say whatever he has to in order to win is, I fear, already [...]
Say it! SAY IT!
Say, do you remember the President giving some sort of speech on Tuesday night? Me neither… I was going to watch it, but I’d DVR’d the last three weeks of Full Throttle Saloon and simply had to catch up. But I did manage to catch the text and the replay the next day. And like [...]
"There can be no brush-off."
Last night, Ron Paul had a particularly impressive debate. He wasn’t as long-winded as usual, he made at least one quip that had the audience laughing with him and not at him, and he spoke as well as usual about the need for sound fiscal policy. Perhaps his relaxed demeanor stemmed in part from the [...]
Plus, backlash to The Drudge Report.
In an interview with Fox Business Network’s John Stossel yesterday, Sarah Palin said the establishment is trying to “crucify” Newt Gingrich. Palin suggests that a double standard exists — that even conservative media members will criticize Gingrich, but ignore the flaws of Mitt Romney. Palin is far from alone in this opinion. Whatever suspicions conservatives [...]
"It made for good copy"
Those decades old newsletters just seem to keep following Ron Paul around like a bad penny or a stalker ex-girlfriend. And while it sometimes gets the Texas congressman peeved to the point of walking out of interviews when asked about them, it looks like the questions won’t be stopping any time soon. Three people, including [...]
Boo hoo, Newt.
In the middle of last night’s debate, I actually tweeted about it because the difference was audible: Mitt Romney’s applause, for the first time that I can remember, was louder than Newt Gingrich’s. The Gingrich campaign can think of just one possible explanation as to how Mitt Romney could have inspired such a response in [...]
Obligatory
I first caught wind of this story from our good friend Fausta, and it seems like a suitably silly note to help wrap up an already strange and unusual week. We’ve got a brand spanking new, rootin’ tootin’ study, fresh off the press from a distinguished group of scientists. (And I can tell they were [...]
Answering Occupiers' demands.
Since his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama has been campaigning in touring five battleground states. His final stop on that tour comes today. At a rally at the University of Michigan, the president plans to unveil a plan to increase federal “investment” in the Perkins loan program — from $1 billion to $8 [...]
"He really has no good options..."
The Green Warriors turned out to have a fairly short lived celebration after Barack Obama kicked the Keystone XL can down the road yet again. What looked like a victory for the environmental lobby was quickly thrown into a tailspin when the President gave his State of the Union address. In it, he spoke some [...]
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