News, Research & Insights for American Homeowners, Patriots & Constitutional Conservatives
Obligatory.
I won’t even call it a palate cleanser. The holiday slowdown being what it is, this is probably the biggest news story of the day. Something like 98 percent of our readers, I expect, know and care more about the LOTR series than I do so I’ll spare you the perfunctory run-through of the movie’s [...]
A properly funded court system is a requirement of the United States and the Florida Constitution. One of the few things that separate this country from the chaos that reigns around the globe was the fact that we had a stable and well funded judicial branch. This is no longer the case and as those countries go, so too will we if we continue on this path.
“We are now facing a $72.3 million deficit between now and June 30,” Goodner said. “We are projecting that we will run out of money in that trust fund in March…Obviously, that is a huge problem for us.”
The issue of lack of funding crippling our Constitutional rights was recently addressed by the Florida Supreme Court in Crist v. Ervin: (read the full decision for a discussion on court funding)
[T]his Court (The Florida Supreme Court) has stated that Florida’s court system is operationally underfunded, see, e.g., In re Certification of Need for Additional Judges, 29 So. 3d 1110 (Fla. 2010), we have not determined that the judiciary is underfunded to the point of it being a violation of the constitution.
Note the Supreme Court stopped just short of making that key decision, but what if the $9.6 million dollar rocket docket funding had not been provided in 2010?
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“Houston has been lauded in numerous national studies ranking housing markets across the country. While this area has, in fact, outperformed other big cities harder hit by the housing crisis, Houston is still participating in the slowdown. It just took us longer to feel it, as the soaring energy industry helped delay some of the pain.”
Foreclosure News
The Decline in Bankruptcy Filings by Chapter
By Bob Lawless | Securitization-MBS
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For the past year, both chapter 7 and chapter 13 bankruptcies have been declining. Some commentators have speculated that the slowdown in mortgage foreclosures has been the reason for the declining bankruptcy rate, but if that were true, one probably would see larger declines in chapter 13 rates given that it is the chapter associated with saving a home. In fact, chapter 13s have been declining at a lower rate than chapter 7s. Consumer credit markets play the most important role in determining the swings of the bankruptcy filing rate. If mortgage foreclosures do climb in the first part of 2012, I do not expect to see a huge increase in bankruptcy filings.
The chart also shows how the increase in filings during 2008 and 2009 was largely fueled by more chapter 7 bankruptcies. Being a cheaper and quicker option, chapter 7 filing rates tend to be more sensitive to changed circumstances such as legal changes, increased costs, or changing credit markets. Consequently, chapter 7 is leading the decline in bankruptcy filing rates. The differences, however, are not huge--in November, for example, the year-over-year decline in chapter 7s was 13.5% as compared to 9.5% for chapter 13s.Because chapter 7s are declining at a somewhat greater rate than chapter 13s, the percentage of bankruptcy cases that are chapter 13s has increased. In the spring and summer of 2008, when bankruptcy filing rates were high, chapter 13 were 25-27% of all filings. For the past six months, chapter 13s have constituted 30-32% of all filings.