As much as I'm loving Obama, I'm not too confident about this stimulus bill. I've spent every spare minute I have trying to learn about and understand it. I have 2 main concerns.

1) I hate to sound like the Republicans, but how is this bill going to create long term jobs and not just temporary work?

2) (And most important to me personally). How in hell does this help the housing industry? After all the talk about how crucial it is to our economy it got essentially NOTHING!! No help. :wtf:

Please enlighten me, talk me down, educate me, prove me wrong. :(

p.s. - It just occurred to me late this evening that what may have worked in the past may not work now. The work demographics have changed. More women are in the workplace now. I doubt the "shovel-ready" jobs are going to be a good fit for laid-off women. :construction:

TNBlue, I posted an article about the details of the stimulus ;

http://z8.invisionfree.com/Al_Gore_Support...showtopic=10895

The biggest chunk of the bill is a break for higher income families: The bill includes a one-year provision to protect middle- and upper-middle-income families from having to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax. The AMT was intended primarily for high-income taxpayers but has in recent years threatened to engulf those lower down the income scale. Estimated cost: $470 billion.

You are right about the 2 points you make, there is not much in the bill for long term jobs and housing, unfortunately.

However, next week, Obama is supposed to come up with another load of stimulus and it seems it will address mortgages/foreclosures. Just rumors on the markets. We will have to wait and see.

Guys, I don't think you have this right. The bill is designed to stimulate the economy by flushing it with money and creating jobs. The less money people have, the less they spend (duh). People stop buying cars, houses, goods and services. Companies go belly-up as a result. More people lose their jobs. The economy spirals downward, out of control. To avoid this, Obama and the Dems. are trying to push money into the economy so businesses stay afloat and people stop losing their jobs, and hence, have more money to spend.

You have to think of it like what FDR did during the Great Depression (although we should note that the thing that finally really ended the Depression was WWII). FDR created jobs by setting up programs to build/repair our infrastructure, which is something Obama is doing. FDR also put in place all kinds of safe-guards for businesses to staunch the bleeding and keep more industries from going under. As I said above, the more businesses fail, the more people lose their jobs, and the more the economy crumbles.

As Obama himself said rather incredulously last week when he was being criticized that the stimulus plan was a spending plan: It's about spending! That's what stimulus is. Since people can't or won't pump money into the economy, which is what keeps businesses afloat, the government has to do it for us, at least for now. It has been proven over and over that tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy don't work. The wealth doesn't trickle down to those of us below. Businesses don't need tax breaks; they need an influx of business, which means people have to have money to buy what they're selling. We, the people, don't have it right now, so the gov't is doing it for us.

Have faith. Nothing else has worked so far, and all the best economic minds in the country agree that tax cuts are not the answer.

From where I sit and for my particular situation this is the way I see it, an additional $15.00/week on my direct-deposit pay check will go (unnoticed by me) to pay my $534.00 electric bill (enjoy, TVA big-wig-coal-sludge-spillin'-environmental-terrorists!). :!:


My husband is a builder of middle class homes. We have INVENTORY and no customers. We still have to pay for it. Now what would get me out the door this instant if I was on the fence about purchasing a home? A huge tax break AND low interest mortgage if I purchase before the end of the year. And, 3% rate if I close before the end of June, 4% if I close before the end of September, 5% if before the end of the year.

Yeah! That would INSPIRE me as a potential home-buyer. The glut of houses on the market aren't just starter homes. More necrosis of the middle class.

Hey, it's not just home builders hurting. Ask employees at Home Depot, Lowes, lumber companies, appliance stores, etc.

http://www.builderonline.com/legislation/s...-stimulus.aspx#

I'm with the Republicans on this one...and, er, Lieberman.

:dripple:

Of course, this wasn't in the final version of the stimulus bill. :bad: :mad:

Like I wrote earlier, Obama is supposed to come out with a plan next week about housing because he is aware of the following situation that is coming up on the radar.

Excerpt from article ;
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2009/0213b.html

The Next Wave of Foreclosures
While many people place the blame for the source of our current economic woes on the Sub-Prime mortgage problem, this was but one symptom that first manifested from the fundamental American Govt. disease of abusive largesse of its world reserve currency. However, with this flawed former line of reasoning, the same people come to the erroneous conclusion that solving the housing crisis will solve the whole problem. This is only partly true. Whilst underpinning the deteriorating housing situation would be a great first step forward in this mess, the FED seems more intent on bailing out the investment banks which were complicit in willfully slicing, dicing and packaging all the highly complex and highly suspect derived debt instruments in the first place.

Yet the Sub-Prime problem pales in comparison to the next wave of loan resets and associated defaults that is about to hit. With the bulk of the Sub-Prime ARM resets out of the way, we have another wave of Alt-A and Option ARM resets to undergo. This will be an additional blow on top of all the other financial fallout that is currently hitting the fan.

If we are to believe certain analysts, this second wave (affecting $2 trillion worth of mortgages) is twice as large as the first in terms of dollars lent although to me the areas under each wave look comparable. Larger or similar in size, it matters not. With an already cash-strapped US home owner and an already battered US economy, the ensuing fallout may be multiples of the Sub-Prime defaults. We are already seeing huge declines in home real estate prices especially in the hotter areas. Bob Chapman estimates average house price declines could reach 35% from their Jun05 highs while hotter areas could fall by 60%.

Growing consensus expects the commercial real estate market to be the next property class to go pear-shaped, as retail outlets and financial firms go bust. New York real estate was already down 61% in Nov08 by Gerald Celente’s reckoning. We can expect these figures to be periodically revised downwards as the full extent of the wash-out becomes apparent. My gut feeling is an average decline figure around 80% from the high as we will not simply be returning to sensible pre-binge norms but diving deeper below them. The following is from the Wall Street Journal:

“In the typical severe financial crisis, the real (inflation-adjusted) price of housing tends to decline 36%, with the duration of peak to trough lasting five to six years. Given that U.S. housing prices peaked at the end of 2005, this means that the bottom won't come before the end of 2010, with real housing prices falling perhaps another 8%-10% from current levels.

Perhaps the most stunning message from crisis history is the simply staggering rise in government debt most countries experience. Central government debt tends to rise over 85% in real terms during the first three years after a banking crisis. This would mean another $8 trillion or $9 trillion in the case of the U.S.
Interestingly, the main reason why debt explodes is not the much ballyhooed cost of bailing out the financial system, painful as that may be. Instead, the real culprit is the inevitable collapse of tax revenues that comes as countries sink into deep and prolonged recession.” (What Other Financial Crises Tell Us)

My point being that this is not your typical severe financial crisis. So even if President Obama does suddenly find religion and decide to bailout real estate owners rather than giving TARP (tax payer’s) money to the investment banks, or into infrastructure spending, we can expect another wave of foreclosures coming to a shoreline near you to scuttle any hope of a quick recovery that many fairy-tale MSM analysts proffer. This second wave will not only hit consumers where it hurts but also put the final nail into the coffin of an already beleaguered US construction industry. With consumerism and home-related service industries having made up such a large proportion of past US GDP, it is not hard to read where this signpost leads.

Eew. I need to liquidate and hunker down. Lord knows we're trying.

EM is absolutely correct here...don't accept everything you hear as a cause for 'panic'...that is what THEY WANT YOU TO DO! :bad:

SEE ANY SOURCES HERE? I DON'T!!!

Sure must be nice to 'cherry-pick' info out of 'thin-air'....it's either that or you are Bernanke, Greenspan, Geithner, or Volker... :rolleyes:

Rich: They sure showed that Obama

By FRANK RICH
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Am I crazy, or wasn't the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had "all but lost control of the agenda in Washington," declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress. "Obama Losing Stimulus Message War" was the headline at Politico a day later. At the mostly liberal MSNBC, the morning host, Joe Scarborough, started preparing the final rites. Obama couldn't possibly eke out a victory because the stimulus package was "a steaming pile of garbage."

Less than a month into Obama's term, we don't (and can't) know how he'll fare as president. The compromised stimulus package, while hardly garbage, may well be inadequate. Timothy Geithner's uninspiring and opaque stab at a bank rescue is at best a place holder and at worst a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the TARP-Titanic, where he served as Hank Paulson's first mate.

But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.

On Wednesday, as a stimulus deal became a certainty on Capitol Hill, I asked David Axelrod for his take on this Groundhog Day relationship between Obama and the political culture.

"It's why our campaign was not based in Washington but in Chicago," he said. "We were somewhat insulated from the echo chamber. In the summer of '07, the conventional wisdom was that Obama was a shooting star; his campaign was irretrievably lost; it was a ludicrous strategy to focus on Iowa; and we were falling further and further behind in the national polls." But even after the Iowa victory, this same syndrome kept repeating itself. When Obama came out against the gas-tax holiday supported by both McCain and Clinton last spring, Axelrod recalled, "everyone in D.C. thought we were committing suicide."

The stimulus battle was more of the same. "This town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy with its own theories that are completely at odds with what the rest of America is thinking," he says. Once the frenzy got going, it didn't matter that most polls showed support for Obama and his economic package: "If you watched cable TV, you'd see our support was plummeting, we were in trouble. It was almost like living in a parallel universe."

For Axelrod, the moral is "not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think."

Here's a third moral: Overdosing on this culture can be fatal. Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the "inevitable" Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The GOP doesn't recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week's. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.

A useful template for the current political dynamic can be found in one of the McCain campaign's more memorable pratfalls. Last fall, it was the Beltway mantra that Obama was doomed with all those working-class Rust Belt Democrats who'd flocked to Hillary in the primaries. The beefy, beer-drinking, deer-hunting white guys -- incessantly interviewed in bars and diners -- would never buy the skinny black intellectual. Nor would the "dead-ender" Hillary women. The McCain camp not only bought into this received wisdom, but bet the bank on it, pouring resources into states like Michigan and Wisconsin before abandoning them and doubling down on Pennsylvania in the stretch. The sucker-punched McCain lost all three states by percentages in the double digits.

The stimulus opponents, egged on by all the media murmurings about Obama "losing control," also thought they had a sure thing. Their TV advantage added to their complacency. As the liberal blog ThinkProgress reported, GOP members of Congress wildly outnumbered Democrats as guests on all cable news networks, not just Fox News, in the three days of intense debate about the House stimulus bill. They started pounding in their slogans relentlessly. The bill was not a stimulus package but an orgy of pork spending. The ensuing deficit would amount to "generational theft." FDR's New Deal had been an abject failure.

This barrage did shave a few points off the stimulus' popularity in polls, but its approval rating still remained above 50 percent in all (Gallup, CNN, Pew, CBS) but one of them (Rasmussen, the sole poll the GOP cites). Perhaps the stimulus held its own because the public, in defiance of Washington's condescending assumption, was smart enough to figure out that the government can't create jobs without spending and that Bush-era Republicans have no moral authority to lecture about deficits. Some Americans may even have ancestors saved from penury by the New Deal.

In any event, the final score was unambiguous. The stimulus package arrived with the price tag and on roughly the schedule Obama had set for it. The president's job approval percentage now ranges from the mid 60s (Gallup, Pew) to mid 70s (CNN) -- not bad for a guy who won the presidency with 52.9 percent of the vote. While 48 percent of Americans told CBS, Gallup and Pew that they approve of congressional Democrats, only 31 (Gallup), 32 (CBS) and 34 (Pew) percent could say the same of their GOP counterparts.

At least some media hands are chagrined. After the stimulus prevailed, Scarborough speculated on MSNBC that "perhaps we've overanalyzed it, we don't know what we're talking about." But the Republicans are busy high-fiving themselves and celebrating "victory." Even in defeat, they are still echoing the 24/7 cable mantra about the stimulus' unpopularity. This self-congratulatory mood is summed up by a Wall Street Journal columnist who wrote that "the House Republicans' zero votes for the Obama presidency's stimulus 'package' is looking like the luckiest thing to happen to the GOP's political fortunes since Ronald Reagan switched parties." There hasn't been this much delusional giddiness in these ranks since Monica Lewinsky promised a surefire Republican sweep in the 1998 midterms.

Not all Republicans are so clueless, whether in Congress or beyond. Charlie Crist, the moderate Florida governor who appeared with the president in his Fort Myers, Fla., town-hall meeting last week, has Obama-like approval ratings in the 70s. Naturally, the party's hard-liners in Washington loathe him. Their idea of a good public face for the GOP is a sound-bite dispenser like the new chairman, Michael Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor. Steele's argument against the stimulus package is that "in the history of mankind" no "federal, state or local" government has ever "created one job." As it happens, among the millions of jobs created by the government are the federal investigators now pursuing Steele for alleged financial improprieties in his failed 2006 Senate campaign.

This GOP, a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those "zombie banks" that we're being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets. Given the mess the country is in, it would be helpful to have an adult opposition that could pull its weight, but that's not the hand America has been dealt.

As Judd Gregg flakes out and Lindsey Graham throws made-for-YouTube hissy fits on the Senate floor, Obama should stay focused on the big picture in governing as he did in campaigning. That's the steady course he upheld when much of the political establishment was either second-guessing or ridiculing it, and there's no reason to change it now. The stimulus victory showed that even as president Obama can ambush Washington's conventional wisdom as if he were still an insurgent.

But, as he said in Fort Myers last week, he will ultimately be judged by his results. If the economy isn't turned around, he told the crowd, then "you'll have a new president." The stimulus bill is only a first step on that arduous path. The biggest mistake he can make now is to be too timid. This country wants a New Deal, including on energy and health care, not a New Deal lite. Far from depleting Obama's clout, the stimulus battle instead reaffirmed that he has the political capital to pursue the agenda of change he campaigned on.

Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. In the first four years after FDR took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House. The GOP is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didn't happen either.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/4002...chonline17.html

In this case, one can only hope history repeats itself. The Reps. are acting like children. It's time for them to stop this partisan bullshit. :mad:

Good article, Wayne. Thanks for posting it. :good:

OUTSTANDING! OUT______ STANDING AS THE DRILL SARGE USED TO SAY TO ME!

Just Excellent Wayne>

Now to highlight:

"a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those "zombie banks" that we're being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets."

"a largely white Southern male party"

This is fact and it is frustrating to be male here now and assume that too many women enable their men to be this way although many vote to cancel their husbands vote?

When you find an Al Gore, a Jim Cooper, or any decent male that comes from the South, much less lives there and is Democrat (Tim McGraw), etc, then realize they are platinum among white males! They must really be committed to their ideals etc ya think?

Guess some of them get good by constant fighting with the majority, but I tell ya, it feels real good just to breathe in Seattle or Manhattan!

Wayne, that article says it all....and cannot be put in terms more clear... :coolwink:

Outside of the vacuum of 'politics' the People are telling us that the repeated 'lie' is no longer working...No matter how much Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, Rove, and the GOP tried to torpedoe this 'stimulus'...THEIR efforts go down the 'drain' because the People are SMARTER than THEY think! ;)

So keep on cutting down FDR....keep on telling your audiences that we are heading for Socialism...go on with your tired diatribes backed up by flimsy pieces of 'propaganda'...thanks to DUBYA, the People don't believe one stinking word of it! :clap:

Agreed completely and very to the point. The bailout to the Financial institutes never got to the general public but was a give away to the rich who were the instigators of the problem. I'm keeping my stock, as low as it has gone for two reasons. Now it looks like I might have lost most of it , but if I sell it now I definately lost it. And if it continues as is in the near future it will be worth less than toilet paper so I'll at least save on that, although it may a little rough and not as soft as Charmin.

Also, Thanks for the post Wayne.

I don't know much about the stock market, but I do know that they always tell you to ride out the storm or you'll lose your shirt. So you're doing not only the right thing for yourself, Al, but also for the market.

Btw, how are you? Send me an e-mail when you get a chance . . .

That's the plan I was waiting for. First step in the right direction as the housing market is one of the most vital components in restoring some stability in the economy.

http://news.ino.com/headlines/?newsid=689669467790

Details are still to come out. I think that more will be needed as time goes by.

I disagreed with the Bank bail out. They did exactly what was expected and showed their deeply rooted greed and lack of remorse at robbing the general public as if it was their right.

The new stimilius bill I agree with. Put the money in the hands of the American People where it will be spent and is badly needed.

It will build jobs for the working class... JOBS... we may need to define that word for the Repugs.

Obama administration launches housing plan
Wednesday March 4, 9:18 am ET
Gov't provides details, sets standards for housing plan aimed at helping 9 million borrowers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration is kicking off a new program designed to help up to 9 million borrowers stay in their homes through refinanced mortgages or loans that are modified to lower monthly payments.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday released detailed guidelines designed to let the lending industry know how to enroll borrowers in the program announced last month.

To help borrowers determine if they are eligible, the government has put answers to common questions and assessment tools on the Web site http://www.FinancialStability.gov.

"It is imperative that we continue to move with speed to help make housing more affordable and help arrest the damaging spiral in our housing markets," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement.

OK< OK< OK< fine, I understand how important it is to fix the housing mess OK< OK!!!????

However, We-us, My wife and I could have gotten one of these mansions all around us, you know TNBLUE, the ones in Rutherford, the $149,000 cheap A-- new wave thrown together blow down in a tornado or wind shear because they did NOT tie the brick facade in correctly etc, (I am just saying that TNBLUE can explain how many of the homes around here are built shody but new!).

Anyway, we could have gotten one of those or maybe even a good one for

AT LEAST $2,000 or more, $2,000 A MONTH MORTGAGE PAYMENT!!!!!!!!!!!

Ya see, I just saw a Painter and his family on TV 2 days ago lamenting how they did not know what they were going to do losing their home that costs them $2,200 a month in mortgage payments.

A FREAKING HOUSE PAINTER, NOT VAN GOGH!

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?????

I am an expert at using, ripping off the system in my life. I could have gotten us in one of those homes for nothing down no problem!

BUT I knew we would never be able to make the first increase in the payments!

This KILLS ME when talking around REpubs, cause I have no argument back for those people as a Democrat!

C'mon, PLEASE, so now we help the poor family that has a hubby for a painter and a wife who is a dental asst----------why?

Because I was smart enough to know better? Because I reformed my morality to NOT rip the system anymore?

Can you folks not see the incorrectness of these actions?

Oh they say, No we will not help those folks but only the ones,etc, etc, etc.

Bull CRAP, ya know they will ALL get the same deal from the settlement!

So they, their children, will get a home, a roof over their head in this tuff time, cause they will "adjust" the payments down low enough for them to make it? How wonderful of us. And my Grandson and us, we are on the edge of the woods behind their homes cause WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY?

Its NOT funny, not a dang bit no sir!

I'm angry over this, too, blueraider. My husband and I have always tried to live within our means. We never sought to live in a bigger house or better town than we could afford. So why do all these people who were greedy (did they really need a McMansion?), and really, no better than the greedy turds on Wall St. . . . why do they get help from the gov't?

Well, the answer, again, I suppose, is that we can't allow all these things to just collapse--the auto industry, the housing industry, etc. and etc.

But it is maddening . . . :mad:

You nailed it EM. Necessary but maddening. Blue's remarks echoes what a majority of responsible people think.

I would say of course it's irresponsible for a borrower to take on the purchase of a house beyond what they can afford; no question about it.

HOWEVER

It's even more irresponsible for a bank or other lender to give out loans to people you know should not really qualify to make payments. And it's even more irresponsible yet for another bigger bank to buy those risky loans bundled up. And the very height of irresponsibility was for AIG to provide mortgage insurance for the entire house of cards (maybe that should be mansion made of cards?). What about the responsibility of the Security and Exchange Commission; the responsibility of federal banking regulators.

I think we are seeing an effort by the crooks who have run the financial industry for years to pass off most of the blame to individual homeowners who tried to bite off a bit more of the American dream than they could chew. The people running our financial system didn't care if it was built on long term sustainability. The bank that made the mortgage didn't intend to keep it and collect interest on the loan or suffer the loss if the payments were not met. They were ALL in it for the short term, buying and selling to make a quick buck. With no adequate checks or balances in the system, there was no one minding the store.

If the government is providing help to homeowners who got in over their heads, I will tell you that the main reason has nothing to do with helping out these homeowners because the system cares about them. The reason some of this help may be coming is to help prevent the wholesale collapse of the banking and investment industries when people en masse bail on their upside down loans and all the lenders start calling each others bonds in.

:spikey:

Wayne you nailed it. Good realistic analysis.

Those that are underwater with their equity should leave the house and start fresh by renting an apartment. At least they won't be slaves to a loan that hinders their ability to put some money aside instead of giving it to the banks. And the rent would cost less than a mortgage. A real mess this stuff.