The best way to look at any business is from the standpoint of the clients. So there are these certain basic things that aren't going to change. Companies are going to have needs for equity, debt, advice, FX, and derivatives. Individuals are going to have needs for auto loans, mortgages, something that looks like a deposit account, and the ability to send money to people. Those things aren't going to change.
I'm angry and I understand why Australians paying mortgages are angry.
The farmer after sacrificing pleasure, taste, freedom, thought, love, to his work, turns out often a bankrupt, like the merchant. This result might well seem astounding. All this drudgery, from cockcrowing to starlight, for all these years, to end in mortgages and the auctioneer's flag, and removing from bad to worse. It is time to have the thing looked into, and with a sifting criticism ascertained who is the fool.
The good people of Dakota offered to give Calvin Coolidge a farm if he would live on it. I wouldn't advise you to give those people too much credit for generosity. There is not a farmer in any State in the West that wouldn't be glad to give him a farm if he will paint it, fix up the fences and keep up the series of mortgages that are on it. And if you think Coolidge ain't smart, you just watch him not take it.
Ladies and babies, and mortgages, for that matter, can all wait. Acting has done a strange thing to me, though. I often sit there, thinking, 'I love this, but I wouldn't put my daughter on the stage. '
We cry for mercy to the next amusement, The next amusement mortgages our fields
The securitisation of mortgages added a new dimension of systemic risk. Financial engineers claimed they were reducing risks through geographic diversification: in fact they were increasing them by creating an agency problem. The agents were more interested in maximising fee income than in protecting the interests of bondholders. That is the verity that was ignored by regulators and market participants alike.
Millions of Americans are struggling to pay their mortgages. They have a right to know whether members of Congress receive sweetheart deals in order to pay for theirs.
Conservatives say human beings are people who are primarily concerned with self-interest, and that's what they should be concerned with - self-interest and individual responsibility. They shouldn't be paying for anybody else's health care or anything else like that. As a result, government is something that should be absolutely minimal. It's not there for your overall protection and empowerment - it's not there to offer protection against disease or natural disasters or bad products or companies who sell you fallacious mortgages and so on.
There's power in the collective. If you don't believe me, just watch a symphony orchestra with a conductor and 120 people who are thinking about exactly the same thing at the same moment - no babies, no stock markets, no mortgages. Just 32nd notes.
According to the Bank of England the economy is growing too fast so interest rates must rise to counter the supposed inflationary threat. In lay terms, I interpret this to mean that people are working much harder, causing economic growth, and they're in danger of spending their money, which is what the recession-hit shops want them to do. But the Bank and the City seem to think this is wrong, and that if people work harder they should be punished by having their mortgages increased.
When Berkshire Hathaway laid out three billion dollars for GE today, we didn't spend it, we invested it. When the Federal government buys the mortgages, they're not spending it, they're investing it. Now, they're investing it in distress type assets but they're buying them at distress prices if they buy them at market. It's the kind of stuff I love to do. I just don't have 700 million. Maybe we could go in it together.
Homeowners who refinanced their mortgages took out cash and reduced their monthly payments at the same time. Much of the cash obtained by refinancing was spent on consumer durables, home improvements and the like.
Indeed, the FHA was born out of the Great Depression, which was also caused in significant part by a foreclosure crisis. Mortgages in the early 1930s were mostly three- to five-year 'bullet' loans, which did not amortize and were due in full at maturity.
When you think that most of us are doomed by divine grace to roast in hell, to say nothing of mortgages and hail and bad crops and extravagant womenfolks, 'tain't any laughing matter!
What I want people to know is I went to Wall Street before the crash. I was the one saying you're going to wreck the economy because of these shenanigans with mortgages. I called to end the carried interest loophole that hedge fund managers enjoy. I proposed changes in CEO compensation.
I'm asking Congress to pass my Zero Down Payment Initiative. We should remove the 3 percent down payment rule for first time home buyers with FHA-insured mortgages.
