Numbers?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Numbers?
11
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 8:05am

Does anybody have any numbers? Actual, real numbers of this "crisis" facing the financial system?


I could care less about 700 billion or whatever large number someone wants to bander around. Here's what I want to know:


In the next ninety days, if this bailout isn't approved, exactly how many pensions aren't going to be paid?


In the next ninety days, if this bailout isn't approved, exactly how many payrolls won't be met?


In the next ninety days, if this bailout isn't approved, exactly which banks (that is actual banks, not holding companies, not investment banks, but actual banks) will fail?


Accounting is boring, but it isn't hard. All I hear is the failure of the market system, but show me some numbers before you lock me and all of my family into paying for a financial system bailout that will suck the life out of the country for years.


Thanks in advance.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-22-2008
In reply to: olddude50
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 9:52am

I don't know if anybody really knows the numbers.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-15-2008
In reply to: olddude50
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 10:03am

Exactly.

Ask nelle, though - she seems to believe the sky is falling, and that if we don't give the President unfettered authority right NOWNOWNOWNOWNOW, we're ALLGONNADIE!!!!!

This is where I get into the "please SHOW me the Sword of Damocles, freed from its thread, descending upon our necks. If you can do THAT, I will believe you when you say that we must act TODAY. If you DON'T or WON'T do that, but insist we must give you everything you ask for right this INSTANT, I smell a rat. Especially with YOU, oh, Mr. Bush, who has handed us so many Rat Sandwiches before, promising that they were caviar and blinis.

You hit it right on the head, olddude.






But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence.....truth is considered profane, and only illusion sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.
- Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 2nd. ed., 1841


But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence.....truth is considered profane, and only illusion sacred. Sacredness
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2007
In reply to: olddude50
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 2:29pm

I am not sure that anybody has any numbers.

Sopal

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-15-2008
In reply to: olddude50
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 4:17pm

Sorry O.D., I got nothing substantive.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-15-2008
In reply to: olddude50
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 4:37pm

I've been watching CNN and MSNBC this afternoon, and there is

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2007
In reply to: olddude50
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 4:49pm
It would be great if our Congress could be united on any number of issues.

Sopal

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2003
In reply to: olddude50
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 4:49pm

I hope your assessment is correct.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
In reply to: olddude50
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 7:40pm

Okay, Doc, good enough. Let's go with your numbers for my example and question.


Say that the bank have one percent of the mortgages fail, and that number, in dollar figures on the total amount of the loans outstanding on the real estate is $450 billion. Fair enough.


Now, let's say that before the bubble, the houses would sell for an average of $250,000 each. (I'm just making this up for the example.) Now, let's say that the people who are in default purchased their house at the very top of the real estate price, wherein, the price had doubled to $500,000. So they are sitting on a mortgage of 0% down, and owe the whole amount. (We'll assume they paid the closing cost and didn't finance it in the mortgage, to try to keep the example clean.)


Now housing prices decline and go back to their original level of an average price of $250,000. Now let us assume that the buyer now defaults. So the lender claims that he or she is holding $500,000 of worthless mortgage paper.


But mortgages are secured. While the mortgage is "worthless" as an asset, the bank now holds the real property worth $250,000. They haven't had a loss of $500,000. They've only had a loss of $250,000. Now I understand that banks are not in the real estate business, but they can sell the house through a broker at whatever price they get, apply it to the outstanding debt and their loss is much less than the $250,000 the bank claims.


Real estate almost never reaches 0. Now I have seen some inner city programs that have given houses away in ghetto areas to anyone who agrees to fix them up, but that is a local government program on property seized for taxes, and I simply refuse to believe those programs got us in this "crisis." And those are pretty wild price swings of one hundred percent bot ways over the course of a few years.


Let me give you another example. My niece brought her aunt's house. Her aunt could no longer afford the house and she could not take care of it, physically. So she found a small place to rent and told my niece if she could take care of the mortage so nothing outstanding was owed, she could have the place. My niece and her husband worked like dogs. Repainted the place, new carpets out of their own pocket, foundation repair and so forth. Now, her aunt had a fixed loan. My neice goes to get a loan with a fixed rate and is refused. She has to get a ARM. She has problems keeping up with the loan. (She'll make it, don't worry. I hear she has an Uncle Deeppockets.)


Anyway, if she were to default on the loan, the bank gets the house. Before the loan, the house was worth $135,000. Now, it is valued at $135,000. While the loan would no longer be good, the loss isn't $135,000 to the bank. It's $135,000 less closing cost, realtor fees and so forth, say $120,000.


This is why I want to see some numbers. This is why I don't believe a lot of what the administration is telling the Congress and the country right now. What actually does happen? How much does this really effect "main street?" What is really needed, bottom line, to keep the lines of credit open?


Call me a skeptic, but it seems to me we, as a nation, need a little time to figure this out.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-03-2008
In reply to: olddude50
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 8:10pm
I don't trust anything this Administration says.
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-15-2008
In reply to: olddude50
Tue, 09-23-2008 - 11:55pm
You won't get any arguments from me about any of this.

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