Biodiversity has many faces. This is why communication initiatives that encourage us to take steps to save biodiversity need to tell many stories and use all kinds of approaches to get the message home. Business Solutions Europa specializes in communications projects that really encourage Europeans, especially young people, to think and act about biodiversity and sustainable development. www.myfriendboo.com is an example of our latest project.
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Enkele jaren terug heb ik in Brugge een paar plaatjes geschoten. Helaas weet ik de exacte lokatie niet. Herkennen mensen op dit forum misschien de juiste lokatie?Alvast hartelijk dank!
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MPs Facing Police Over Expenses Look to Ancient Bill of Rights for Protection
Lawyers for the MPs are looking at whether the 1689 act could protect them from prosecution. If
the Commons rule book, which has for years governed the expenses claims
of MPs, is found to be covered by privilege then it could severely
hamper attempts by prosecutors to bring MPs to court.’Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who’ve Been Screwing You
‘A year of our collective life has flown by and our global culture is still rife with schemers, screw jobs and sorry excuses for solutions. And we just sit back and take it, year
after year. But no more. When you make that hefty list of New Year’s resolutions, drop some of these bombs. Then duck. You’ll get your change faster than you can say, “Teabag this!” ‘Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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2010 Ducati Motorcycles UK Pricing Announced
Ducati UK had just released pricing information for the 2010 model year machines, which are already on sale at nationwide dealers. The range includes new models, such as the 1198 S and R Corse editions, 848 Dark, Multistrada ABS and Multistrada S Sport/Touring together with the Hypermotard Evo and Evo SP.The entry level Multistrada 1200, priced at £10,995, was first unveiled at the 2009 EICMA show in Milan, where it has also received the Best in Show recognition.
… (read more)
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How Obama’s Mortgage Modifications Are Making Things Worse By Giving Desperate Homeowners A False Sense Of Hope
Is the mortgage modification program making things worse? An article in the New York Times gives voice to fears that by encouraging homeowners to stay in homes that they cannot really afford, Obama’s Making Home Affordable program is actually increasing the agony of homeowners, who pour money down the rathole of their mortgage rather than recognizing the loss and starting over. In the meantime, the modification programs disguise the true condition of bank balance sheets (because modified mortgages are not yet non-performing mortgages), and slow down the process of recovery.
How much truth is there to this story? Some, at least. I found myself talking to my father about this after I exchanged blog posts over the tragic case of Tom Vellucci, a Floral Park resident who lost his job and wound up with a non-paying tenant, then drained his savings trying to keep up with a modification that got him current, but didn’t lower his payment. We’re both longtime New Yorkers, so there’s a certain local interest in what happened. We were mystified by why anyone would think that Mr. Vellucci would qualify for a modification–and more importantly, why Mr. Vellucci would have thought so.
Reading between the lines in his story, Mr. Vellucci had virtually no savings (making his house payments tapped him out in four months). His income was moderate at the best of times, and his house payment was so large that everything had to go right for him. If he was out of work or lost a tenant for any length of time, he was going to end up in defaulting. As of the story’s publication, he was still on the dialysis that cost him his job, meaning he is not going to regain his income any time soon. There was no way that any imaginable mortgage modification was going to clean up this mess. Yet he gave the last of his savings to a skeezy servicer in some sort of tragic Hail Mary pass.
Why would he do something so patently insane? Apparently he was hoping that he could get a second modification under MHA. But his interest rate wasn’t his problem. He had a mortgage principal that probably ran into the mid six-figures, and no job, and probably required a modification that slashed his payment in half. The Obama program clearly raised ridiculous, unrealistic hopes in at least a few people.
That said, the people pushing the notion that MHA is making everything worse have their own vested interests: people who want to pin political blame on Barack Obama; hedge fund managers and other financial types who presumably have taken bets that will pay off quicker and easier if foreclosures pick up; people pushing for more aggressive modifications that write down principal as well as interest rates. With few permanent modifications yet approved, and no data, it’s not clear to me that this is a significant problem, rather than an occasional tragedy.
But I think that the so far lackluster results from MHA do point to something important, which is that we don’t have the kind of mortgage crisis we thought we had when we passed the modification. This represents not only a shift in our thinking about how to fix the housing markets, but a major shift in our national narrative about the housing bubble. Six to nine months ago, the major story we told in connection with the financial crisis was the homeowner suckered–by either fraud or greed–into a teaser loan with an artificially low interest rate that was going to turn disastrous when it reset.
We’ve seen some of that, to be sure, particularly with the “Option ARM” or “negative amortization” loans on which homeowners weren’t even making the full interest payment. But that hasn’t turned out to be our biggest problem, largely because we are in a very low interest rate environment right now, so many people saw their rates reset downward rather than up. Instead, we are plagued by negative home equity, and unemployment. We have a modification program designed to avert a threat that never materialized.
Now we have a choice between two more stories. One presents the negative equity as the major problem. Negative home equity is a bigger predictor of default than job loss; so, the reasoning goes, we must be seeing something akin to the infamous “jingle mail”, in which people hand over their keys rather than keep making payments on a house that isn’t appreciating.
Obviously, this happens. But I doubt it’s particularly common. Most bankruptcy experts believe that while there are a handful of grossly irresponsible jerks who deliberately borrow as much as they can get away with before defaulting, or otherwise abuse the process, the majority of people who default try really really hard to find some way to make their payments. (Interestingly/oddly, this does not seem to be as true of student loans and utility bills.)
My story is a little more complicated. People who lose their jobs, but have positive equity, sell the house when money gets tight. (Five years ago, they probably would have refinanced).
People who lose their jobs, but have negative equity, lose the house. So do people who get divorced and have negative equity, people who are whacked with unexpected medical or legal bills and have negative equity, people who get hit with back taxes and have negative equity, people who develop a gambling problem or a drug habit and have negative equity. The negative equity is better correlated–but that doesn’t mean that people are deciding to walk away from houses just because they’re underwater.
My story is kinder to the debtors, but it also makes modifications more problematic. If the negative equity is the main problem, you can solve the mortgage crisis by switching to modifications with “cramdowns”–i.e., get a judge or a banker to write off the portion of the principal that exceeds what the house is worth. This has unpleasant side effects–it would probably pretty much instantly return us to the days of 20+% down payments on every house, and likely cause house prices to fall farther. But it at least has some hope of solving the immediate foreclosure problem.
But if negative equity is merely exacerbating an untenable situation, it’s not clear how much good even a cramdown will do. Proponents of cramdowns have begun a recent love affair with the pre-1977 bankruptcy code. They are blissfully oblivious to the fact that the pre-1977 code was in many ways much less debtor-friendly, which is why it was reformed. But that is neither here nor there, really. Even the pre-1977 code did not view the cramdown as a sort of magical gift to the homeowner.
At least as I understand it, cramdowns were then, as they are now, part of a Chapter 13 bankruptcy–in other words, part of a court-ordered repayment plan, not a Chapter 7, in which the debtor sheds their past debts. If a Chapter 7 debtor wants to keep an asset that is securing a loan, he has to reaffirm the debt.
In a Chapter 13 cramdown, the loan is “stripped” or bifurcated into two portions: the secured part, in the amount of the asset’s current value, and an unsecured part, which is paid after other obligations have been satisfied. (In practice, this usually means “never”; they’re generally discharged if the plan is completed successfully). You have to pay the bank on time, every month, for a number of years; if you don’t, your Chapter 13 fails, and the loan reverts to its old terms. Which, among other things, means that you now owe all the money you didn’t pay the bank while the modification was in effect, plus the interest that compounded on the unpaid portion. Since most Chapter 13 plans fail, this should give advocates of mortgage cramdowns pause.
There is no precedent or procedure that I am aware of for letting homeowners get a modification in order to sell the house; that’s what a short sale is for. But if people really are defaulting out of desperation, then selling the house is probably what they need to do. Unless they’re very poor, people don’t lose the house because they got a 5-10% pay cut; lower taxes mitigate some of the effect, and people will do a lot before they’ll allow themselves to be foreclosed on. No, by the time most people are looking at foreclosure, they’re in one of three situations:
- They were irresponsible borrowers who have amassed an essentially unpayable amount of debt
- They have had a dramatic loss of income (business failure, bad investments, furlough/job loss/new job at lower pay)
- They have had a dramatic increase in expenses (lawsuit, medical bills, back taxes, gambling problem, etc.)
The first group may be helpable, but if someone has $50,000 in credit card debt, no responsible banker would agree to modify their loan outside of a bankruptcy court; you’d essentially be making a free gift to other creditors who ought to share the pain.
The second group is not helpable, because outside of a few frothy markets like California, writing the house down to market value will not provide enough of a decrease to cushion the kinds of income decline that push people into foreclosure. A 10% writedown on a $400,000 mortgage at 6.25% nets you a little over $250 a month in savings. If you make enough money to have a $400,000 mortgage, you are not defaulting because you suddenly developed a $250 shortfall in your monthly budget.
This arithmetic is also a problem for the third group, plus one hopes that no sensible banker would modify the loan of anyone whose other major creditor was Harrah’s.
So to answer the question I posed at the beginning: there’s not much evidence that the current scheme of mortgage modification is making things worse. But there’s also not much evidence that any differently designed system would have made things any better. We may have to look for other ways to ease the pain of those whose houses are more than they can afford.
And we might start by trying to make it easier to get out of houses, as well as stay in them. Instead of encouraging people to throw their savings into hopeless modifications, maybe the government should be trying to streamline the process of arranging for a short sale so that people can walk away with a little savings in the bank (and on their credit report) to help them get a fresh start.
Join the conversation about this story »
See Also:
- Loan Mods Are Still A Disaster
- Bank Of America Is The Worst Major Bank When It Comes To Mortgage Mods
- Why Mortgage Mods Aren’t Working
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The Creatures from the Black Lagoon of the Reptile Mind
‘The reason they came up with an
underwear bomber is the same reason they came up with a shoe bomber.
First they wanted to get into your shoes and then they wanted to get
into your underwear. After that they want to get into your body. But
job one, day one, they want to get into your head. These are stages of
humiliation designed to strip you of your dignity,They could have fixed it for Richard
Reid to blow up his foot and they could have fixed it for Abdulmutallab
to blow up his balls but neither of these have the graphic potential of
a suspicious passenger being overpowered on an airliner while weird
shit happens. This way, you know exactly what they want you to know. If
they have to piece it together (pun intended) later it’s a lot
more costly and involved. They also didn’t have to destroy an
airplane to do it. Saving expense is, of course, not their primary
concern. Their primary concern is putting an image in your mind and
making everyone suspicious of each other.’Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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As an American, I Refuse to Buy Mandatory Health Insurance That Supports Corrupt Conventional Medicine
‘Even if Obama’s health
care reform bill becomes law, mandating that all Americans buy health
insurance policies for a failed system of “sick care”, I will refuse to
comply. I’ve read the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights, and
nowhere in that document do I find that the federal government has the
power to force consumers to purchase for-profit insurance products from
private companies.The very basis of the
health care reform bill is, at its core, unconstitutional. If this
mandate is allowed to stand, it sets a dangerous precedent for the U.S.
government to require us to purchase other products and services from
whatever industries it chooses to support. What’s next? Will the
government pass a law forcing us to buy pharmaceuticals at thousands of
dollars a year? Will it force us to purchase U.S.-made automobiles in
order to boost the automobile industry? Is our economic free choice now
centrally planned by our own government operating like Communist China?’Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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Corruption of Physicians by Big Pharma Now ‘Limited’ to $500 an Hour
‘High-ranking physicians and executives
at Partners HealthCare, which includes Massachusetts General and
Brigham and Women’s hospitals, can no longer receive stock or
unlimited fees for sitting on the boards of biotechnology and
pharmaceutical companies, under new rules that took effect Friday.Partners estimates that the policy
affects roughly 25 vice presidents, clinical department heads, and
other top executives who are directors for some of the nation’s
leading drug companies. The rules limit their pay to $500 an hour, or
$5,000 for a typical 10-hour day attending a board meeting; the rules
ban executives and high-level physicians outright from taking company
stock as compensation.’Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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Daily Crunch: Into the White Edition
Parkour flip book-style
Beam me up, Scotty: Some weird wristband lets to you talk to the hand
Star Trek wetsuit lets you boldly go where few have gone before
Hitachi’s develops brain signal-powered remote control
Review: The Torch, a $300 flashlight
CrunchGear at CES 2010
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France to Sell its Swine Flu Vaccines
‘France joins the list of European
countries like Germany and the Netherlands, which have been seeking
clients for their excess swine flu vaccines. Latest
figures have revealed that swine flu has already claimed the lives of
at least 12,220 individuals worldwide, the majority of whom were from
the US and Canada.Despite primary statements, health
officials have claimed that a single H1N1 flu vaccine is sufficient to
ward off swine flu symptoms, meaning that many developed countries have
a massive oversupply of vaccines.’Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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Brown Irked by Plan for Antiwar Demo
‘British Prime Minister
Gordon Brown says he is appalled by an Islamic group’s proposal to
demonstrate against the UK’s continuation of war in Afghanistan.In a Monday statement
issued in response to calls by the Islam4UK group for a protest march
in the country, Brown expressed strong dismay at the plan and said he
was “personally appalled” by the group’s bid to protest
against the government’s war policies in Afghanistan.’Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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Passing the Ball…
Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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Gordon Brown Promises Full body Scanners at UK Airports
‘Prime Minister Gordon Brown has given the go-ahead for full body scanners to be introduced at Britain’s airports. BAA, which runs six UK airports, said it would now install the machines “as soon as is practical” at Heathrow. Experts
have questioned the scanners’ effectiveness at detecting the type of
bomb allegedly used on Christmas Day in an attempted plane attack over
Detroit.’Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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Hunter-Reay Signs Andretti Autosport Deal for 2010
Andretti Autosport announced the signing of American racer Ryan Hunter-Reay for the 2010 season of the IndyCar Series. However, it’s not all good news for the former Vision Racing and AJ Foyt Racing driver, as Hunter-Reay is yet to secure sponsorship for an full campaign in the series.All the other Andretti Autosport racers are regulars in the championship – Danica Patrick, Tony Kanaan and Marco Andretti – with Hunter-Reay being the only one guaranteed a few rounds, including the… (read more)
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Health and Safety Rules to Guard Pupils Against Dangers of Singing and Spicy Food
‘Schools are being warned to follow new
health and safety rules designed to protect pupils from musical
instruments, singing with a dry mouth, spicy food, a helicopter landing
in the playing field and other bizarre hazards.’Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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Are US Forces Executing Kids in Afghanistan? Americans Don’t Even Know to Ask
‘The Taliban suicide
attack that killed a group of CIA agents in Afghanistan on a base that
was directing US drone aircraft used to attack Taliban leaders was big
news in the US over the past week, with the airwaves and front pages
filled with sympathetic stories referring to the fact that the female
station chief, who was among those killed, was the “mother of
three children.”But the apparent mass
murder of Afghan school children, including one as young as 11 years
old, by US-led forces (most likely either special forces or mercenary
contractors working for the Pentagon or the CIA), was pretty much
blacked out in the American media. Especially blacked out was word from
UN investigators that the students had not just been killed but
executed, many of them after having first been rousted from their
bedroom and handcuffed.’Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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Detroit Air Attack – Zionist Lies & Future Plans
‘The failed ‘terrorist’
attempt on Christmas day 2009 by Omar Farouk Abdul Mutallab on
Northwest Airlines from Amsterdam to Detroit was a singular victory for
the Zionist/Military Complex which rules the White House and Capitol
Hill.Working in close
connection with the Pentagon and the CIA – the Israel Defense Force
(IDF) and its intelligence branch, the Mossad, have set their sights on
a new Middle East target, the nation of Yemen which borders oil-rich
Saudi Arabia.Yemen is of particular
interest to the Zionist/Military Complex as both China, a trading
partner with Yemen, and Russia, now exporting weapons to Yemen, are
gaining greater influence in the area. (Obama with Nobel Peace Prize in
hand, bombed and killed 120 civilians in Yemen on December 16, 2009.)’Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList
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Keepin’ it real fake, part CCXLIX: Cool K07 is the ultimate facePalm
Yeah, yeah — we’ve seen a fairly weak effort to ape the Pre before, but this… this is the knockoff webOS device your shady side has been waiting for. A dead ringer for the Palm Pre, the Cool K07 boasts a luscious 2.8-inch touchscreen (320 x 240 resolution), a T-Flash card slot, a 2 megapixel camera, inbuilt speaker, MP3 / MP4 player, a blazing fast connection to the web (GPRS, if you must know), Bluetooth, an FM radio tuner, alarm clock, a few games and room for 1,000 contacts. Granted, there’s none of that fancy “Synergy” stuff, and we’re guessing you won’t find any “cards” or “multitasking” here, but for $128 unlocked and room for the SIM card of your choice, how on Earth could you complain? Exactly. You can’t. Or maybe that’s just stunned silence we hear…
[Thanks, Dechris]
Keepin’ it real fake, part CCXLIX: Cool K07 is the ultimate facePalm originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Iomega v.Clone turns your whole computer into a portable, bootable VMWare image
We’re not used to thinking of Iomega as a software company, but with EMC — the maker of VMWare — in the background now, some sort of synergy was bound to happen. Iomega’s new v.Clone software is the result, and it sounds pretty great. Basically it backs up your C: drive into a bootable, standalone app-wrapped VMWare image, which can run off of a compatible Iomega drive (new eGo and Prestige lines, for starters) on any other Windows computer. Any changes you make to your system in VM mode will then be synced back to your main machine when you return. We’re guessing there will be some performance implications to the setup, and it’ll take some using to know just how practical this might be, but it presents an intriguing opportunity for people to untether from their increasingly bulky, store everything desklaptops if it works — and their friends don’t mind them jacking in.
Iomega v.Clone turns your whole computer into a portable, bootable VMWare image originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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