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Post by macrockett on Mar 2, 2010 21:01:16 GMT -6
www.fhfa.gov/webfiles/15466/HARPEXTENDED3110.pdfFHFA Extends Refinance Program By One YearWashington, DC -- Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Ed DeMarco today announced the extension of the Home Affordable Refinance Program, (HARP), a refinancing program administered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to June 30, 2011. The program is a key component of the Administration’s Making Home Affordable Program announced last February. The HARP program expands access to refinancing for qualified individuals and families whose homes have lost value. The program was set to expire on June 10 of this year. “FHFA has reviewed the current market situation and the state of mortgage insurance availability and has determined that the market conditions that necessitated the actions taken last year have not materially changed,” said DeMarco. “ Accordingly, to support and promote market stability, and to encourage lenders and other mortgage market participants to fully adopt the HARP program, including the implementation of the October 2009 expansion of loan-to-value ratios (LTVs) to 125 percent, FHFA is authorizing the extension of HARP until June 30, 2011.” In 2009, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased or guaranteed more than 4 million refinanced mortgages. Of this total, 190,180 were HARP refinances with LTVs between 80 percent and 125 percent. The HARP began in April 2009 and has grown over the past few months. For more information on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refinance activity, see FHFA’s monthly Foreclosure Prevention & Refinance Report. Additionally, homeowners can visit www.MakingHomeAffordable.gov for additional information on the program.
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Post by doctorwho on Mar 2, 2010 21:02:18 GMT -6
We have the trifecta of government waste tonight! The Post Office, Freddie Mac, and HAMP Hat Trick ! |
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Post by macrockett on Mar 3, 2010 21:01:36 GMT -6
When it comes to State and Local government, the report released yesterday by the GAO paints a rather bleak picture in the long run. Look at the summary graph on page 2: www.gao.gov/new.items/d10358.pdfThe GAO states: "GAO projects that the sector’s long-term fiscal position will steadily decline through 2060 absent any policy changes, as shown in figure 1. The decline in the sector’s operating balance is primarily driven by rising health care costs. The fiscal challenges confronting the state and local sector add to the nation’s overall fiscal difficulties. Because most state and local governments are required to balance their operating budgets, the declining fiscal conditions shown in GAO’s simulations suggest the fiscal pressures the sector faces and the extent to which these governments will need to make substantial policy changes to avoid growing imbalances."
What does this mean? Serious issues for State and Local governments.
As for our School District, it means start now, start cutting whatever is not essential to the education of our children. Get ahead of the curve. In negotiating with the union, give them a copy of this:L.A. Unified board approves layoff notices
March 2, 2010 | 4:17 pmThe Los Angeles school board voted Tuesday to send about 5,200 preliminary layoff notices to teachers and other employees because of a large budget deficit.The school district is facing a $640-million shortfall and officials have proposed shortening the school year, mandated furlough days for some employees, and asked union leadership to make salary concessions in efforts to cut costs. The unanimous vote affects about 2,300 teachers. Final layoff notices could be issued during the summer. -- Jason Song reporting from Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters This is happening virtually everywhere. Make no mistake about it, the pain will not be over any time soon. At best I would say it will be a slow grind.
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Post by macrockett on Mar 7, 2010 19:44:57 GMT -6
Lets just call it a rounding error:
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704869304575104214170174900.html?KEYWORDS=cboThe Wall Street Journal
MARCH 6, 2010
CBO Says White House Underestimates Deficits www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/112xx/doc11231/03-05-apb.pdf
By PATRICK YOEST and COREY BOLES
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Friday that based on the Obama administration's budget proposal, deficits over the next decade would be $1.2 trillion higher than the White House estimated.
A preliminary analysis of the president's budget by the CBO forecasts a $1.43 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2011, $75 billion higher than the White House projection. The CBO also estimated deficits from 2011-2020 would be more than $9.7 trillion, compared with $8.5 trillion projected by the administration.
Notably, over the same period, the CBO revised downward the savings estimates from legislation that would reduce subsidies to student-loan lenders, to $67 billion from $87 billion. The total estimated cost of the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program increases to $109 billion, compared with an earlier estimate of $99 billion, due largely to a revised assessment for providing tax-free funds to American International Group Inc. The CBO said it couldn't analyze what the administration projects to be $743 billion of revenue from health-care legislation, but "assumed that the policies would have the effect set forth in the budget." Write to Patrick Yoest at patrick.yoest@dowjones.com and Corey Boles at corey.boles@dowjones.com
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Post by macrockett on Mar 8, 2010 12:56:53 GMT -6
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Post by doctorwho on Mar 8, 2010 13:32:18 GMT -6
a BILLION freakin dollars -- and you wonder why the country-state are broke -- |
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Post by asmodeus on Mar 8, 2010 13:47:52 GMT -6
If an admitted tax cheat can become Treasury Secretary, these foibles certainly don't surprise me.
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Post by macrockett on Mar 8, 2010 21:29:10 GMT -6
a BILLION freakin dollars -- and you wonder why the country-state are broke -- If this upsets you, you should go to the government/pension thread and see the average compensation and benefits packages of goverment workers compared to the private sector. Oh and did you know that the number of federal government employees receiving compensation in excess of $150000 doubled in less than 18 months from 30000 employees to 66000? |
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Post by macrockett on Mar 9, 2010 8:20:47 GMT -6
www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/2091109,6_1_NA09_POSTAL_S1-100309.article# Is the end of an era near for the Postal Service? (If we could only be so lucky) Naperville residents say they wouldn't miss Saturday mail delivery
Comments
March 9, 2010
By JOSH LARSEN jlarsen @stmedianetwork.comIf the U.S. Postal Service discontinues Saturday delivery, it won't be the first major change Steve Chapleau has seen in 37 years of working for the Naperville post office. "Automation was the biggest," Chapleau said, referring to the processing and packaging of mail by machines, which began in the 1990s. "When I started, we had to do the bundling and packaging -- no scanners or bar codes." Still, the loss of Saturday delivery would be a huge shift in how the Postal Service does business. The move is among the proposals being considered by Congress -- including rate increases and the closing of post offices -- to help avoid the $7 billion loss being projected for the service this year. "I think it makes a lot of sense considering the condition we're in and the costs that we have and the reduction of money coming in," said Naperville Postmaster Dennis Lyons. "It makes perfect sense to me to do something like this." As Americans turn more and more from paper to electronic communications, the number of items handled by the post office fell from 213 billion in 2006 to 177 billion last year. Volume is expected to shrink to 150 billion by 2020.
Without drastic action the agency could face a cumulative loss of $238 billion over 10 years, Postmaster General John Potter recently said when releasing a series of consultant reports on agency operations.Naperville customers visiting the Ogden Avenue post office Monday weren't fazed by the prospect of losing Saturday delivery. "I don't think it would make a huge impact," said Janice Kerr. "We do most of our billing online." Kerr had come to the Naperville post office to deliver a package after comparing shipping rates with those of UPS and FedEx. "The two-to-three-day delivery was very competitive," she said. "I always get good service at this location, so I like to come here." Naperville's Horst Fiedler also wouldn't miss Saturday delivery. "It doesn't matter to me," he said. "During the week is fine." Just don't mess with rate increases. A proposal before the Postal Regulatory Commission has estimated that increases of 3 percent this year and 10 percent next year would be needed to get the agency back to break-even. "I don't know about that," Fiedler said of increasing the 44 cent cost of a first-class stamp. "They just raised it up." Debbie Blake-Moench, a letter carrier for the Naperville post office and president of the City Carrier's Union, said stopping Saturday delivery wouldn't be met with much happiness either. "Once we lose Saturday, what else are we going to lose?" she said. "It would definitely hurt the sanctity of the mail. It would take away our exclusivity." According to Blake-Moench, under law only the USPS can deliver to home mail boxes, but if the agency dropped down to delivery only five days a week, that could allow "mom and pop" shipping companies to also deliver to those boxes. And then there is the issue of letter carrier jobs. Blake-Moench said that if Saturday delivery was lost, 25,000 city carrier positions would be lost nationwide as well. Lyons said the Naperville post office would hope to meet any calls for job reductions through natural attrition. "The Postal Service has done an excellent job of downsizing by attrition -- people retiring or going somewhere else," he said. Chapleau hasn't gone anywhere else for 37 years. And to him, the job remains as simple as ever. "It still comes down to the carrier who goes on the street every day and meets his customers," he said. "That hasn't changed." The Associated Press contributed to this report. .
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Post by macrockett on Mar 9, 2010 9:58:37 GMT -6
blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/03/08/cbos-elmendorf-us-fiscal-policy-on-unsustainable-path/tab/print/March 8, 2010, 11:11 AM ET
CBO’s Elmendorf: U.S. Fiscal Policy on Unsustainable Path
The U.S. federal budget deficit is on a trajectory that poses “significant economic risks” and will become unsustainable, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said on Monday.In a presentation delivered before the National Association for Business Economics, Mr. Elmendorf noted that the choices needed to address the medium and long-term budget deficit will be “larger and more fundamental” than in the past. “U.S. fiscal policy is on an unsustainable path that can’t be resolved through minor tinkering,” he said. “The problem posed by the federal budget deficit not at its current level but on this trajectory… poses a growing risk to the recovery.”
Mr. Elmendorf said that if current tax policy is extended — including the tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 which look increasingly likely to be extended beyond their 2010 expiration — the deficit will swell from the $6 trillion baseline forecast by 2020 to just shy of $10 trillion.
In addition, the debt held by the public with current tax policies extended would soar to 90% of GDP by 2020, Mr. Elmendorf said, making the U.S. public debt load one of the world’s highest.
“The U.S. is entering unfamiliar territory in its level of public debt,” said Mr. Elmendorf. “It will be larger over the next decade than it’s been in half a century… and also unfamiliar by the standards of other developed countries.” The choice is not whether to change course from current policy, he noted, but “how quickly and in what way.” President Barack Obama has already declared a spending freeze on discretionary, nonessential outlays, but that only amounts to roughly 17% of total spending. Much of the rest of federal spending is for entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, defense spending and interest payments on the federal debt. The size of U.S. entitlement programs has grown sharply since 1970, from 3.8% of GDP to 8.2% as of 2007, and is expected to hit 11.1% of GDP by 2020 thanks to an aging population of Baby Boomers and fewer workers in the system to help pay for their benefits.
Mr. Elmendorf said one reason entitlements have grown over the last few decades without being accompanied by an obvious increase in taxes or reduction in government spending is because defense spending, which few Americans directly observe, has fallen by half during the same period of time, to 4% of GDP in 2007.That same pattern can’t be repeated in coming years, Mr. Elmendorf said. “We’ll have to pay for future growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid through a visible increase in the tax burden, a visible reduction in other programs or a visible reduction in these [entitlement] programs themselves,” he said.
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Post by asmodeus on Mar 9, 2010 10:03:13 GMT -6
They make it sound like the volume is dwindling to nothing. 150 billion is still an extremely large number of items (500 items per year for every man, woman, and child). And an increasing number of those are undoubtedly higher margin packages being sent for online commerce. I'll wager that the year the post office first passed the 150 billion items per year barrier wasn't very long ago. And the postal rates were less. So let's not kid ourselves that this is an issue of volume. It's an issue of pensions and benefits, period.
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Post by Arch on Mar 9, 2010 11:09:00 GMT -6
My brain just automatically associates the word pension with ponzi now...
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Post by macrockett on Mar 9, 2010 11:18:28 GMT -6
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541304575099430857238738.html?mod=WSJ_Real+Estate_LeftTopNews#printModeMARCH 6, 2010
Homeowners Hold Ground Against Rising Property Taxes
By M.P. MCQUEENDan Scagliozzi has paid higher property taxes each year since he purchased his home in West Orange, N.J., more than a decade ago. Last year, with the value of his house sliding, he decided to do something about it. Using a new online property-tax service, he appealed his tax assessment—for $49.99. Mr. Scagliozzi, 52 years old, says he reduced his assessment about 10%, knocking his tax bill to $13,049 from $14,680. "Overall, a very nice return on our $49.99 investment," he says. Property owners are taking action across the country as tax bills continue rising, even as home values have tumbled. Nationally, median prices of existing homes fell 22.3% from 2006 to 2009, according to the National Association of Realtors. But local tax formulas and assessment cycles usually don't reflect rapid price declines. Indeed, a recent survey by the National League of Cities found 25% of cities raised property tax rates in fiscal year 2009 to offset falling tax revenues. [PROPTAX] In Michigan, so many owners protested their assessments last year that the state's highest tax court has 24,000 cases awaiting hearings. Homeowners in Missouri and Illinois are organizing tax-protest groups. In New York and New Jersey, where residents pay some of the highest property-tax bills in the nation, voters threw out Democratic incumbents in recent state and local elections. At the same time, some homeowners are voting with their feet, relocating from high-tax states to those with a lower burden. When Peter Maguire, 42, a securities analyst, bought his first single-family house with his wife last year, they chose Connecticut because it has lower taxes than Westchester County, N.Y., or northern New Jersey, where his parents live. The $610,000 home in Norwalk, Conn., has a tax bill of about $6,100, he says, which he expects will rise this year because of renovations and a rate rise. "In Westchester, in a place like Pelham, taxes would be more than twice as high." While some of the highest taxes are in the Northeast, taxpayers all over are facing increases. George Parnell, 68, and his wife, Janice, 66, live in McDonald County, Mo., about 10 miles from Bentonville, Ark. In 15 years, Mr. Parnell says, his taxes have soared from roughly $30 a year to more than $900. The biggest jump came when they erected a small house on the property in the mid-1990s, but they have gone up almost annually ever since, he says. "We struggle to keep up," he says. "At our age, we need some kind of relief." Mr. Parnell says that he wrote to his local state representative complaining about the school property tax, and arguing that sales taxes should be used to finance schools instead. He hasn't applied for a reduced assessment or for property-tax relief. Most states, including Missouri, have homestead exemptions or property-tax-credit programs for the elderly, disabled or those with low incomes, many of which reduce property taxes by lopping off a chunk of the assessed value. Some states, including California, Minnesota, Oregon and Texas, have tax-deferral programs, in which an "increasing lien" is placed on the property of elderly or low-income homeowners who can't pay. The county collects the taxes plus interest when the property is sold, so it amounts to a low-interest loan. As it is now, more homeowners are falling behind on their taxes. Some want to sell their homes to save on taxes, but they are stuck because of the housing market. Ted Lanzaro, a certified public accountant in Shelton, Conn., says he has a client who is more than a year in arrears on her property taxes because of a business failure. She wants to unload her home, but there is little demand for trade-up housing in the area. "A lot of people's savings and credit are starting to dry up," Mr. Lanzaro says. "If things don't improve soon, you are going to see more people who can't pay their real-estate taxes." Copy
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Post by doctorwho on Mar 9, 2010 12:08:21 GMT -6
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541304575099430857238738.html?mod=WSJ_Real+Estate_LeftTopNews#printModeMARCH 6, 2010
Homeowners Hold Ground Against Rising Property Taxes
By M.P. MCQUEENDan Scagliozzi has paid higher property taxes each year since he purchased his home in West Orange, N.J., more than a decade ago. Last year, with the value of his house sliding, he decided to do something about it. Using a new online property-tax service, he appealed his tax assessment—for $49.99. Mr. Scagliozzi, 52 years old, says he reduced his assessment about 10%, knocking his tax bill to $13,049 from $14,680. "Overall, a very nice return on our $49.99 investment," he says. Property owners are taking action across the country as tax bills continue rising, even as home values have tumbled. Nationally, median prices of existing homes fell 22.3% from 2006 to 2009, according to the National Association of Realtors. But local tax formulas and assessment cycles usually don't reflect rapid price declines. Indeed, a recent survey by the National League of Cities found 25% of cities raised property tax rates in fiscal year 2009 to offset falling tax revenues. [PROPTAX] In Michigan, so many owners protested their assessments last year that the state's highest tax court has 24,000 cases awaiting hearings. Homeowners in Missouri and Illinois are organizing tax-protest groups. In New York and New Jersey, where residents pay some of the highest property-tax bills in the nation, voters threw out Democratic incumbents in recent state and local elections. At the same time, some homeowners are voting with their feet, relocating from high-tax states to those with a lower burden. When Peter Maguire, 42, a securities analyst, bought his first single-family house with his wife last year, they chose Connecticut because it has lower taxes than Westchester County, N.Y., or northern New Jersey, where his parents live. The $610,000 home in Norwalk, Conn., has a tax bill of about $6,100, he says, which he expects will rise this year because of renovations and a rate rise. "In Westchester, in a place like Pelham, taxes would be more than twice as high." While some of the highest taxes are in the Northeast, taxpayers all over are facing increases. George Parnell, 68, and his wife, Janice, 66, live in McDonald County, Mo., about 10 miles from Bentonville, Ark. In 15 years, Mr. Parnell says, his taxes have soared from roughly $30 a year to more than $900. The biggest jump came when they erected a small house on the property in the mid-1990s, but they have gone up almost annually ever since, he says. "We struggle to keep up," he says. "At our age, we need some kind of relief." Mr. Parnell says that he wrote to his local state representative complaining about the school property tax, and arguing that sales taxes should be used to finance schools instead. He hasn't applied for a reduced assessment or for property-tax relief. Most states, including Missouri, have homestead exemptions or property-tax-credit programs for the elderly, disabled or those with low incomes, many of which reduce property taxes by lopping off a chunk of the assessed value. Some states, including California, Minnesota, Oregon and Texas, have tax-deferral programs, in which an "increasing lien" is placed on the property of elderly or low-income homeowners who can't pay. The county collects the taxes plus interest when the property is sold, so it amounts to a low-interest loan. As it is now, more homeowners are falling behind on their taxes. Some want to sell their homes to save on taxes, but they are stuck because of the housing market. Ted Lanzaro, a certified public accountant in Shelton, Conn., says he has a client who is more than a year in arrears on her property taxes because of a business failure. She wants to unload her home, but there is little demand for trade-up housing in the area. "A lot of people's savings and credit are starting to dry up," Mr. Lanzaro says. "If things don't improve soon, you are going to see more people who can't pay their real-estate taxes." Copy The state of Illinois process is not on line is it? |
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Post by macrockett on Mar 9, 2010 13:21:34 GMT -6
There is nothing online here that I am aware of Doc. Property taxes challenges start at the township level, then at the county board of review. I imagine DuPage has a similar process. Will County says: How do I protest my taxes? First, speak to your township assessor about your property assessment. Second, you can appeal your assessment to the Will County of Review during a month-long period late each summer. Here is a state guide some general info: tax.illinois.gov/publications/localgovernment/ptax1004.pdf |
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