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Monday, January 10, 2011

Making Money on Ebay

The Education Tech Series is supported by Dell The Power To Do More, where you’ll find perspectives, trends and stories that inspire Dell to create technology solutions that work harder for its customers so they can do and achieve more.

Non-profit organizations and passionate individuals have found a slew of creative ways to leverage social media and the class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet to make the world a better place. Online campaigns help provide clean drinking water, food and malaria-preventing bed nets to people who need them.

Creative uses of the web are helping to provide and enhance education. These four projects, for instance, found innovative ways to help build schools through digital campaigns.

1. Epic Change

Epic Change has become a model for raising money using social media. Since 2008, its annual TweetsGiving has asked people to tweet about what they’re thankful for while making a donation. The strategy was so successful that #tweetsgiving became a trending topic on Twitter during the first year’s campaign.

Starting out, the benefactor of TweetsGiving was a school in Tanzania that was founded by Mama Lucky Kamptoni, a passionate local woman who started the school using money she earned from her poultry business (now there are two more benefactors). Epic Change wanted to help her rebuild and expand the school.

The organization also launched To Mama With Love, a website where users can make a donation by creating a “heart space” for a mother they care about. The “heart space” is a collection of photos, videos and words dedicated to that mother. Other people who care about that mother are invited to donate in her honor.

From one of the classrooms that was built using donations from these campaigns, the students now tweet and connect with the rest of the world.

“So often, we hear the stories of children in the so-called ‘developing’ world from the perspective of the media, non-profits or friends who have traveled or volunteered,” explains the Epic Change Blog. “What happens now – when these students can share their own stories, and build relationships with the rest of the world, for themselves? How will the world be different when these children, who live so geographically far away, move into our virtual backyard? What difference will it make in their lives to know that their voices will be heard?”

2. Stillerstrong

When Ben Sitller launched the Stillerstrong campaign on YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube, Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter and a branded website, he did it with a video that poked fun at Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong campaign. It was hard to tell if he was kidding.

But the campaign, which sells Stillerstrong headbands and accepts donations by text message and credit card, has raised about $300,000 to help provide temporary schools for Haitians displaced by January’s earthquake. At the time the campaign was announced, the organization and its partners Causecast and the Global Philanthropy Group were expecting each school to cost between $45,000 and $55,000.

3. TwitChange

Instead of auctioning off celebrity memorabilia to support a charity, TwitChange hosts eBay auctions for celebrity Twitter interaction. The donation’s bidders put down to have a celebrity follow them, retweet their tweet, or mention them in an update. The proceeds go to aHomeInHaiti.org, which will use them to build a home and school for children with disabilities in Haiti.

The first auction in September raised $531,640.25. The website instructs us to “stay tuned for the celebrity tweet auction coming this holiday season.”

4. University of the People

Less of a “campaign” than a full-blown effort to democratize education, University of the People provides tuition-free higher education through an online campus.

Since launching last year, the university has accepted about 700 students from 100 different countries to its three- to four-year programs for business and computer science. Recently the university opened computer centers in Haiti so that students with limited Internet access could enroll in its courses.

“I do believe that if we take the millions of people around the world who could not afford going to university and teach them tuition free, we’re not only changing their lives, and their family’s lives, we also change their communities, their countries,” founder Shai Shai Reshef says. “And if we have a lot of them, we will change the world for a better world.”

Series Supported by Dell The Power To Do More/>

More Social Good Resources from Mashable:

- How Online Classrooms Are Helping Haiti Rebuild Its Education System/> - Why Social Media Is Reinventing Activism/> - 5 Creative Social Good Campaigns for the Holiday Season/> - 4 Real Challenges to Crowdsourcing for Social Good/> - 9 Creative Social Good Campaigns Worth Recognizing

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, urbancow

For more Social Good coverage:

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Try a different mobile OS

If you are due to renew your mobile contract this year then why not give some thought to switching OS? Android, iOS and Symbian have all seen big shifts in usablity and technical features in 2010 and 2011 might be a ideal time to see how the other third lives or to try something new and go with Windows Phone 7. Who knows, maybe by the time your contract is due, BlackBerry will surprise us too?

Listen up and listen good

Last year you probably gave Spotify a try and maybe even subscribed. This year you should give a few other music streaming services a go. Try out the web-based mflow so super simple track sharing and purchasing and keep your eyes peeled for Google Music and Apple’s take on cloud music storage.

Make an app

If you run Android you can now knock up an app using Google App Inventor without too much in the way of coding savvy. Symbian users can make newsreader apps with the Ovi App Wizard and iPhone owners can use AppBreeder to create promotional apps that can be published to the App Store (for a fee).

Back that stuff up

Listen carefully – your data is important. If you lose your hard drive or your PC gets nicked you will be in trouble, so the time to start doing proper backups is YESTERDAY. Luckily there are plenty of ways to back up your stuff that mean you won’t have to give it any thought bar a bit of initial set-up. Try online solutions like Carbonite or Dropbox or go for a local WiFi gadget like Q-Waves Wireless USB Data Kit.

Reuse and recycle

Getting rid of some of your old gadgets and gizmos has never been easier. eBay now offer green.ebay.com to instantly trade decent old electronics for cash or recycle duffers at no charge. There are other specialised services for mobile phones such as SellMyMobile that will pay you cash money for your old blower. Go 3D

If you want to watch the undoubtedly amazing new David Attenborough 3D doc via Sky you will have to bite the bullet and get yourself a 3D TV at last. Come on, you know you want one really. Just think of all those times you can watch Avatar! If 3D video still isn’t floating your boat then this could be the year of 3D Radio.

Kill your television

Well not the telly itself maybe (especially if you just spent a fortune on a new 3D one) but why not see if you can live without your satellite or cable subscription and embrace Internet TV? Google TV, Apple TV and the Boxee Box all offer low-cost ways to change the way you suckle from the glass teat. TV catchup services like iPlayer and 4OD mean you can still watch shows you like from the terrestrial channels even if all you have is an old laptop – just dont forget you still need a licence.

Make something amazing in Minecraft

There are loads of incredible games launching this year but the amazing creations of Minecraft players keep wowing us with their sheer inventiveness. Now that Minecraft guru Notch has decided to release the first proper beta of the indie mining and making game it seems like the ideal time to start digging for minerals and build something out of this world. We’d love to see what you can come up with.

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Friday, January 7, 2011

Making Money Ebay

The Middle East’s largest online auction and buying site has decided auctions are so last decade.

From the beginning of 2011 sellers won’t get the option to sell their products in an auction. It’s fixed price, or none at all.

The decision comes as a shock to many as Souq.com, which opened its doors to the public in 2005 and has since launched in 5 countries in the region, has always been portrayed as the eBay of the Middle East. At least in terms of online auctions, not anymore.

“We (and most of our sellers) want to offer the best online shopping experience to users in the region, and this is one step along the way to support this goal.” said CEO and Founder of Souq.com Ronaldo Mouchawar in an email about the recent shift.

This change, as most in life, will have its supporters and detractors. The good thing is, it looks like a only slim minority might end up annoyed.

To illustrate the above, lets say you’re a painter and you work from home during your spare time. I’m one of those who believe art has no price, but since it’s good to have paint to create priceless masterpieces, putting the occasional price tag on your work isn’t entirely evil. The only problem with that is how do you put a price tag on art in the first place? Van Gough considered giving money for art is as important as being an artist yourself. That’s where auctions come in strong.

By putting up a painting to sell through an auction, the seller allows the highest bidder to give her as much it takes to win the auction, or otherwise ask to ‘Buy Now’ according to a price the seller sets. Will this shift be good for those who realistically don’t know how much their work is worth? I would say no.

On the flip-side regional retail stores tend to invest large amounts of money to put their products online on their own, and usually fail miserably. Many factors come into play, but the most obvious are a large user base and an easy to use website to buy from.

This encouraged Souq.com to build a platform for merchants and retail stores to offer their products on Souq through fixed prices (almost all the time), and through Souq Stores which are customizable online outlets for retailers such as UAE’s I'm not a big fan of boycotts, but if you can avoid buying Nike, Best Buy, Levi Strauss and Target stuff, you might help stop their support of the global warming scam.

Crony capitalism is a stepping-stone to socialism. The term is used to describe the unholy, anti-citizen alliances between corporations and big government. These kinds of companies generally engage in massive lobbying efforts (read: backscratching) to coerce government into various taxpayer-funded schemes:

• by paying them directly through government purchases...
• by carving out market segments for them through regulation...
• and otherwise increasing profit margins by suppressing the free market.

With this as our context, let's examine The American Spectator's article entitled "What Do Nike, Best Buy, Levi Strauss and Target Have in Common?".

They all support EPA efforts to regulate greenhouse gases, even though that circumvents the citizens' right to have their elected representatives make U.S. laws. More on the Obama Administration overreach and his crony corporatists support at the National Legal and Policy Center blog today.

Heading over to the NLPC, we can discover the sordid details.

Earlier this month corporate climateers including Nike and 3M were given awards -- supposedly "the equivalent of an Oscar for the climate change mitigation world" -- for their efforts to reduce their carbon emissions... Nike also co-signed a letter to President Obama that called for U.S. leadership in an initiative to create and finance the Global Climate Fund, which was established at the UN climate talks in Cancun in early December.

Other members of [this group include] Levi Strauss & Co., Starbucks, Timberland, Best Buy, Ben & Jerry's, eBay, Gap Inc., The North Face, and Target Corporation. Mark them down as corporations who favor the circumvention of the peoples' right to have their elected representatives make U.S. laws.

Carbon dioxide is plant food. It can no more be a pollutant than water vapor or oxygen. The Marxist Left progressives believe, or want us to think they believe, that capping CO2 emissions can act as a thermostat on the climate.

The reality is quite different. Trying to control carbon dioxide is a money-making scam and it has been since the original IPCC reports that were issued by folks poised to make millions through inherent conflicts-of-interest.

Companies that feed this government-run monstrosity should be treated as the anti-free market pariahs they are.

Image: Fox News.
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Thursday, January 6, 2011

Making Money Without

Hell's Kitchen continues to be a highly desirable neighborhood for many New Yorkers, but living in the HeKi (our coinage&msash;you're welcome Corcoran) isn't without sacrifice. Local residents who don't have washer/dryers in their buildings are finding it increasingly annoying to get their laundry done! One of the neighborhood's last laundromats, on 53rd Street and Ninth Avenue, recently closed, leaving behind, the Post reports, "a mile-long, laundry-less desert between Eighth and Tenth Avenues." This heavy news comes on the heels of Second Wave Laundry, the largest Laundromat in the neighborhood on 55th Street and Ninth Avenue, closing because the landlord threatened to raise the rent from $14,000 to $20,000 a month and demanded an $80,000 security deposit.

Now Hell's Kitchen locals are throwing "champagne and laundry parties" in apartments with washing machines. Others simply do their laundry in the sink. For this very reason, Councilwoman Gale Brewer has introduced a resolution to give tax breaks to owner-operated city businesses. "This is the most basic challenge to the crisis of the lack of mom-and-pop stores in the city," says Brewer. "It's beyond frustrating." And Christine Gorman, president of the West 55th Block Association, tells the tabloid, "The Laundromats are fleeing our area. The services in our neighborhood are disappearing. There's rumors that the Laundromat is going to become a Citibank." At least that's welcome news for anybody in Hell's Kitchen who needs some money laundered.

The Middle East’s largest online auction and buying site has decided auctions are so last decade.

From the beginning of 2011 sellers won’t get the option to sell their products in an auction. It’s fixed price, or none at all.

This change, as most in life, will have its supporters and detractors. The good thing is, it looks like a only slim minority might end up annoyed.

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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Being Right or Making Money

The UAW, not content with bankrupting GM and Chrysler once, want a repeat performance. And with Bob King at the helm, and apparently done campaigning for world peace and praying at the US capitol, they may yet get the double double. But first, it's time to put on the sheep's clothing and pretend to be rational. From the Detroit Free Press: UAW reveals ideas to try to level playing field. By 'leveling the playing field', what they mean is putting a thumb on the scale to tip the balance in their favor, but such is establishment media and their newspeak.

The document, called “UAW Principles for Fair Union Elections,” outlines 11 ideals that are designed to level the playing field between the UAW and an employer during a union campaign and election.

....The principles include an agreement that the ability to join a union is a “fundamental human right.”

But opting out from being forced to join the union is not. The document with the 11 principles can be found at this link, but just check out #2 for one:

Employees must be free to exercise the right to join a union or refrain from joining a union in an atmosphere free of fear, coercion,intimidation or threats. There is no free choice if a worker is afraid of losing a job or losing benefits as a result of his or her choice, or is intimidated into making a choice not of one’s own making.

This guest post is by Brandon Connell of brandonconnell.com

When I first started a blog that I took seriously, it was to promote an ebook that I had published on Amazon’s Digital Text platform. Initially, I wanted the blog to be my “author’s headquarters,” but soon after, I realized what I really wanted to do with my blog. It was far from my initial goal, and I wish I’d made the right decision from the beginning, rather than reversing course.

The problems

Changing your blogging type after you start the blog causes problems. Those problems include, but are not limited to:

losing readers and subscribers that had expectations

confusing the search engines due to content changes

wasting time marketing your blog on the wrong sites.

Readers walk

When you change your blog style or niche, it’s common sense that your readers will most likely walk. Think about it. They came to your blog because they came across some content that intrigued them. Now that you’ve decided to change your content, what reason do they have to stick around?

It’s important to choose your blog style ahead of time, and think about it carefully. You can literally waste hours of your time approaching the wrong reader audience. You can also end up being bad-mouthed by another blogger who’s angry with your switch.

Search engines get confused

It is a search engine’s job to make sure it indexes and ranks relevant content. Let’s say you start a blog about your golf hobby, but then you switch course, writing a stock tips business blog. Search engines may have already given you good rankings for golf. If you change your content, you’ll lose those rankings. You may even end up being penalized by the search engines.

When you first publish your blog, unless you’re blog hopping and guest posting, search engines are likely to be the first ones to read your content. Make sure they leave as happy customers. How? Be consistent. Your niche and blogging style should never change once you start.

You waste time

Should you have done your research on blog marketing, you’ll know that blog commenting and article marketing are excellent ways to promote your blog and build backlinks to it. If you change your style or niche, you have to consider the fact that you wasted all that time writing irrelevant articles that don’t match your newly chosen niche. The audiences for those article sites, backlinks, and guest posts will no longer be interested in what your blog has to say. When they click through to your site, they’ll be disappointed.

Another wasted effort would be the fact that you now have to delete your mailing list that you may have built up, since your subscribers didn’t sign up for information on your new topic. They subscribed because they had an interest in your previous topic.

Style vs. niche

Your blog style is not your niche: a blog style reflects your reasons for starting the blog in the first place:

Did you want to make money?

Did you want to influence a certain type of group?

Did you just want to blog about your interests?

When choosing a blogging style, you need to think about what you intentions may be in the long term. There are many bloggers who simply want to make money—they heard that blogging can make that happen for them. There are others who don’t believe or care about making money blogging: they simply want to write about what they love. The influential blogger is a writer who wishes to have his or her readers care about what s/he says, and take action because of what s/he said.

A niche, on the other hand, is a topic that you’re writing about. You can fit your blog into any niche using any of the three blogging styles I just mentioned. My niche topic is making money blogging, and I write regularly about this topic. You could say that this niche reflects my target keyword—the topic that I want to be known for.

As we saw with the golf and stocks example above, it’s important not to change your niche after you start blogging. Most of the time, your niche is connected to your style. When one changes, so does the other in most cases.

Let’s look more closely at these blogging styles.

The influential blogger

The influential type wants more than anything to have control over the actions that people take. We can take medical marijuana as an example niche in which the influential blogger style might be applied. This blogger will either want to oppose medical marijuana laws, or support them. Whichever route they choose, they want to be able to get people on board to support their cause. Their cause may be a call to action: for example, to contact a congressman with a specific message that will generate support for the blogger’s desired law.

Influential bloggers are usually heavyweights because they touch on sensitive topics that gain a lot of attraction. An influential blog doesn’t usually have a lot of advertising, and although the blogger may ask for donations to support their cause, that’s usually the extent of their money0making agenda. This does not make them a cash-seeking blogger.

The hobby blogger

I love the hobby blogger because they don’t care about anything other than sharing their passion with others. They care about what they do for fun, and they want you to have fun reading about it.

Hobby bloggers are quick to gain followers because they’re not concerned about advertising on their blog. They love the idea of publishing their articles and having like-minded people comment on them.

The cash blogger

I would say that I am a mix between a cash blogger and a hobby blogger. My entire niche and style is to teach others and make money doing it. I have done well in my style and niche, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The reason why I consider it a hobby is because I love what I am writing about, and I love sharing it all with others. It just so happens that I make money doing it.

My niche isn’t a necessary one, and it’s flooded with new blogs every day. You can monetize a hobby blog in any niche. I would say that there are a lot of hobby bloggers who have unintentionally turned into cash bloggers too, just because they realized at some point that money can be made with their traffic. If you’re thinking “but that’s changing your blogging style!” you’re right … in part. It’s a sort of merging of the two, rather than a clear switch. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and you shouldn’t feel like you’re selling out if you go down this path.

Which choice is right for you?

No matter what style or niche you choose, you need to take the decision seriously. The last thing you want to do is change course once you’ve made your decision. There are too many negative side-effects of changing your style halfway through the mission.

Look at your decision as a life choice. You wouldn’t just pick up and move from Chicago to Iceland, would you? The choice you make today will impact your life years down the road. Make sure it is a decision you can live with, and choose a style and niche that you love without a doubt.

How did you choose your blogging style and your blog niche?

Brandon Connell is a full-time blogger, web designer, and internet marketer in Illinois. Visit http://www.brandonconnell.com, where Brandon teaches you how to make money blogging.

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Tuesday, January 4, 2011

foreclosure statistics

In his book, Thompson's search for the American dream ends at the burned-out husk of a former nightclub, a fitting metaphor for a city that went from the fastest-growing to the most-foreclosed city in America in the space of a year. As our article and its accompanying video document, today more than 80% of Vegas mortgages are underwater, and empty or abandoned home pepper the city.

Sunshine and Stricken Suburbs

Vegas is hardly the only region whose housing sector fed on dreams. In Florida, the third-most foreclosed state, dreams have fed the area's growth ever since Ponce de Leon ventured there in search of the fountain of youth. Our piece from Florida explores a different kind of dream: an uncompleted "Italian resort themed" suburban neighborhood that's now filled with cows. In order to save on taxes in the now-unprofitable real estate venture, the area's developer had the area reclassified as farmland and moved in livestock. As for the people who live there, the swanky neighborhood they signed on for is now a barbed-wire bonanza.

And dreams continue to be deferred across the country. In Modesto, Calif., Todd Lappin documents empty streets, hastily boarded-up windows and stagnant swimming pools in the fourth most foreclosed state. With his images of rusting barbecues, overgrown yards and abandoned homes, Lappin sketches a near-apocalyptic landscape, the scattered leavings of a once-posh suburban development.

Meanwhile, a promising development in Vickery, Ga., has started transforming into a money pit. To the dismay of the area's residents, the bankruptcy of Vickery's developer and rising foreclosures have sent neighborhood fees through the roof, even as property values have tumbled. As the author notes, it's unclear if the bucolic neighborhood will ever recoup its lost property values.

Small-Town Destitution

One doesn't have to travel to a sun-kissed wonderland to find a dream that came crashing down. As David Schepp documents in "The Housing Mess Hits One New York Town Hard," Mount Vernon, a scruffy suburb of New York City has also watched its property values plummet. With a majority African-American and Hispanic populace, the working-class city was heavy targeted by subprime lenders, a factor that helps explain why prices have fallen by 37% across the city and by as much as 72% in some neighborhoods.

...statistics show that despite Countrywide's representations, a much higher percentage of borrowers did not occupy the mortgaged properties:

...Overall, 18.3% of the loans sampled had recalculated LTV ratios of more than 10% higher than was claimed in the offering materials, and 6% of the loans sampled had recalculated LTV ratios of more than 25% higher than what was claimed in the offering circular. This overvaluation affected numerous statistics in the Offering Materials...For instance, the Offerings each made representations about the percent
of loans that had LTVs higher than 90% provide the lender little value
cushion to protect against borrower default and loss upon foreclosure.
However, the AVM indicates that a much higher percentage of the loans
had LTVs higher than 90%.

The Offerings uniformly represented that none of the Mortgage Loans that collateralized the Certificates had LTV ratios greater than 100 percent, meaning that the size of the loan is greater than the value of the property. (aka: being "underwater") Loans with over 100% LTV afford the lender no equity cushion and leave the lender with inadequate collateral from the outset of a loan. Allstate's analysis has found that, despite Countrywide's representations, a substantial number of Mortgage Loans had LTVs greater than 100%, as follows:

Allstate has also analyzed the weighted average LTV of the Mortgage Loans in each pool and has found that the weighted average LTV was also overstated, because of the overstatement of individual Mortgage Loans within the pools.

All these lies, and much, much more, can be found detailed in the filing below. At the risk of cheeiness, this is just a sampling of the sampling. And it demonstrates as all those who purchased loans from CFC/BofA that were repped to be in order, will find, following sampling or loan by loan analysis, that Brian Moynihan's bank committed acts of fraud after fraud, putting not only itself, but its underwriter counsel at risk time again. In fact, if there was anything remotely close to a working legal system in the US, what happened to Lehman's Repo 105 auditor, E&Y, should promptly befall every single underwriter's counsel which is jointly liable in representing that the data set forth by the underwriter is correct. But just as importantly, it means that of the hundreds of hundreds billions in loans sold by BofA to hapless dimwits, arguably the bulk of it is now subject to putbacks, and is of far worse quality than previously expected. It also means that the GSEs: those infinite receptacles of mortgage biohazard, are lying consistently when representing the state of their own books, which are likely orders of magnitude worse than the monthly status reports will indicate.

This is just starting to get interesting.

The full Allstate filing which is a must read for everyone is presented below.

robert shumake

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robert shumake detroit

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robert shumake

In his book, Thompson's search for the American dream ends at the burned-out husk of a former nightclub, a fitting metaphor for a city that went from the fastest-growing to the most-foreclosed city in America in the space of a year. As our article and its accompanying video document, today more than 80% of Vegas mortgages are underwater, and empty or abandoned home pepper the city.

Sunshine and Stricken Suburbs

Vegas is hardly the only region whose housing sector fed on dreams. In Florida, the third-most foreclosed state, dreams have fed the area's growth ever since Ponce de Leon ventured there in search of the fountain of youth. Our piece from Florida explores a different kind of dream: an uncompleted "Italian resort themed" suburban neighborhood that's now filled with cows. In order to save on taxes in the now-unprofitable real estate venture, the area's developer had the area reclassified as farmland and moved in livestock. As for the people who live there, the swanky neighborhood they signed on for is now a barbed-wire bonanza.

And dreams continue to be deferred across the country. In Modesto, Calif., Todd Lappin documents empty streets, hastily boarded-up windows and stagnant swimming pools in the fourth most foreclosed state. With his images of rusting barbecues, overgrown yards and abandoned homes, Lappin sketches a near-apocalyptic landscape, the scattered leavings of a once-posh suburban development.

Meanwhile, a promising development in Vickery, Ga., has started transforming into a money pit. To the dismay of the area's residents, the bankruptcy of Vickery's developer and rising foreclosures have sent neighborhood fees through the roof, even as property values have tumbled. As the author notes, it's unclear if the bucolic neighborhood will ever recoup its lost property values.

Small-Town Destitution

One doesn't have to travel to a sun-kissed wonderland to find a dream that came crashing down. As David Schepp documents in "The Housing Mess Hits One New York Town Hard," Mount Vernon, a scruffy suburb of New York City has also watched its property values plummet. With a majority African-American and Hispanic populace, the working-class city was heavy targeted by subprime lenders, a factor that helps explain why prices have fallen by 37% across the city and by as much as 72% in some neighborhoods.

...statistics show that despite Countrywide's representations, a much higher percentage of borrowers did not occupy the mortgaged properties:

This is just starting to get interesting.

The full Allstate filing which is a must read for everyone is presented below.

robert shumake detroit

robert shumake

John Roberts switches to FOX News | Inside TV | EW.com

John Roberts, the veteran newsman who co-hosted CNN's American Morning for three years, is joining the competition. “We are excited to welcome Jo...

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Are Korea's “Bending” away from Bluster? « Liveshots

LONDON After a 2010 that saw the Korean peninsula edge towards the brink of nuclear Armageddon,

robert shumake

John Roberts switches to FOX News | Inside TV | EW.com

John Roberts, the veteran newsman who co-hosted CNN's American Morning for three years, is joining the competition. “We are excited to welcome Jo...

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LONDON After a 2010 that saw the Korean peninsula edge towards the brink of nuclear Armageddon,

robert shumake

The Obama housing plan has the Treasury Department - as well as those in dire need of rescue from a comprehensive Obama mortgage solution - hoping that it can stop the hemorrhage of foreclosure statistics. Will it suffer the fate of the Hope for Homeowners plan?

Obama Housing Plan against a Backdrop of Sobering Foreclosure Statistics

Foreclosure statistics published by the FDIC are sobering indeed. According to the organization, one in 200 homeowners will experience foreclosures at a rate of 250,000 homeowners every three months. With 52% of workers said to live paycheck to paycheck and 43% spending more than they make, there is precious little room for error, and a workable Obama housing plan cannot come a moment too soon.

Obama Mortgage Plan a Two Tier Approach

The Wall Street Journal's Market Watch revealed that the Obama mortgage plan seeks to allocate $50 billion to enable the modification of mortgages of as many as five million homeowners, who may be at risk of losing their homes. The catch is that this housing plan benefits homeowners who worked with Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae to get their mortgages or refinanced through either of these institutions.

The second tier of the Obama housing plan is an allocation of $75 billion for a program identified as"homeowner stability imitative." This ambitious housing plan is estimated to benefits roughly three to four more million homeowners. This money is set aside for lenders who actively work with borrowers who are paying more than 31% of their income on their mortgage payments. In this it is essentially another version of the Hope for Homeowners program put in effect by the Bush Administration.

Will it Work?

While the money funneled to lenders could have a positive impact on the mortgage foreclosure crisis, the fact that banks are unwieldy when it comes to lending makes it questionable whether any of the additional money given to them will actually be allowed to be used as intended.

Consider the Associated Press report which revealed that the 20 biggest banks that had out their hands last year for the bailout funds are now shown to have curtailed their lending rather than increasing it or at least remaining steady.

Even more worrisome is the fact that it is the mortgage lending that is decreasing measurably. Even the Hope for Homeowners program is not enjoying the lender participation one might expect in the wake of a multi billion dollar bailout.

Combine these facts with the failure to compel financial institutions other Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to modify home loans, and it is indeed questionable whether little more than guarded optimism over the Obama housing plan is appropriate at this time.

Sources

http://www.fdic.gov/about/comein/files/foreclosure_statistics.pdf; http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/obama-releases-foreclosure-mitigation-plan/story.aspx?guid=%7BFC471D1A%2D4A21%2D4A01%2D91FA%2D72F9C2020978%7D&dist=TNMostRead; http://portal.hud.gov/portal/page?_pageid=73,7601299&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTA; L; http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gg9sJnu7_PrgZodh1L3ncoMHPu0gD96DKIUG0

robert shumake detroit

John Roberts switches to FOX News | Inside TV | EW.com

John Roberts, the veteran newsman who co-hosted CNN's American Morning for three years, is joining the competition. “We are excited to welcome Jo...

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Are Korea's “Bending” away from Bluster? « Liveshots

LONDON After a 2010 that saw the Korean peninsula edge towards the brink of nuclear Armageddon,

robert shumake

...statistics show that despite Countrywide's representations, a much higher percentage of borrowers did not occupy the mortgaged properties:

This is just starting to get interesting.

The full Allstate filing which is a must read for everyone is presented below.

robert shumake detroit