America is not in an economic recovery! The jobless rate is going to continue to climb as corporate profits are maintained with government support through borrowed money…money borrowed from China.

Raghavan Mayur, president at TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, follows unemployment data closely. So, when his survey for May revealed that 28% of the 1,000-odd households surveyed reported that at least one member was looking for a full-time job, he was flummoxed.

“Our numbers are always very accurate, so I was surprised at the discrepancy with the government’s numbers,” says Mayur, whose firm owns the TIPP polling unit, a polling partner for Investors Business Daily and Christian Science Monitor. After all, the headline number shows the U.S. unemployment rate today is 9.5%, with a total of 14.6 million jobless people.

However, Mayur’s polls continued to find much worse figures. The June poll turned up 27.8% of households with at least one member who’s unemployed and looking for a job, while the latest poll conducted in the second week of July showed 28.6% in that situation. That translates to an unemployment rate of over 22%, says Mayur, who has started questioning the accuracy of the Labor Department’s jobless numbers.

Read Full Article Here: The Real Unemployment Rate: Is It 9.5%, 16.5%, 22%, or Higher? – DailyFinance.

Unfortunately jobless Americans are now the ones responsible for paying off the trillions in debt the government has incurred to prop up Wall Street.

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A growing number of the people whose homes are in foreclosure are refusing to slink away in shame. They are fashioning a sort of homemade mortgage modification, one that brings their payments all the way down to zero. They use the money they save to get back on their feet or just get by.

This type of modification does not beg for a lender’s permission but is delivered as an ultimatum: Force me out if you can. Any moral qualms are overshadowed by a conviction that the banks created the crisis by snookering homeowners with loans that got them in over their heads.

“I tried to explain my situation to the lender, but they wouldn’t help,” said Mr. Pemberton’s mother, Wendy Pemberton, herself in foreclosure on a small house a few blocks away from her son’s. She stopped paying her mortgage two years ago after a bout with lung cancer. “They’re all crooks.”

Mr. Pemberton and Ms. Reboyras decided to stop paying because their business, which restores attics that have been invaded by pests, was on the verge of failing. Scrambling to get by, their credit already shot, they had little to lose.

“We could pay the mortgage company way more than the house is worth and starve to death,” said Mr. Pemberton, 43. “Or we could pay ourselves so our business could sustain us and people who work for us over a long period of time. It may sound very horrible, but it comes down to a self-preservation thing.”

They used the $1,837 a month that they were not paying their lender to publicize A Plus Restorations, first with print ads, then local television. Word apparently got around, because the business is recovering.

The couple owe $280,000 on the house, where they live with Ms. Reboyras’s two daughters, their two dogs and a very round pet raccoon named Roxanne. The house is worth less than half that amount — which they say would be their starting point in future negotiations with their lender.

“If they took the house from us, that’s all they would end up getting for it anyway,” said Ms. Reboyras, 46.

Read Full Article Here: NYT: Some homeowners stop paying mortgages – The New York Times- msnbc.com.

The banking industry owns congress. I expect to see legislation written after the midterm elections that would bar homeowners from getting out of their mortgages. In other words the banks will be able to continue to collect your debt after they take your house. If you are in over your head dump your house now.

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An Interpol notice on Tuesday said Einarsson was wanted on charges of counterfeiting, forgery and fraud.

Einarsson, who lives in London, was said to be reluctant to come to Reykjavik for fear of being arrested and Icelandic authorities have refused to offer any assurances.

Curiously, in December, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office had opened an investigation into suspected fraud by Kaupthing while trying to attract British investors to its high interest deposit accounts.

On May 6 two former top officials of Kaupthing, formerly Iceland’s largest bank, were called in for questioning by Iceland’s special prosecutor and were then detained in isolation at the main Litla-Hrauni prison in the southern part of the country.

Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, former CEO of Kaupthing, was placed on 12 days in remand, while Magnus Gudmundsson, former director of the bank in Luxembourg, was remanded to seven days in custody.

Kaupthing, Glitnir Bank hf and Landsbanki Islands hf collapsed in October 2008 after running up total debts worth 61 billion US dollars, calculated as being equivalent to 12 times the country’s GDP.

The government was compelled to take over the three banks and seek an International Monetary Fund bailout as Iceland fell into a deep economic slump, triggering public outrage.

Special Prosecutor Olafur Thor Hauksson was appointed in January last year to investigate suspected criminal actions around the time of the collapse of the banks in October 2008.

“We are researching alleged market abuse by Sigurdsson and Gudmundsson, along with illegal loan granting and breach of trust,” said Bjorn Thorvaldsson, one of the prosecutors who works at the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP), when asked why the two men were taken into custody.

Two months after Hauksson started his term in office, Norwegian-French investigative judge Eva Joly, who uncovered the Elf oil company fraud case, became Hauksson’s advisor. She has been continually pressing for more funds and more personnel to push the process onwards.

However, the arrests would not have been possible had it not been for the Parliamentary Althingi’s Special Investigation Committee (SIC), which published its report on the causes behind the 2008 collapse of the Icelandic banks on Apr. 12.

The authors of the report interviewed people from banks, government ministries, the Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA), the Central Bank of Iceland (CBI) and other bodies, although it states that “the Commission was not expected to address possible criminal conduct of the directors of the banks in their operations”.

Amongst other things, the report summary says: “The banks had invested their funds in their own shares”, and “the banks held a lot of their own shares as collateral for their lending. With share prices declining, the quality of their loan portfolio declined. This could in turn affect the banks’ performance and, consequently, the price of their stock. Additionally, the employees of the banks in many cases owned significant shares in their own bank, sometimes even financed by the bank itself.”

Read Full Article Here: ICELAND: Int’l Arrest Warrant Against Top Bank Official – IPS ipsnews.net.

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“I will vote no simply because I disagree very strongly with us… having to shoulder this burden” from the 2008 collapse of the online Icesave bank, Ingimar Gudmundsson, a 57-year-old truck driver, told AFP.

The issue is whether Iceland should honour an agreement to repay Britain and the Netherlands 3.9 billion euros (5.3 billion dollars).

This would be to compensate them for money they paid to 340,000 of their citizens hit by the collapse of Icesave in 2008. Events leading to Iceland bank payout referendum

Observers say an Icelandic refusal to repay the money could block the remaining half of a 2.1-billion dollar International Monetary Fund rescue package, as well as its European Union and euro currency membership talks.

It could also push Iceland’s credit rating over the cliff and destabilise the leftwing government, which negotiated the agreement in the first place.

According to the latest opinion poll, three quarters of voters will reject the agreement, which was passed by parliament in late December.

It went to a referendum after President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson refused to sign it into law because of public opposition.

Hundreds of people came out to demonstrate in front of parliament Saturday, demanding the government do more to improve conditions in Iceland, which has seen a hike in unemployment and home repossessions since its once-booming economy crumbled in October 2008.

Banging on pots and pans, the protesters brandished banners exclaiming “Icesave, no, no, no!” and calling for an end to the Icelandic government’s “financial casino”.

According to Magnus Arni Skulason, a founder of the Indefence movement opposed to the deal, the agreement being voted on was “obtained through coercion, with threats from both the British and the Dutch against Iceland”.

Echoing the frustration felt by many Icelanders, he told AFP that the demanded 5.5-percent interest rate was particularly unacceptable.

“You’re basically sending the bill to tax payers for the failure of a private bank,” he said.

Spessi, a 54-year-old photographer, said he was infuriated that he and other tax payers were being asked to foot the Icesave bill.

“I’ve lost my house and it’s still up to me to pay for this!” he told AFP as he left a voting booth in the Reykjavik city hall.

And for many Icelanders, handing what they consider an exorbitant price to London is especially infuriating.

Many here are still fuming over the so-called “cod wars” with London in the 1970s over fishing rights, and over Britain’s decision in 2008 to use an anti-terrorism law to freeze British savers’ assets in the stricken Icelandic bank Landsbanki.

“I’m not against paying people their money back, but I’m against (British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown getting his money back,” Thorstenn Pall Leifsson, a 43-year-old unemployed construction worker, told AFP.

“This (Icesave deal) is so excessive. I don’t want us to pay more than what we’re legally obliged to pay,” he added.

Despite the strong emotions surrounding the issue, the all-but guaranteed outcome of Saturday’s referendum meant voter turnout would likely be lower than in last year’s general election, when some 85 percent of the country’s 230,000 eligible voters cast a ballot.

At 1500 GMT, only 26 percent of voters had turned out in Reykjavik, compared to 36 percent at the same time in the general elections, according to the electoral commission.

Turnout elsewhere stood at about 30 percent, which was also some 10 percentage points lower than in last year’s election.

Reykjavik had been negotiating with London and The Hague for weeks to avert the vote, but the talks ended Friday without a new agreement on the table.

Iceland’s leaders said they would resume talks after Saturday’s referendum.

Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir insisted Friday that since a better deal was likely the referendum was “meaningless”, saying she saw no reason to go to the ballot box.

President Grimsson however defended his decision to put the issue to a referendum, telling AFP he felt “the referendum already has had a very positive effect. It has moved the British and the Dutch towards a fairer deal”.

The first referendum results were expected to start coming in shortly after polls close at 2200 GMT, with final results later in the night.

Read Full Article Here: Bank payback plan faces failure as Iceland votes – Yahoo! News.

The IMF won’t give the people of Iceland 1 billion dollars in aid unless they repay a PRIVATE banks failure costing 5.3 billion dollars at 5.5 percent interest.  Boy that sure seems like a no brainer to me. I think U.S. bank bailouts need to be approved by the American voters!

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No, you shouldn’t feel bad about it, and you shouldn’t feel guilty. The lenders would do the same to you—in a heartbeat. You need to put yourself and your family’s finances first.

How widespread is this? More than 11 million families are in “negative equity”—that is, they owe more on their home than it is worth—according to a report out this week by FirstAmerican Core Logic, a real-estate data firm. That’s a quarter of all families with mortgages. And for more than five million of those borrowers, the crisis is extreme: They are more than 25% underwater—the equivalent of having a $100,000 loan on a property now worth just $75,000 or less. That’s true for a fifth of mortgage holders in California, nearly a third in Florida and an incredible 50% in Nevada.

Are you in this situation? Are you still battling to pay the bills each month, even when it may make little financial sense to do so?

It’s time for some tough talk.

Stop trying to chase your lost equity. That money is gone. Don’t think like the gambler who blows more and more cash trying to win back his losses. That’s how a lot of people turn a small loss into a big one.

And do the math. Even if you hope the real estate market is near the bottom—it’s possible, but by no means certain—it may still take years to see any meaningful recovery. If you are 25% underwater, your home will have to rise by 33% just to get you back to even.

Is that likely? And over what time period? Even if home prices rose by 5% a year from here, that would still take six years. And during that time you could instead be building fresh savings elsewhere.

If you are reluctant to give up on “your” home, realize that it isn’t “yours.” If you are in negative equity, it’s the bank’s home. You’re just renting it. And right now you may be paying way above market rates. You need to be ruthless about your cash flow.

Are you worried about the legal consequences of walking away? Certainly, you should check with a lawyer before doing anything, but the consequences will probably be more limited than you think.

In “non-recourse” states, the mortgage lender may have no right to come after you for any shortfall. They may have no option but to take the home, sell it and eat the loss. According to a survey last year by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, such states include negative-equity hot spots California and Arizona. Even in “recourse” states, lenders may have limited ability to come after you. Often they’d have to jump a lot of legal hurdles, and it’s just not worth it for them. They’re swamped with cases anyway.

“In my experience, right now they’re not really going after anyone,” says Richard Nemeth, a bankruptcy attorney in Cleveland. “They just don’t have the resources.”

If you’ve taken smart steps to protect your money, you may be safer still. For example, money held in a 401(k), Individual Retirement Account or pension plan is sheltered from creditors.

Sure, a strategic foreclosure may hurt your credit score. But if you’re in financial difficulties, it’s probably already suffered. And your credit score is not the only thing in life that matters.

Still, when it comes to the idea of walking away from debts, many people are held back by a sense of morality. They feel it’s wrong to abandon their obligations. They don’t want to be a deadbeat.

Your instincts, while honorable, are leading you astray.

Read Full Article Here: ROI: When It’s OK to Walk Away From Your Home – WSJ.com.

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In October 2008, the mainstream media and politicians of the Western world were warning of an impending depression if actions were not taken to quickly prevent this. The problem was that this crisis had been a long-time coming, and what’s worse, is that the actions governments took did not address any of the core, systemic issues and problems with the global economy; they merely set out to save the banking industry from collapse. To do this, governments around the world implemented massive “stimulus” and “bailout” packages, plunging their countries deeper into debt to save the banks from themselves, while charging it to people of the world.

Then an uproar of stock market speculation followed, as money was pumped into the stocks, but not the real economy. This recovery has been nothing but a complete and utter illusion, and within the next two years, the illusion will likely come to a complete collapse.

The governments gave the banks a blank check, charged it to the public, and now it’s time to pay; through drastic tax increases, social spending cuts, privatization of state industries and services, dismantling of any protective tariffs and trade regulations, and raising interest rates. The effect that this will have is to rapidly accelerate, both in the speed and volume, the unemployment rate, globally. The stock market would crash to record lows, where governments would be forced to freeze them altogether.

When the crisis is over, the middle classes of the western world will have been liquidated of their economic, political and social status. The global economy will have gone through the greatest consolidation of industry and banking in world history leading to a system in which only a few corporations and banks control the global economy and its resources; governments will have lost that right. The people of the western world will be treated by the financial oligarchs as they have treated the ‘global South’ and in particular, Africa; they will remove our social structures and foundations so that we become entirely subservient to their dominance over the economic and political structures of our society.

This is where we stand today, and is the road on which we travel.

The western world has been plundered into poverty, a process long underway, but with the unfolding of the crisis, will be rapidly accelerated. As our societies collapse in on themselves, the governments will protect the banks and multinationals. When the people go out into the streets, as they invariably do and will, the government will not come to their aid, but will come with police and military forces to crush the protests and oppress the people. The social foundations will collapse with the economy, and the state will clamp down to prevent the people from constructing a new one.

The road to recovery is far from here. When the crisis has come to an end, the world we know will have changed dramatically. No one ever grows up in the world they were born into; everything is always changing. Now is no exception. The only difference is, that we are about to go through the most rapid changes the world has seen thus far.

Read Full Article Here: Debt Dynamite Dominoes: The Coming Financial Catastrophe.

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“People are brainwashed to think that paying a credit card is more important than paying for the necessities of life,” Katz says. “If you’re in a position where you have to make a choice, my argument is food, clothing and shelter come first… Nobody ever went to hell for not paying a debt.”

“Fight back” is the take-away message from a visit to Debtorboards, which is intended to help consumers who wish to file lawsuits without the help of lawyers.

Read Full Article Here: Better Off Deadbeat: People Get Into Debt, Learn the Law, Become “Credit Terrorists” – BlackListed News.

These men are true Survivalists using the debt slavery system against itself and winning. It’s not always about bunkers and guns.

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