subprime mortgages at Brave New Films

Foreclosure Prevention Begins at Home

2008-10-03T05:45:32Z

Congress has probably done all that we can expect to prevent foreclosure with the housing bill passed last month. Because of its poor design, the Congressional Budget Office projects that it will only help 260,000 families facing foreclosure.

This bill also gave Fannie and Freddie a pass, bailing out its stockholders and its hugely overpaid and incompetent managers (competent managers don't put companies into bankruptcy) while imposing no real conditions on these companies' conduct. Congress only imposes conditions when the issue is welfare for poor people.

Among other things, Congress could have required that Fannie and Freddie follow the model that Sheila Bair of the FDIC is pursuing following its takeover of the bankrupt subprime lender IndyMac. She has stopped foreclosures on IndyMac's mortgages and is trying to arrange workouts with homeowners.

There is also Representative Raul Grijalva's Saving Family Homes Act, which would give homeowners facing foreclosure the option to stay in their home for up to 20 years as renters paying the market rent. But no one expects Congress to pass this one any time soon.

Bill Moyers Journal: Mortgage Mess

2008-08-09T01:27:33Z

Ground zero of the mortgage meltdown — Cleveland, Ohio. Correspondent Rick Karr takes viewers to Slavic Village, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods in the nation when it comes to the spate of foreclosures caused by the subprime mortgage crisis. Aired Friday, July 18, at 9p.m. on PBS (check local listings).

For more: http://www.pbs.org/billmoyers

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Congress Helps Banks, but What About Homeowners?

2008-08-26T08:53:23Z

More at therealnews.com

Danny Schechter: "This is a 50 state Katrina"

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The Subprime Swindle: Economic War on Black America

2008-10-12T10:42:45Z

Nation magazine contributing writer Kai Wright discusses his July 14 article about the mortgage crisis and its affect on the Black middle class. For his story, Wright traveled to Atlanta, Georgia where he met George Mitchell and many others like him who had fallen victim to lending scams and looming foreclosures, a problem that has plagued millions around the country.

Mitchell, age 77, was approached by IndyMac lenders, among others, and was convinced to take out loans he didn't need or understand. He doesn't even remember signing the papers and now faces losing the home he and his wife bought forty years ago.

Wright explains that home equity is one of the main sources of wealth for many middle-class African-Americans who used home ownership as a means of attaining the American dream. Today, that wealth is being stolen from them through predative loans and a national rhetoric of "borrower responsibility."

Watch Wright explain the depth of the problem and what it means for the future of the black middle class.

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Is the Housing Crisis Over?

2008-10-02T12:48:23Z

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/05/helping_homeowners.html

Andrew Jakabovics of the Center for American Progress sits down with our cameras for this latest installment in CAP's ASK THE EXPERT SERIES to answer these questions: Is the housing crisis over? What does the congressional legislation do and will it help? And what's left to be done?

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Subprime -The 'new' homeless in the U.S.

2008-06-13T03:30:18Z

Tent cities have sprung up outside Los Angeles as people lose their homes due to the subprime mortgage crisis. The BBC reports.

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Stephen Colbert talks to Jim Cramer about his on-air meltdown

2008-10-10T19:01:43Z

7 million people are losing their homes because billionaires gave loans to poor people who can't afford it, and now the whole thing is crashing down.

Here's Cramer's meltdown from a few days ago.

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