BBC: “A judge in New Zealand made a young girl a ward of court so that she could change the name she hated - Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. Judge Rob Murfitt said that the name embarrassed the nine-year-old and could expose her to teasing.

He attacked a trend of giving children bizarre names, citing several examples. Officials had blocked Sex Fruit, Keenan Got Lucy and Yeah Detroit, he said, but Number 16 Bus Shelter, Violence and Midnight Chardonnay had been allowed.”

BILL TO SAVE THE SYSTEM–OR AT LEAST TRY
WASHINGTON POST DISCOVERS STORY ON ITS DOORSTEP
AIR WAR OVER IRAQ HEATS UP

The need to save the system comes before the desire to help its victims.

What began as a “housing bill,” an attempt by the Congress to help homeowners trapped in subprime hell, has become a bank rescue bill with the Treasury Department getting the authority to raise the debt limit by $800 BILLION, and giving the Goldman Sachs embed in the Treasury Department, Secretary Hank Paulson, the authority to give credit to or invest in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

This is a maneuver to shore up capital markets—and respond to the growing sense of panic in financial circles as our two mortgage giants could falter and bring down still more of the global economy with them. This is a soak the taxpayers measure and out tax cuts for the rich President has already announced he will not veto the 600 plus page measure which has emerged from a process of extensive horse trading and lobbying.

AP Reported yesterday afternoon:

NEW YORK (Associated Press) - The House passed a sweeping housing bill Wednesday that President Bush could sign as early as this week, easing some of the market’s problems, but providing only modest benefits for homebuyers or borrowers facing foreclosure.

After months of negotiations between House and Senate lawmakers and the Treasury Department, President Bush dropped his opposition. While the bill was widely praised by real estate industry groups, doubts remained about how much real-world impact it will have for consumers.

“This isn’t going to be the catalyst for a better housing market,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “It may staunch some of the downturn, but it’s going to have a very modest positive impact.”

The New York Times on its front page reported that the bill will “HELP HOUSING.” On the jump page, the headline says it will help the “HOUSING INDUSTRY” as if that is necessarily the same thing. The headline says “Hundreds of Thousands Facing Foreclosure Stand To Benefit.” When you read on, you discover that it provides for REFINANCING–a complicated process that not everyone in need can qualify for, not RESTRUCTURING or modifying the loan which is quicker and will protect existing mortgage holders in trouble. This distinction is not explored or analyzed. The bill is there to protect Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, not most at risk homeowners.

WASHINGTON POST FINALLY LOOKS OUT WINDOW AND REPORTS ON NACA EVENT NEXT DOOR

The Washington Post which ran one columnists opinion piece on what was then an upcoming event in Washington and then didn’t cover it as news finally sent some reporters to find out why thousands of people were lining up across the street from the ir offices.

AFP from France covered it but not AP in America. CBS, PBS, NPR and local TV outlets came but not ABC or NBC. Networks including Al Jazeera had already reported on the story that the Post was ignoring in its own back yard. I even went to the paper to try to encourage them to report on it, but they didn’t, until now.

This is in Thursday’s paper—after the event ended:

Thousands Flock for a Chance at Loan Relief
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 24, 2008; Page A01

The homeowners started lining up at 4 a.m. yesterday, some, like Patricia Ephraim, coming for a second or third day.

Ephraim, who lives in Silver Spring, was among the thousands of distressed borrowers drawn to downtown Washington yesterday by a promise of help from the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America. The Boston housing advocacy group set up tables and offices staffed with about 300 housing counselors at the Capitol Hilton in Northwest D.C. They worked with the homeowners to prepare budgets and submit proposals to their lenders for lower mortgage payments. A line of people clutching folders of their financial documents snaked around the outside of the hotel.

After attending Monday and working with a housing counselor until 11 p.m. Tuesday, Ephraim learned yesterday afternoon that her mortgage payments would be cut by more than $500 a month. Still, the 25-year-old remained perched by the side of her counselor, waiting for confirmation in “black and white.”

“This is going to let me go back to school, get my master’s degree,” she said. “I can definitely save some money. It opens up a lot for me.”

After contacting more than 1 million homeowners in the Northeast who have subprime or adjustable-rate mortgages, NACA estimated that it attracted 20,000 people from as far away as Boston, as well as an attendee from Miami. Counselors submitted workout plans for 10,000 homeowners during the five-day event and by yesterday had secured 700 loan modifications that lowered interest rates and monthly payments, said Bruce Marks, the group’s chief executive. Those figures could not be independently verified. Lenders agree to such modifications because they can be less expensive than foreclosure.

During the week, NACA volunteers in bright yellow T-shirts fanned out with homeowners across the city to promote the event and to meet with members of Congress.

Group officials said attendance climbed throughout the event and peaked yesterday. Because of the crowds, they moved an orientation class for more than 1,000 people to the nearby National City Christian Church…

WATCH POST VIDEO

REUTERS: The number of homes lost to foreclosure in California soared to a 20-year high in the second quarter and mortgage default notices

ABC: The Number of Foreclosures Jumped 261 Percent Compared to Last Year

WTOP in DC: “Foreclosures have soared in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of the nation’s capital over the past year,

FT: US home owners cut back refinancing

The rise in US mortgage rates has prompted a sharp decline in the number of refinancings according to data released yesterday by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

RAW STORY: Woman Kills Herself Because of Imminent Home Auction

ON THE WORD “FREE” IN THE TERM “FREE MARKET”

The credit crisis really puts the free in free market. The freest market is supposed to be the United States, and the evidence in favour of that argument is mounting. It’s just not what you think. Free, in this case, means a free ride for a select group of people. Wall Street never looked so good, or bad, depending on your perspective.

From early 2004 until mid-2007, the big Wall Street investment banks made $250-billion (U.S.) in profits. (That’s Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.) During the past year, they’ve written off $107-billion. Keep in mind as we follow the money that if you include smaller dealers and commercial banks, the profit number swells and the writeoffs are even bigger.

As fate would have it, the writedowns, mostly garbage subprime loans, equal almost perfectly the amount of money Washington will dole out in stimulus cheques to get the economy going again. The House of Representatives Speaker said last year that the stimulus package would create 500,000 jobs. She got the number more or less right, but it was actually a loss of jobs.

Meanwhile, recent figures show that of the money that’s been mailed and spent, only a 10th has gone to new spending.

THE REALITY OF “FRAUD”

Fraud and the subprime bubble By George Pugh

The subprime crisis is ending in massive losses, bare balance sheets and wilted capitalizations: a true rite of spring. Early theories blamed the crash on corporate greed, bad product design, poor analytics, rating agency failures, and fraud, in various combinations.

The US Federal Reserve Board is now asking for tighter regulation of the brokerage industry, while in truth fraud started with the mortgage originators, which helped cause the collapse of the market, while the firms that are now being blamed are actually the victims rather than the perpetrators of the fraud…..

Clearly fraud played a very important role in this bubble, and that fraud began with the originators. The last time fraud was an issue, we later found that not all “cures” stand the test of time. The demand for preventative action always comes in the wake of a costly financial crisis like this one and the last one that had fraud in the mix. Retired Congressman Michael Oxley told of his dissatisfactions in an interview, highlighting also the role of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) which the Sarbanes Oxley Act established to oversee and discipline accounting firms in their roles as auditors of public companies….

MORE ON BANK FAILURES

I met Sheila Bair at the NACA Save The Dream of Home Ownership event. She is the head of the FDIC, the agency that supervises banks and has to deal with those that may fail. Noriel Roubini has been tracking this issue in the RGE Monitor. He asks:

Can the FDIC Handle the Coming Banking Bust?

* Five banks have failed this year (here’s a list of failures this decade), and FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair expects more. 90 banks are currently on the FDIC’s undisclosed problem bank list (IndyMac was added in June)–> alternative lists of problem banks circulating (see below)

* By law, the FDIC maintains a rainy-day fund (i.e. reserves) equal to 1.25 percent of the level of insured deposits.

* The fund totaled $53 billion on March 31 as the FDIC increased its reserves for expected losses by 1,000%, to $525 million—

Today, $53bn fund -all of it in ultra-safe treasury bonds—stands behind $4.2 trillion in insured deposits.

* When the FDIC assumed control of IndyMac, one of Bair’s first actions was to freeze foreclosures temporarily on $15 billion in loans it owns while it seeks to modify them–> The failure of IndyMac will sap $4 billion to $8 billion from the fund, or up to 15% of its total.

TASINI: MINIMUM WAGE GOES UP TODAY: A JOKE?