New York Times Bites My Walkaway Rhyme

[Scott Thill, Morphizm]
Look, New York Times: You can pay me for my cultural and political insights. People already do. Seriously. Like when you posted that article today advising underwater homeowners to walk away from their worthless mortgages? Dude, I wrote that a year ago. And then this year. It’s common knowledge now, which is not an insult. What is an insult? Not hiring me. Seriously. Also, I’m kidding.

Seriously, now that New York Times is on the walkaway train, along with most of the mainstream financial press, the next person that looks at me sideways for suggesting it, way back then and now, is going to get slapped. By reality, at some point. Here’s the breakdown for those who’d like more information on how to get free of their mortgage slavery, from myself and the Times. Tell a friend.

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Can’t Pay Your Mortgage? Trash Your House and Leave
[Scott Thill, AlterNet]
Homeowners, including those with good and bad credit, have seen the light at the end of our current economic crisis only to decide there isn’t a house in it. In fact, one could almost see the Wall Street Journal frown with disapproval upon reading the title of their December 2007 piece, “Now Even Borrowers With Good Credit Pose Risks.” But the title no doubt was influenced by the comments of Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis in the piece itself. It seems that Lewis, whose company recently bought the housing meltdown’s poster boy for bad lending, Countrywide, for $4 billion in stock, nevertheless feels confounded that customers of questionable loans would simply choose to abandon ship, er, house.

“There’s been a change in social attitudes toward default,” Mr. Lewis told the Journal. “We’re seeing people who are current on their credit cards but are defaulting on their mortgages. I’m astonished that people would walk away from their homes.”

While Lewis may scratch his head in disbelief, employees of the bank Wachovia have an explanation that might work for him: Homeowners have crunched the numbers and decided their houses are worth less than their mortgages. According to a recent conference call, many of Wachovia’s current losses in California are originating not from subprime buyers fallen on financial hardship, but from homeowners who can pay their cleverly structured loans but are just choosing a different fate. MORE @ ALTERNET

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Mortgage Underwater? Just Walk Away
[Scott Thill, AlterNet]
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” — Warren Buffett

Here’s a terrible new twist to a housing meltdown tortured by too many of them. Banks are refusing to take possession of houses after the foreclosure process because of the prohibitive cost, from legal to maintenance fees, of being stuck with the same worthless mortgages with which they’ve saddled American homeowners.

It’s a problem of their own making: Foreclosures shot up 7 percent in July, and the rate is nearly a third higher than this time last year. There is no end in sight. That’s led to increased homeowner abandonment of their properties, which in turn has led to escalating blight that has depressed property values and tax revenues even further.

By 2011, around half of the mortgages in the shell-shocked United States could be underwater, which is a softball euphemism for utterly worthless. The financial industry is well known for such empty metaphors — including “class warfare,” ably dissected above by Berkshire Hathaway billionaire Warren Buffet. That’s because they are easier to stomach than the purposefully labyrinthine, fearsomely destabilizing details. MORE @ ALTERNET

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Walk Away From Your Mortgage!
[Roger Lowenstein, New York Times]
John Courson, president and C.E.O. of the Mortgage Bankers Association, recently told The Wall Street Journal that homeowners who default on their mortgages should think about the “message” they will send to “their family and their kids and their friends.” Courson was implying that homeowners — record numbers of whom continue to default — have a responsibility to make good. He wasn’t referring to the people who have no choice, who can’t afford their payments. He was speaking about the rising number of folks who are voluntarily choosing not to pay.

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Perhaps the mainstream media will start suggesting that homeowners do the same, now that mainstream print has caved. Even a shout-out from The Daily Show or The Colbert Report would do the trick. Whatever works, dude. Whatever works.