Thu, Feb 21 2008
BERRY-PICKING BEVERLY HILLBILLIES
This is from last year, but beautifully illustrates the madness of the housing/credit bubble.
First off, I don't care what language they speak, these stupid, greedy yokels should have known that they couldn't afford a one-bedroom roachmotel apartment, let alone a McMansion.
Secondly, the stupid, greedy mortgage brokers should have known that these stupid, greedy yokels couldn't afford a one-bedroom roachmotel apartment, let alone a McMansion.
Thirdly, the stupid, greedy lending bank should have known that these stupid, greedy yokels couldn't afford a one-bedroom roachmotel apartment, let alone a McMansion, and that the stupid, greedy mortgage brokers were most likely scamming the stupid, greedy yokels for the loan commission.
But I'm guessing the stupid, greedy bank didn't care because they were all set to pass the toxic waste down the line to stupid greedy SIV investors.
What the fuck, okay? Seriously, at what point in this transaction was the WTF alarm not blaring?
[$14,000 per year berry pickers Rosa and Alberto Ramirez stand in front of their
$720,000 home, which they purchased with a subprime loan]
Minorities Hit Hard by Foreclosure Crunch
Hollister Freelance, May 3, 2007, Hollister, CA - Despite making only $14,000 a year, strawberry picker Alberto Ramirez managed to buy his own slice of the American Dream. But his Hollister home came with a hefty price tag - $720,000.
A year and a half later, Ramirez has defaulted on his loan, and he's hoping to sell the house before it's repossessed. And according to many housing advocates and civil rights groups, Ramirez is not alone. As mortgage foreclosures rise, many minorities are suffering.
In April, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, the National Fair Housing Alliance, the National Council of La Raza and the Center for Responsible Lenders called for a six-month moratorium on subprime home foreclosures. Those groups reported that minorities receive a disproportionate share of riskier subprime loans, and while those loans make up only 13 percent of the overall mortgage market, they account for more than 60 percent of new foreclosure filings.
Heidi Li, co-director of the Oakland-based Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, agreed that minorities and non-English speakers are being hit particularly hard by the foreclosure crunch. Li's organization has seen a dramatic increase in mortgage-related complaints in the past few weeks, and she said non-English speakers account for between one-third and one-half of those calls.
"Most people are vulnerable when it comes to mortgages, because the situation is very complex," HERA Co-Director Maeve Brown said. "But (people of color) feel our choices are more limited; therefore we're more vulnerable to those limited choices."
Brown said the language barrier (Ramirez, a native Spanish speaker, is not fluent in English, and spoke to the Free Lance through a translator) can also play a big role.
"When you go into Washington Mutual ... you can't always get someone to speak your language," she said.
Deidre Swesnik, director of public policy and communications at the National Fair Housing Alliance, said non-English speakers and minorities have been targeted by subprime mortgage brokers. A study by the National Council of La Raza showed that nearly all mortgage advertisements in Spanish-language newspapers were for subprime brokers, Swesnik said.
But Rafael Cebrero, whose company Rancho Grande Real Estate sold Ramirez his home and arranged his mortgage, said subprime loans are getting a bad rap. Those loans, he said, have made it easier for many people, including Latinos, to purchase a home.
So how did Ramirez, the strawberry picker with an annual income of just $14,000, purchase a $720,000 home in Hollister without any money down?
He had help, for one thing. Although Alberto Ramirez was the only one to sign the purchase agreement and the only one named on the loan documents, he actually bought the house with his wife Rosa Ramirez, as well as their friends Jesus Martinez and his wife. However, even in a good month, the Ramirezes and Martinezes together don't earn much more than a combined $6,500, and their official monthly payments were around $5,200.
Karl Skow, president of the Greater Monterey Bay Area Chapter of the California Association of Mortgage Brokers, said that as a rule of thumb, people shouldn't pay more than one-third of their income for their housing. In California, where homes are more expensive, that's a little unrealistic, Skow said, but he said most lenders still draw the line at 50 percent.
With their combined incomes, the Ramirezes and the Martinezes estimated that they could afford monthly payments of $3,000 - around 50 percent of their income. However, the Ramirezes said Rancho Grande real estate agent Maria Avila promised they could refinance their home in three to six months to an affordable rate; until then, Rosa Ramirez said, Avila said she would pay for whatever they couldn't afford.
Avila did supplement the mortgage payments on the Hollister home, paying about $2,200 per month for nine months.
But the refinance never happened, and Martinez said Avila stopped helping with the payments at the end of 2006. A notice of default has been filed on the home, but no foreclosure date has been set, and the Ramirezes and the Martinezes are hoping they can sell the house before they lose it in a repossession.
Cebrero said the Ramirezes' and Martinezes' situation is an unfortunate one, but he said Rancho Grande was only trying to help the two families buy the home they wanted.
"We feel we have done as much or more than we can do for these clients," he said.
However, Pamela Simmons, whose Soquel law firm Simmons and Purdy is representing the Ramirezes, said the loan should never have been made. Simmons and Purdy attorney Alison Lawton said the firm sent a letter of demand to Rancho Grande in February alleging that Avila knew Alberto Ramirez could never afford the house and that she made the deal only for personal profit. Lawton said Simmons and Purdy are currently in settlement negotiations with Rancho Grande's attorney, but if they can't come to an agreement, the law firm plans to file suit.
Simmons said predatory lending and subprime mortgages aren't a new phenomenon, but back when the area's housing market was red hot, people who signed up for unaffordable loans could just sell their houses. As the housing market has slowed, more cases have come to light.
"The real estate boom covered a multitude of sins," Simmons said. "Once the market started depreciating, the rug was pulled back to show the rot underneath."
Thu, Feb 21 2008
WILL YOUR PANTS STICK TO THE CARSEAT?
This all sounds great on paper, but...
The power of healing: damaged rubber repairs itself
PARIS, Feb 20, 2008 (AFP) - French chemists on Wednesday announced they had created rubber that heals itself after it has been cut, a breakthrough that could lead to clothes that self-mend if torn and toys that repair themselves if damaged by a tot.
The molecular concoction -- described by other scientists as having "a touch of magic about it" -- can self-heal at room temperature in around 15 minutes by simply pressing the damaged pieces together, they report in the British weekly science journal Nature.
Conventional rubber typically comprises long, cross-linked chains of polymers that can stretch and then recover to their original size and shape.
The new formula made by a team at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a private firm, Arkema, achieves the same elasticity by using a mixture of two different kinds of smaller molecules.
Some are ditopic, which means they can hook up with two other molecules, and others are tritopic, meaning they can associate with three molecules.
The network is meshed together by weaker hydrogen bonds, which get broken when the rubber is cut but also provide an atomic "glue," recombining into chains to bridge severed parts.
The ingredients comprise fatty acids made from ordinary vegetable oils, combined in a stepped process with diethyline triamine and urea, both cheap and common chemicals.
The result is a substance that at eight degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit) becomes a translucent glassy plastic that, like soft rubber, can be strained five times its length before breaking.
Unlike rubber, though, the pieces can be mended at room temperature (20 C, 68 F) without the need for them to be heated or even pressed together strongly. And the substance can be easily reprocessed.
"If you drill into a rubber sealing in a wall, the hole will repair by itself," said lead researcher Ludwik Leibler, of the CNRS' Soft Matter and Chemistry Laboratory.
"Anything involved with compression, such as joints and rubberised coatings, can be fixed. The fracture and healing process can be repeated many times."
Arkema and CNRS have already worked on other "self-healing" materials, including paint that smooths itself out if scratched, Arkema researcher Manuel Hidalgo said.
The first products from that research should be on the market "in a year or two," he told AFP.
In a commentary also published by Nature, synthetic materials scientists Justin Mynar and Takuzo Aida noted that when the Spanish conquistadores first witnessed the Aztecs playing a game with a bouncing rubber ball, they thought such balls must be possessed by evil spirits.
"Imagine their reaction if, on cutting the ball in half, it was made as good as new simply by pressing the two halves together," they write.
"Even today, such a feat would have a touch of magic about it. But this is what (has been) achieved."Thu, Feb 21 2008
MADE IN CHINA
This is a good move, except for the part where they sell the toxic fish as sushi to the local peasants. But then again, just like the fish, we can always make more, right? I suppose it makes sense on a lot of levels - it cleans up the lake, it helps keep the locals fed, and at the same time it helps trim the population by speeding up the cancer death rates. Brilliant!
Algae-munching fish clean up Chinese lake: official media
BEIJING (AFP) - Chinese authorities are using algae-munching fish to clean up one of the country's most polluted lakes -- and after their diet of toxins they will be sold on to consumers, state media said Thursday.
More than 50,000 silver carp fry have been introduced into Chaohu lake and another 1.55 million will be added in the next 20 days, said Wu Changjun, from the Chaohu Fishery Administration, according to the Xinhua news agency.
Each carp is expected to have gobbled between 40 and 50 kilogrammes (88 to 100 pounds) of blue algae when it reaches its adult weight, with each chomp of the sludge helping to clean up the toxic lake, the report added.
Once the carp have matured, fishermen will be able to catch them and sell them in markets, at a price 15 times their original cost, giving a boost to the local fishing industry, according to Xinhua.
Chaohu, China's fifth biggest lake in the nation's eastern Anhui province, was last year overcome by the blue-green foul-smelling algae, threatening water supplies and destroying life in the lake.
The algae has led to a decline of 20 percent in the lake's whitebait stocks, one of the local fishing industry's key catches, Xinhua said Thursday.
Hundreds of factories discharge their waste into Chaohu.
More than 70 percent of China's waterways and 90 percent of its underground water are contaminated, according to government figures, often as the result of years of untreated sewage discharge and industrial pollution.
The environmental woes have had led to problems with the nation's food supply, with some of those toxic foods making their way into exports that have contributed to the recent tarnishing of the "Made in China" brand.All news articles and images provided under the Fair Use Notice.