I had a retort to Jim's love of his government and all his great work below:
We are getting closer and closer to releasing our economic agreements with the Status Quo. However, before we're finished this particular series of Cow Tipping Games, we really must handle this major Sacred Cow accompanied by her siblings, because they would just love to keep us stuck in the mire of doubt, fear and cynicism:
This “big one” sets the playing field up so that the others can spread their misinformation and thinly veiled threats throughout the pasture, keeping people like us corralled into a scenario of doom and gloom. This manure creates thoughts in our heads, like these:
~ “You don’t know what you’re doing.” ~ “You obviously don’t understand.” ~ “You’re lost.” ~ “What if you make a mistake?”
Reclaim Your Faith in Yourself
The kind of thoughts that he is advocating have never led us in a positive direction, they take us right back to avoidance of our own power and being willing to settle for less. He would love us to believe:
“Things will never change, we might as well give up.”
“It’s too hard. We don’t have a chance – we’re screwed.”
“Let’s face it, there’s no way out.”
“I’m too scared to make a decision, make it for me.”
“I’m stuck, we’re stuck, the whole world is stuck.
We aren’t stuck; the Status Quo is stuck and we need to stop following the Status Quo. It feels really sticky and unpleasant, that’s true. However, the very fact that we’re feeling it so strongly means that we’re breaking away from it. Not only that, in the past, Mr. Cheney would have one of his minions do all this for him. He can't stay hidden in the shadows, because no one with any credability is left to shield him. This is not the time to give up!
Look at the Sacred Contract Circle to your right and let go of your personal, familial and cultural agreement to be lead around by fearmongering of the Status Quo. Tip the cow and make a new commitment to a change in direction. Not just any change, a real change that has freedom, peace and prosperity at its core.
Rheanni Lightwater Ccpyright 2009
Play all sixteen games!
April 2, 2009
"The new “New World Order”
© Enrique Woll Battistini 2009
Now that the G20 Summit in London is over, it is fair to ask if sufficient attention was given by the leaders of the world's 20 richest countries to the economic and social conditions and prospects for development of the remaining 90%, which as should be noted, are non-OECD members and located mostly in the Southern hemisphere. Why is it considered acceptable that the rich and powerful decide on the fate of the poor, without their consent? Poor does not mean stupid or morally inept. Rather, it means disenfranchised, still, and that, in the new “New World Order” proclaimed by Gordon Brown today, should be abolished forthwith. The grossly unacceptable welfare imbalance between countries in the Southern and Northern hemispheres also must be corrected forthwith. It is a reflection of the gross capitalization imbalances between them, and will cease in short order if G20-supported special action to promote North-South foreign direct investment is undertaken. For such action to be successful, it must occur in the context of for-profit PRIVATE-PUBLIC Partnerships in each of the three main geo-economic North-South scenarios -The Americas, Europe-Africa, and Asia-Oceania. These Partnerships must be comprised of the fittest surviving financial companies in the leading OECD-member country in each scenario, and their counterparts in each non-OECD or developing country in that scenario. In addition, each Partnership must include appropriate multilateral institutions relevant to economic and social development and their counterpart local governmental entities, in a supporting role. Without question, these Partnerships must be for-profit, as stated, and must be led by the private sector. It is not enough to reform the international financial system, abolish banking secrecy, super-inflate the IMF, or to enact a massive world-wide deficit-spending scheme. In The Americas, the Partnership could be called, for instance, "A Partnership for Development with the United States of America" ("Sociedad para el Desarrollo con los Estados Unidos de América"). This idea was first proposed in 1992 to President Clinton, and in 2005 to Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Perhaps its time has finally come.
***
I am proud of our Obama's announcement today.
It is wonderful to see a smart, strong young man stepping up to the plate and doing what needs to be done. It is wonderful to see one of my "Change This!" Wish List items getting attended to. (see earlier blog "Change This!")
We have a lot of housecleaning to do - at least it's springtime and time for it anyway. I can't wait to watch this Failed Lead Executive Extirpation Program (FLEE, for short ;) become common practice as we go about our economic recovery. I look forward to courageous, honest and deserving players taking the place of a too-long-entrenched uncaring régime - good thing you have a lot of résumes to choose from.
My prayers are with you folks and, for what it's worth, I'm around for ya.
All My Relations, Gramma Willi
P.S. Bringing the Indian Tribes into the UN is a sheer stroke of genius. Mad props to everyone who is behind it! Suggestion - put some of those savvy Native Elders at the helm of some of these organizations.
Ok maybe and hopefully this will be read by someone that has some brains in their head. I see how the people's money is just being given away to banks and private companies under the guise that jobs will be saved. Nice, that's real nice. It's our (the people) own fault for allowing our government of the people, by the people, and for the people to get away with this. Please Mr. President. I know I am no one compared to the people you are used to dealing with... But some of us do have good ideas on how to make things in this country right. I am begging you Mr. President to please take to the time to listen. Giving this money in the form of stimulus to the banks and businesses will not work as you can already see many of these banks and companies are already taking advantage of the people's money just as they have before the s**t hit the fan. There is only one way to fix the economy and that is you have to fix it at the source. Theoretically if you gave every American "citizen" between $500,000.00 and 1 million dollars it would only be a fraction of the billions upon billions that are being given to the banks and companies that look at taking advantage of the people as business as usual. If you give that money to the people I believe that 80 to 95 percent of those people will use that money to get themselves out of the red. They will use the money to pay their debts. And who do they owe? The banks! So when the people pay the banks. The banks will get their money and still be able to function and not have to foreclose not one more home. The people will pay those credit cards and again the banks will get the money they need to continue doing business. The people will shop and buy goods and so private businesses will no longer need stimulus money because we the people are now the ones giving the money to the banks and the businesses as it should be. I promise and guarantee you that this will save our economy. Please Mr. President leaving out the average Joe from the equation of saving the economy will only spell more disaster. My plan isn't perfect and it needs someone like you Mr. President to hone it into something viable that can and will work. A hint any one on Social security or any kind of existing government subsidization like me would not qualify for stimulus... But the average working American like the ones whose hands you shook in all those small towns would qualify and our great nation with its government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. I hope this makes sense and the right person reads this because trickling the money up can work just as well as trickling it down. I don’t even care if you take all the credit for my plan I really don’t care. I just want to see “all” of us proud and back on top again and I feel this is a very good way to accomplish that.
Thank you Mr. President,
Harold Marcano
Once upon a time some thousand years back a country X faced serious economic crisis resulting financial and banking institution failures, massive unemployment, trade crisis that slashed kingdom revenue. King and his chief minister were worried about moving economy. All solutions they brought were failed rather deepened further. Entire kingdom was sleepless. Worried King ordered the ministries “Perceiving economic down turn I decide to invite all the economists and ministers for their suggestions to overcome the deepening crisis and find solutions. Suitable idea will be rewarded”.
Yap yap yap - the talking heads.
Meanwhile, we NEED health care solutions. We are not taking proper care of ourselves. We HAVE TO educate all of our children so much better than this. Our children, for goodness sake! And WE CAN invent and use new energy solutions. We could actually live to see things greener and cleaner.
There is no chance that Washington will do what we need them to do. We knew that. That is why we elected this new President -- he wants to speak for us. He wants to hear our voices.
President Obama has presented his 10 year budget that plans to invest in Health Care, Education and Energy now, on the road to Economic Recovery and to a future that we all want to live in.
We KNOW that is the right thing to do right now in this country. Whatever Congress people and media heads have to say, there is no FUTURE without planning for and investing in it. This is our chance to create the future we want to see.
"We know this fight won't be easy. But important battles never are. Together, we have the opportunity to shape our country's future. We believed in the power of people to win an improbable election victory. And we believe in the power of people to drown out the cynics and entrenched interests in Washington to bring lasting, meaningful change we can all be proud we played a role in." -- David Plouffe
So let's get busy. (1) Sign the Pledge online. http://my.barackobama.com/pledgeproject (2) Get all of your friends and contacts to Sigh the Pledge online. (3) Host a Canvass Party on Saturday, 3/21. Engage your friends & neighbors. http://my.barackobama.com/pledgecanvass (4) Go out & Canvass on Saturday 3/21. Find an event and Show up.
Make our voices heard.
Yes We Can!
On Thursday, March 12th, Governor Rick Perry of Texas declined $555 million dollars of aid for the unemployed. The funds come from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 often touted as the "Obama Stimulus Package".This move will hurt untold numbers of families in Texas. These are not people who laying around at home. These are people who have lost their jobs--workers. The 77,800 jobs lost in Texas during January are felt all over the State from large cities to rural texas; the latter a region suffering for many years due to poor policy and loss of industries in small towns.Perry criticizes the funds by stating they will force businesses to have higher unemployment insurance costs.However, Perry is what I like to call a "surface ideologue". Instead of digging deep and analyzing a situation to do what's better for the people of his State, he will go with numbers which are on the surface--those numbers which affect costs at the next degree of separation.If Perry delved deeper then he will see that rising troubles for families will costs Texans far more money than a slight increase in unemployment insurance.Let's take a look at this and mind my poor drawing skills.
This represents a typical middle-class neighborhood in Texas today. Middle-class homeowners are all striving to be completely self-sufficient and worked hard to move into their American dream. They want jobs and to make a decent living just as those before them did.However, economic problems have begun to move into Middle Class Drive. Originally it was a national bank problem which immediately caused foreclosures on some people. But now, the reverberations of 15-months in a recession has affected residents of Middle Class Drive more directly.In this image, the red X over a home is where a family has been foreclosed upon and the purple is a family who has sacrificed credit cards or other bills to stay in a home.
Now let's go forward in time a few months. We see that savings begin to dwindle, more jobs are lost, and property values have declined so much that many are not even able to realistically relocate and as a side-effect they will have less job possibilities.
Further on in time we see the same trend. Companies lay off more people and those remaining will work longer hours with less pay due to less help and the desire to justify their position to corporate. Those in car sales and in related businesses such as dealer service departments will continue to see low numbers and will reach a breaking point. The $555 million in funds from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act will permit more people to stay in their home and to continue paying their bills. Nobody on Middle Class Drive wants to be in the position they are in. For those struggling it is no longer about ideology. It is about holding on the American middle-class way of life. We all know the consequences of losing that.The small increase in unemployment insurance will not even compare to the costs this will continue to have on banks, housing prices, neighborhoods, and the college educations of their children--something we desperately need right now to move America in its next step in the future.Not accepting the $555 million ARRA unemployment money will not destroy Texas, but it will continue to move Texas backwards. Lack of education, innovation, and cutting edge companies in this state will continue to proliferate to a place where it will be much more difficult to recover in the future as America, consisting of all 50 states and the district of Columbia, will be competing toe-to-toe with the rest of the world.I ask that all Texans stand up and be heard. I am born and raised in Texas and well aware that our state is well known for being rather quiet regarding policy and politics. But this is simply not the time for that. Perry's continued path of bad decisions should end here. This cannot be the next Trans-Texas Corridor.
edit: Fixed HTML tags to get images working and some typos. Also a thanks to everyone who has read and/or commented.
The Most Oppressive Debt- The Banking Scam You Never Hear About
As a former student organizer and staff of the US Student Association, I always have an eye out for stories about access to higher education, and the affordability crisis. Not only are there few stories, but they usually focus on the impact of rising tuition. The analysis (if there is any) is it is caused by more cut backs in state funding. There's little to no analysis of the declining value of the Pell Grant.This segment on Democracy Now is astonishing. Like I said, I know more than the average person about student loans, the impact on students, and on access to higher education for communities of color; and I am amazed at the analysis and the evidence here of a student loan racket and wholesale ripoff. You have to watch it for yourself starts 13 minutes in (scroll down for audio or the written transcript).
They show clips of Defualt: The Student Loan Documentary, from the website,
"While the media has focused on the disaster that sub-prime mortgages have turned out to be, only superficial attention has been given to financial giants which have been profiting by approving loans to low-income students with variable interest rates up to 25%."
Another guest, Alan Michael Collinge, author of The Student Loan Scam: the Most Oppressive Debt in US History--and How We Can Fight Back, talks about his personal experience with the student loan industry and reveals how private banks have created a perfect monopoly and racket in student loans that even the mob would envy. His website www.StudentLoanJustice.org is fantastic- it names names.In addition to extraordinary and arbitrary fees, student loans have been stripped of consumer protections, not just bankruptcy protection, but truth in lending laws. Under the banking protection laws, it is in their financial interest for students to default- you owe them WAY more, AND they still collect. This graph will help illustrate that profit motive.
It is becoming a common occurence, hard working Americans unable to be hired for a job because they placed having a home over credit cards when their jobs are lost in this economy. The level of oversight and regulations over credit reporting agencies are appalling. Essentially they have extraordinary power over Americas, but none of the members of their boards are elected or under respectable oversight.
Legislation to protect Americans is vastly limited. They are not merely a tool for banks to assess risk of loaning, but used by employers, military recruitment, and other entities for a purpose other than lending money.
Jobs are a de facto right for all Americans. Most of cannot survive without their income. Yet, private entities without any electoral oversight and virtually no legislative regulations are in control of such vital aspects for the very existence of the working class.
For those that read this, please pressure the Obama Administration and your Representatives to push for credit reform.
Long, long ago, the Status Quo established a particularly opportunist Sacred Cow to use whenever cornered by their own abuse of power. This collective agreement was bred and perpetuated into the people through the use of force and trauma to avoid responsibility, and it's being used now with the economy:
"Blame the Victim."
The way it often works is for the perpetrator to insist that they had no choice – they had to do whatever it was they did because of the victim. They don't want the economic recovery plan to help the people that need it the most. They think they are able to depend on compliance because the victims are so used to being abused, falling into the role almost automatically. A victim readily accepts blame because that is what they have been trained to do through repeated traumatic events.
Our nation has begun implementing a nearly 800 billion dollar Economic Recovery Plan. This money is on top of the 750 billion dollar TARP, and as we frequently hear would cost over two trillion dollars in total if they were paid for by conventional issuance of treasury bonds. The stated goal of both programs is to head off economic collapse, raise the bottom of the downward trough of the business cycle, and restore the economy to a rational marketplace. Those goals for the economy are our hopes, but we hold back our faith in those hopes because we know that government is a notoriously inefficient spender, and we suspect that corrupt practices and special interests will divert the investment funds into foolish and pointless directions. Experience tells us this is true, so we would be foolish to place our faith in the latest economic theory, or our wise leadership in Washington, or the captains of industry. After all, it was pie in the sky economists, dogmatic politicians and greedy, irresponsible businessmen who put us into the situation we are in. We cannot seriously trust these guys to fix this mess, can we?
Placing our trust in mankind can only lead to disappointment; the Marxists already tried that. While I personally did not spend the wealth that was created for me in the housing bubble, that wealth is now gone, and I have nothing to show for it although I am also not in debt. I did hope we would eventually see a Dow 30,000, and placed my hopes and retirement funds in the stock market, and now much of that money is gone. I guess I can only conclude that I cannot place my hope in my own wisdom. Nevertheless, we live in a deterministic society that believes in the laws of science and nature. Perhaps it is time we stopped gaming the fundamentals of economics to project the disappearance of the business cycle and deal with what the fundamentals of the economy really are. If the wealth I theoretically had when my house was worth the most at the peak of the housing bubble was not real, then what is the worth of a dollar today? The worth of a dollar is the fundamental element that can explain how we can spend our way out of the current economic depression/recession, and the key to how we are going to pay for it.
Since 1973 the value of a dollar has been tied to our nation’s Gross National Product, or GNP. Before that, we were on the gold standard which meant that dollars were tied to the value of gold, or actually had something solid behind them. I was 12 when we went off the gold standard, so I really do not remember being on it, but I don’t see how that was really a big change. The value of gold was tied to how many goods and services could be purchased with it, so it strikes me that the dollar was still worth a percentage of our economic output or GNP. A dollar’s worth today can be described as the fraction 1 over the total number of dollars in the system, and the number of dollars in the system is equal to the value of the goods and services that our economy produces. To simplify this further, if there are 100 dollars in circulation and you have one of them, then you can buy 1% of our GNP with it. The worth of a dollar is determined by the number of dollars in circulation, and the value of the goods and services produced by our economy.
So what has happened to those two variables in the last year? First of all, the collapse of the housing and stock bubbles greatly reduced the number of dollars that were in circulation. Some of that money, like the value of my house and the retirement funds that I did not borrow against, was in unrealized gains, and so was not an actual part of the active money supply, or M1. Much of it, however, was borrowed against and so was in the active money supply. The disappearance of all of that money, in theory, should make the remaining dollars more valuable. In the previous example a dollar was worth 1/100 of the GNP, well if we are now down to 95 dollars in the economy, my dollar should buy more since it is now worth 1/95 of GNP. It is this contraction in the money supply that has made it difficult for banks to lend. The dollars that they had have disappeared!
Another problem that we face in determining the worth of a dollar is that GNP has also been falling. To use the 100 dollar economy as an example, if the money supply fell by 5 dollars, but GNP also fell by 5% then the dollar would still buy the same amount of goods and services. There would neither be inflation nor deflation, just a lot of miserable people who have largely been kicked out of the economy since they have neither a job, nor any assets that they can spend.
So, what is a dollar worth today as compared to last year? The unsettling thing is that we really do not know. We know that the economy is contracting, and we know that the money supply has contracted, and continues to contract. Beyond that, we can see that there is an insufficiency of money supply to allow “normal” borrowing to take place. This uncertainty is the root cause of the volatility in world markets, and no argument about “moral hazard” is going to bring certainty. Since our economic problems are now rooted in both the GNP and money supply, it follows that we need to increase both.
Politically, our two parties fall into camps that each address one or the other of these problems, although Republicans have recently started to advocate a hands off approach. Republicans want to stimulate the economy through tax cuts, which basically gives free dollars to the beneficiaries since no corresponding reduction in government services is planned. This is the same as “printing” money to increase the money supply.
The Economic Recovery Plan seeks to expand GNP by creating demand in the marketplace. Right now, the only entity with money to spend is our government since the contraction of GNP makes investment by businesses undesirable. By spending money on fixing roads or building buildings we create jobs that would not otherwise be there, and those workers can then spend that money at the coffee shop, grocery store, or Wal-Mart. So, one dollar invested by the government in that sort of spending hopefully produces many more dollars in spending by the private sector, which increases the GNP. In economics, this concept is called “velocity.” Remember velocity because we will get back to it later, but understand that the velocity of money spent in the economy is likely to be greater than that of money saved in a tax cut. Beyond that, you have to have a job to get a tax cut.
Let us assume for a moment that the government, using either or both approaches, essentially prints the money to pay for this stimulus, since I have no idea who has the money to lend it to us. If every dollar we “print” creates two or three dollars in economic stimulus, then we actually raise our GNP numbers by more than we do our money supply, and a dollar actually gains in value! If we take the 100 dollar money supply, and “print” 10 more dollars, the economy would have to grow by 10% to keep the buying power of that dollar constant. If GNP grows by 20% on a 10% growth in money supply, the dollar is worth more! Now, this sounds like “pie in the sky” type economics!
The reason that this type of approach can be used now is two fold: we have a contracted money supply, and we have a contracting economy. If this approach were used in near full employment economic times, the money that the government spent would actually compete with the money the private sector had to spend and we would not see growth in GNP but would see growth in money supply. That would lead to inflation. Money supply increasing while the economy is stagnant or continues contracting will lead to the type of run away inflation that Germany experienced before the rise of Hitler. The key to a noninflationary increase in money supply is expansion of GNP, and that cannot happen if we are truly at full employment. (It can happen in full employment if worker productivity is increasing, but that is another subject.) The keys here are that we are not at full employment, and the money supply has definitely contracted. The difference between the contraction in money supply and the contraction in our economy is the amount of money we can literally print. We are in a window before the economy has contracted too much. We still have an opportunity to spend, but if the economy collapses, that opportunity will be gone. That is why we must act now!
So, we can print noninflationary money now, but will we ever have to pay the piper? Of course we will. Eventually it is hoped that the economy will recover and grow under its own momentum. At that time, the Fed will lose a lot of control over the money supply as stocks recover and housing values potentially begin to recover. At that time the economy will be “printing” its own money through velocity. (I told you we would get back to it.) When velocity increases the government must decrease money supply or new bubbles, like the ones that did us in this time, will occur. Essentially there are three ways that the government can do this:
1) Reduce spending. Fortunately, the new money created in the ERP has time constraints. Both the tax cuts and the projects will expire. While this does not actually take money out of the money supply, it at least stops pumping more money into it. Further cuts will probably be desirable, but I doubt politicians have the courage to make them.
2) Raise Taxes. If I doubt politicians have the courage to cut spending, I know they do not have the courage to raise taxes. Nevertheless, raising taxes to pay off our debts would reduce the money supply and counter the final option.
3) Inflation. This is the cruelest tax of all, and will eventually lead to another economic down turn. If velocity increases while economic output stays constant, money supply increases while GNP stays the same. A dollar will no longer buy as many goods as it did before the money supply increased. The Fed can counteract this by raising interest rates, but in essence that amounts to the same thing as inflation.
In the final analysis, some spending will expire, some taxes will be raised as tax cuts expire, and some inflation will inevitably occur. The mix of those paybacks will largely be determined by the economic policies we follow at that time.
Does this mean that we are placing our hope in politicians that we have not even elected yet? I guess that it does, and that is not a place I want to place my hopes for a fulfilling life. Nor do I want to trust the latest fad to come out of economic academia, and I have already said that I demonstrated a poor ability to perceive economic reality before this crash happened, so I am not a good place to deposit my own hopes. There must be something greater in which we can entrust our hopes. Maybe if we make wealth a means rather than an end we can escape the trap of measuring our lives against the economy. Forget about what a dollar is worth, what are you worth, and to whom? If we begin the search for those answers, maybe we will resist buying houses that we cannot afford and bidding up the prices of stocks. Both Karl Marx and Adam Smith agreed that the economy would function better if there were better people in it; Smith, however, unlike Marx, did not put forth a plan to accomplish that goal, since he already knew that one existed.
We're only partly responsible
The biggest part of the problem is the rampant abuse, usury, skirting of laws, fraud and plain incompetence by lenders. The banks and mortgage companies are guilty as sin of abusing consumers, and Bush/Cheney let it happen while their rich buddies gleefully made even more millions.
Certainly many homeowners are in this mess of a mortgage crisis partly because of poor decisions, lack of forethought, and other problems. I've made my own mistakes, too. And I support making reasonable profits. But the profiteering that's led to the downfall of the American economy is way beyond reasonable.
Income redistribution already happened: Your money went to the rich
In other words, the "income redistribution" by Obama that Limbaugh, Hannity and other (already rich) conservatives fear has ALREADY HAPPENED--in their favor! They simply--and greedily--don't want to give back what they've taken from you.
No, they have not literally stolen it--they just took it because you individually have little or no power or representation to earn what you deserve, to protect your rights, and to keep large companies with vast resources from charging you too much. They essentially nudged you aside, little by little, in every transaction, with every paper you've ever signed, till now you're at their mercy.
Now less than 1% of the US population owns an estimated 40-50% of the wealth in this country! That's happening while the poor became even poorer, and the middle class saw their incomes eroding since the 1970s. CEOs on average earned 42 times that of the average worker in the 70s. Now CEOs make about 411 times the average worker's salary!
Their powerful lawyers made sure that company execs like Angelo Mozilo (ex-CEO - Countrywide Bank) and Alan Mulally (CEO - Ford) and Rick Wagoner (CEO - GM) made their millions, riding in limousines and jets, while you suffer in joblessness, with a home nearing foreclosure. Dick Dauch of American Axle sucked in in $18.67 million in overall compensation in 2008, yet the company laid off many workers and slashed workers' wages by $10/hour!
My own family is a victim of mortgage fraud, RESPA and TILA violations, abusive practices by lenders and/or their representatives and contractors--including title specialists--and who knows what else. I am also only partially employed and seeking work.
I think these and other CEOs bear a large responsibility for this economic and housing crisis!
Even dogs can tell when a situation is unfair. A recent study reported on NPR showed that dogs who were treated differently in the amount of food they were given showed anger, depression and sadness toward their feeders. Awareness of unfairness is an evolutionary trait that ensures survival of the species. Evidently, we've been electing and supporting people--in government and business--who are fundamentally greedy and unfair--until Obama, that is. We hope.
Contact your county legal aid office or state attorney general for legal problems
We've had the devil of a time getting representation. We pray that our county legal aid office will take our case. Lawyers tell us that we would have to pay $10,000 to start a case! Who can afford that, if you're behind on your mortgage payments! What ordinary citizen can afford thousands in legal fees?
You too should review your loan paperwork. Call your FHA or HUD office to get help from a qualified agency or county legal aid. And you should not have to pay for this help!
Plenty of scam artists looking for your cash
Beware of anyone or any company asking for money up front. No legitimate housing counselor is allowed to demand up front payment. Under some circumstances, lawyers may charge up front--but be careful!
FHA and HUD approved counseling agencies will not ask for any monies up front, and should disclose any fees for additional counseling after the first consultation.
Below is a list of resource. This will get you started. But...
Start NOW! HUD is slow to help
Don't be surprised if these agencies don't help you! We had to talk to our HUD field office director, then an FHA director in Oklahoma, to discover that our bank's fraudulent practices had put our loan in jeopardy. It is no longer FHA insured because of their fraud and mistakes.
After 3-4 months of exhaustive research, we finally were put in touch with an FHA approved trainer who trains HUD approved housing counseling agencies. A housing director at the Inner City Christian Federation (ICCF) in Grand Rapids, MI, she was the first person to completely understand every wrinkle of our situation. What a relief!
Push for change and consumer protections
Most of the housing counselors you may encounter are not yet trained and ready for the avalanche of mortgage fraud and abuse cases. Keep pushing! Demand that your senators and representatives push for greater consumer protections, fines and a moratoriam--or stoppage--of foreclosures! Call for a mortgage moratorium to stop foreclosures in your state, too!
You can contact your state representatives and senators for help too. States can enact laws to protect its citizens when the federal government has not.
Ask your local church or nonprofit organization to help you fight lenders, predatory and weak laws and help protect you. Religious organizations have a spiritual mandate to help members of their congregations. If they won't stand up for you, leave them, boycott them, protest and demand help, and keep pushing for it!
"I am my brother's keeper" is a Biblical maxim. Also remember "...neither shalt thou stand idly by the blood of thy neighbour..." from Leviticus, 19:16.
The government works for you, but sadly, they don't do enough unless you shout for it. Especially under Bush-Cheney, fraud, waste, corporate abuse of citizens, overcharging and the foxes guarding the henhouse was encouraged--and we're paying for it now.
Thank God for Obama's administration. It seems to be the most responsive to consumers and ordinary citizens ever. Keep demanding that responsiveness!
Resources
HUD - who to contact
HUD on predatory lending
White House blog - on mortgage foreclosures and crisis
HUD - Guide to Avoiding Foreclosure
Michigan only - Inner City Christian Federation (ICCF) in Grand Rapids, MI (616) 336-9333
