Debtocracy (documentary around Greek debt crisis)

about Debtocracy

"
For the first time in Greece a documentary produced by the audience. "Debtocracy" seeks the causes of the debt crisis and proposes solutions, hidden by the government and the dominant media.

Editor/Script Katerina Kitidi
Aris Chatzistefanou
Scientific Research Leonidas Vatikiotis
Animation Magda Plevraki
Sokratis Galiatsakos
Music

Giannis Agelakas
Ermis Georgiadis
Aris RSN

Edit Aris Triantafillou
Camera Aris Papastefanou
ulia Reinecke
Coloring Thanos Tsantas
PR Michalis Alimanis
Contributors Aggeliki Gaidatzi
Fani Gaidatzi
Ioulia Kileri
Margarita Tsomou
Production Costas Efimeros
2011 - BitsnBytes.gr
"

Subprime mortgages in NZ

Overheard from a very popular Auckland talk radio station this morning during an ad break, "... little or no down payment mortgages!... no down payment for those under $300,000!" Yeah, in America those're called "Subprime Mortgages", it actually precipitated a Subprime Mortgage Crisis :D

So it begins, party time in New Zealand!!!

US Federal Reserve holdings update

So the question remains how long the Fed will hold these bad assets for, to maintain the American financial bubble.

Health Reform = Bailout in Disguise?

AIG and life insurance derivative Wall Streeters come to mind, when we explore those with the most to gain from the coming mandatory health insurance imposed upon Americans. All the while ARM problems (Adjustable Rate Mortgage) and the CRE crisis (Commercial Real Estate) have yet to be addressed, i.e. Wall Street NEEDS this bailout in the form of Health Reform to delay catastrophe a bit longer.

Economists at University of Missouri-Kansas City explain,

"
...Wall Street packages assets (home mortgages, commodities futures, and life insurance policies) so that gamblers can speculate on outcomes. If you lose your home through a mortgage delinquency, if food prices rise high enough to cause starvation, or if you die an untimely death, Wall Streeters make out like bandits.

Health insurance works out a bit differently: they sell you insurance and then the insurer denies your claim due to pre-existing conditions or simply because denial is more profitable and you probably don’t have sufficient funding to fight your way through the courts. You then go bankrupt (according to Steffie Woolhandler, two-thirds of US bankruptcies are due to healthcare bills) and Wall Street takes your assets and garnishes your wages.
"

America on sale

This is In-Your-Face deflation that has not eased for a while now.
AP News, by Rachel Beck

" Prices on everything from clothes to coffee to cat food are dropping, some faster than they have in half a century. Items rarely discounted - like Tiffany engagements rings - are now. The two biggest purchases most people make - homes and new cars - are selling at steep price reductions.

Traditionally, manufacturers and retailers lowered prices to clear inventory. Today, they're cutting prices because consumers are demanding it. If it lasts, the ramifications will be wide-ranging.

Retail sales remain sluggish, and more than half of the people surveyed recently by America's Research Group and UBS said they are shopping less.

Homes in parts of Detroit are cheaper than a new car.

Overall, prices are tumbling at the fastest rate in decades. The government's Consumer Price Index, which measures the average price of goods and services purchased by households, has fallen 1.5 percent over the last 12 months. The reading for July showed a 2.1 percent annual decline, the biggest since 1950 "

The world, lead by US, remains in a credit/monetary contraction phase, while inflation has remained positive in New Zealand. This really hurts over here. People are losing jobs left and right, and everything just keeps getting more expensive (as inflation kicks in).

Brits selling kidneys to pay off debt

Whoa, this kind of stuff used to happen in third world regions, exclusively. Nice to see that Times Online still has the courage to tell stories as they are, against Bernanke's late message of "recovery".


"
British victims of the credit crunch are offering to sell their kidneys for £25,000 or more to help pay debts... One person willing to sell a kidney is a 26-year-old mental health nurse who said he needed the money to pay debts after a business he set up went bankrupt. Another is a 43-year-old taxi driver from Lancashire, who wants to raise cash to pay off some of his mortgage and buy a new kitchen.
"

Of course, some of these folks got into so much debt due to reckless borrowing and spending. Past mistakes do not just go away, decisions result in consequences. What happened to the contingency plans? Or did they all have the same standpoint, "K, I'll just sell a kidney to pay it off some day, how bad could it be?" It's bad.

Global shipping decline 2009

The Canadians have the courage to uphold truth, instead of the "recession is over" rhetoric from American and New Zealand central banks. The credit contraction phase has not eased in any means, reality bites.

Prime credit score= 50% more likely to default

Conventional thought concludes that folks with good credit score will likely struggle to keep making payments, and then reality hits creditors with "strategic defaults". It makes sense, those with adequate understanding of finance and discipline would find it desirable to transfer losses to lenders while sacrificing "credit".


The LA Times agrees with the below,

"
Research using a massive sample of 24 million individual credit files has found that homeowners with high scores when they apply for a loan are 50% more likely to "strategically default" -- abruptly and intentionally pull the plug and abandon the mortgage -- compared with lower-scoring borrowers.

* Homeowners with large mortgage balances generally are more likely to pull the plug than those with lower balances. Similarly, people with credit ratings in the two highest categories measured by VantageScore -- a joint scoring venture created by Experian and the two other national credit bureaus, Equifax and TransUnion -- are far more likely to default strategically than people in lower score categories.


* People who default strategically and lose their houses appear to understand the consequences of what they're doing. Piyush Tantia, an Oliver Wyman partner and a principal researcher on the study, said strategic defaulters 'are clearly sophisticated,' based on the patterns of selective payments observable in their credit files. For example, they tend not to default on home equity lines of credit until after they bail out on their main mortgages, sometimes to draw down more cash on the equity line.
"