Santa's helpers this holiday season wrestle in the Christmas spirit to save homeowners from foreclosures in the Mountain State and across the land and ultimately from the wolves described in the Dec. 1 issue of BusinessWeek magazine.
"The subprime wolves are back and they're feeding off the bailout," the magazine's cover story says. "Don't let the makeover fool you."
The makeover, for one thing I can see and tell, encounters the powerful spirit of Santa's service at work to help keep the wolves at bay this time around. And again, if only because more homeowners and taxpayers all have eyes on the way the $700 billion bailout package is used to solve the financial crisis.
Even now, the crisis is blamed on the subprime mortgage mess, laid mainly to lenders making adjustable rate mortgage loans to unqualified borrowers and deadbeats.
Surely, almost any high school senior who reads the newspapers knows better. BusinessWeek writers picture the wolves rearing and tearing in the marketplace as usual. But plainly, watch now over them is stronger and brighter than lookout lights at West Virginia's newest penitentiary.
The magazine says thousands of subprime mortgage firms are now fronting as safe, government-backed institutions. When the subprime market began to disintegrate two years ago, many lenders and brokers began offering loans guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration.
What's more, BusinessWeek notes, FHA has granted licenses to some firms with questionable histories and to some lenders with new company names.
"Some former subprime lenders employ their old tactics, issuing loans to unqualified borrowers and running up high default rates," the magazine says.
Santa's helpers this holiday season wrestle in the Christmas spirit to save homeowners from foreclosures in the Mountain State and across the land and ultimately from the wolves described in the Dec. 1 issue of BusinessWeek magazine.
"The subprime wolves are back and they're feeding off the bailout," the magazine's cover story says. "Don't let the makeover fool you."
The makeover, for one thing I can see and tell, encounters the powerful spirit of Santa's service at work to help keep the wolves at bay this time around. And again, if only because more homeowners and taxpayers all have eyes on the way the $700 billion bailout package is used to solve the financial crisis.
Even now, the crisis is blamed on the subprime mortgage mess, laid mainly to lenders making adjustable rate mortgage loans to unqualified borrowers and deadbeats.
Surely, almost any high school senior who reads the newspapers knows better. BusinessWeek writers picture the wolves rearing and tearing in the marketplace as usual. But plainly, watch now over them is stronger and brighter than lookout lights at West Virginia's newest penitentiary.
The magazine says thousands of subprime mortgage firms are now fronting as safe, government-backed institutions. When the subprime market began to disintegrate two years ago, many lenders and brokers began offering loans guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration.
What's more, BusinessWeek notes, FHA has granted licenses to some firms with questionable histories and to some lenders with new company names.
"Some former subprime lenders employ their old tactics, issuing loans to unqualified borrowers and running up high default rates," the magazine says.
"Home loans insured by FHA - meaning loans that are ultimately backed by taxpayers - account for 26 percent of all new mortgages, up from 4 percent in 2007."
From other sources, reports are that hunters, so to speak, are moving across the land against wolves and similar predators feeding anew on foreclosures.
The hunters prove again that the spirit of Santa Claus drives individual and community services, aside from personal gift giving and the pleasure of self-indulgence.
The West Virginia Housing Development Fund has an ongoing service of counseling, mediation and deal-making between borrowers and lenders to prevent foreclosures and keep families in their homes.
The agency already has put $350,000 in the program and plans to add more, Director Joe Hatfield told the Gazette's Kate Long.
Matter of fact, reports are that such programs are growing across the country. Hope Now, a coalition of private and public initiatives, plans to kick off a program Dec. 15 to help homeowners facing foreclosures.
Such efforts have yet to prove that they are stronger than wolves. But the old saying is that nothing beats a try but a failure. Truly, the spirit of Santa Claus never quits or gives up in hard times or good times. It endures all the time against the wolves.
Peeks is former business/labor editor of the Gazette.
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