Alexandra Swann's Blog, page 10
January 10, 2014
The New Face of Subprime--Look in the Mirror; There's a 50% Chance it's You
In the last three and a half years, since July of 2010, four thousand pages of new regulations have been written governing mortgages in the U.S. Today is D-Day for two of them; today, January 10, 2014, the qualified mortgage and ability to repay provisions of the Dodd-Frank bill will take effect. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who helped write the rules and served as the interim director of the CFPB prior to the confirmation of Richard Cordray, spoke from the Senate floor this week praising the new rules saying that they will, "make a real difference for millions of families who own, or who hope to own, their own home” and “show once again that government can fix problems,” according to HuffPo.
Much like the disastrous roll-out of Obamacare, what the QM's are really going to do is demonstrate once again the failure of big government. Remember that Dodd Frank was supposedly passed to end "too big to fail" bailouts and "predatory loans," just as Obamacare was supposedly passed to ensure that all Americans would have access to affordable healthcare. In October of 2013, many Americans discovered for the first time that their existing insurance policies were being cancelled and that they would no longer have access to the private insurance for which they had been paying. They also discovered that their new "free" healthcare was really, really expensive.
Much the same thing is about to happen today. Under the pretext of shielding borrowers from bad loans, the federal government has created a small but elite class of borrowers--those who meet the standards of the "qualified mortgage". These borrowers will have access to the best interest rates and financing available because only these loans can be sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But about half of the borrowers who up until today were "prime" borrowers will not qualify under the new guidelines. Last February, Corelogic Credco completed a study of the qualified mortgage rules and found that under the government's proposed guidelines about 40-50% of borrowers who qualified to have a conforming mortgage in 2010 will no longer qualify under the new rules. This statistic was confirmed this week as Wells Fargo prepares a team to underwrite the non-qualified mortgages that it will keep and service itself. Wells estimates that 40% of its mortgages will not meet the qualified standards. If you have shopped for a mortgage loan in the last three years, you know that qualification standards were already tough, so to shut an additional 40-50% of borrowers out of a market which has already shrunk from a three trillion dollar industry to a 1 trillion dollar industry is significant.
What the government has really succeeded in doing here is creating a new class of subprime borrower out of borrowers who were previously eligible for low rate and fee mortgages. And the new rules are going to have a massive impact as consumers find themselves forced into non-prime portfolio loans.
Assuming that your credit score is above 700, what factors could keep you from getting a qualified mortgage? Below are a few:
1. You are self-employed. Even if you earn a good living and declare all of your income on your income taxes, the requirements are so strict that if your income has declined over the past two years, the underwriter may not accept part or all of your income.
2. Part of your income is bonus or commission. Let's say you have been on your job 15 years and in addition to a base salary you earn a substantial bonus or commission. You receive the bonus every year so you have always used it as income. Unlike base pay, bonuses and commissions are averaged over a two year period, so if your bonus has fluctuated you may not have a high enough average to qualify with the new 43% debt to income ratio requirements. If your bonus were less last year than the the previous year the underwriter might not let you use it at all.
3. You co-signed a loan for somebody else. Your sister just got divorced and is struggling to support herself and her three kids. She has gotten a job but she needed a car to go to work and you helped her out by co-signing for it. She makes all the payments with checks and you could prove that by getting copies of the cancelled checks. The problem is that Fannie Mae won't accept documentation that someone else is paying this bill, so you will have to qualify with her car payment, and even a small car payment could be enough to push you over the 43% DTI guidelines. (This is also true for business debt in your name under your personal credit.)
4. You are receiving child support for four children, the oldest of whom is sixteen, while you go back to school to get your nursing license. The child support covers all of your expenses and allows you to qualify, and in a year when you graduate from nursing school you will be able to go straight to work for a hospital. Unfortunately, child support can only be considered if it will continue for three years, and in the case of the sixteen year old it doesn't so even though you wanted to get that house now while the interest rates and home prices are still low, you won't qualify. You can either take the higher-priced non-qualified loan or you can wait and hope that when you get your nursing job you have not been priced out of the market.
The ultimate irony of the new rules is that it allows banks to profit from higher costs and fees to a newly created class of subprime borrowers who are actually a very good credit risk but can't meet the tight new requirements. Wells Fargo and others can create a set of products to meet this need that is greatly more profitable than the loans being sold to Fannie and Freddie and FHA and they can expect to have a large demand for them.
If you are one of the nearly fifty percent of credit worthy borrowers who can no longer qualify for a Fannie/Freddie conforming mortgage what can you expect?
1. Higher interest rates and more fees. The new rules say that a lender making a non-qualified mortgage must retain at least 5% of the balance of that mortgage for life. In reality, probably most of these loans will be "portfolio mortgages"--private label mortgages written to each lender's individual specifications which they retain for the life of the loan. By the end of 2014, mortgage rates are expected to be about 5%, so a portfolio mortgage might range anywhere from 5.5 - 7-5% or higher depending on the underwriting guidelines and level of risk. Keep in mind that they have to be more expensive because in addition to the cost of servicing the loan, the lenders have the added risk of not being able to foreclose if the loan is determined to be predatory at a later date.
2. Adjustable rate mortgages. Nobody is saying much about this yet, but the thirty year fixed rate mortgage (or the fifteen year fixed rate) is really a function of a government backed guarantee which is what Fannie, Freddie, FHA and VA provided. Portfolio loans often don't offer fixed rates. Often these loans are structured to be fixed for anywhere from 2-10 years and then the rate adjusts after that. This allows the lender to qualify the borrower at a lower initial rate and then adjust the rate upward at the end of the fixed term. Not being able to secure a fixed rate mortgage for the life of the loan is going to be a big surprise for a lot of Americans who have grown up in a world where this was standard. The irony is that the adjustable rate feature of many subprime loans was blamed for much of the mortgage crisis because as the rates adjusted homeowners could not pay the new costs, but now we can expect to see a resurgence of this product.
4. Higher down payments. The government toyed with requiring 20% downpayment as part of the qualified mortgages, but in the end they did not institute this. (If they had added a 20% downpayment requirement, according to the Corelogic Credco study, a full 60% of borrowers who qualified in 2010 would not have met the new guidelines.) Typically, though, portfolio loans require more downpayment than agency loans (agency loans are loans sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.) Lenders mitigate the risk of foreclosure by requiring more downpayment, and in a world where they have to service the loan forever that can be very helpful. Also, if a borrower does decide to take the lender to court because of a foreclosure action, the lender can argue more successfully that they followed conservative lending standards when they required more cash up front. In my experience, we should expect fifteen to twenty percent downpayments to become standard for the new class of subprime.
Elizabeth Warren says that the rules will show all Americans that the government can fix problems. In reality, these rules have not "fixed" anything. Just as Obamacare has caused millions of insured Americans to lose their coverage, so the QMs are going to force millions of Americans into subprime higher cost loans. Here's a message for Washington: Stop fixing things for us. We can't take much more of this.
When the mafia extorts money from you to allow you to live, they call it "protection money." When the government does it, they call it "consumer protection." Either way, you are paying for protection from someone who has the power to take everything you have.
Much like the disastrous roll-out of Obamacare, what the QM's are really going to do is demonstrate once again the failure of big government. Remember that Dodd Frank was supposedly passed to end "too big to fail" bailouts and "predatory loans," just as Obamacare was supposedly passed to ensure that all Americans would have access to affordable healthcare. In October of 2013, many Americans discovered for the first time that their existing insurance policies were being cancelled and that they would no longer have access to the private insurance for which they had been paying. They also discovered that their new "free" healthcare was really, really expensive.
Much the same thing is about to happen today. Under the pretext of shielding borrowers from bad loans, the federal government has created a small but elite class of borrowers--those who meet the standards of the "qualified mortgage". These borrowers will have access to the best interest rates and financing available because only these loans can be sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But about half of the borrowers who up until today were "prime" borrowers will not qualify under the new guidelines. Last February, Corelogic Credco completed a study of the qualified mortgage rules and found that under the government's proposed guidelines about 40-50% of borrowers who qualified to have a conforming mortgage in 2010 will no longer qualify under the new rules. This statistic was confirmed this week as Wells Fargo prepares a team to underwrite the non-qualified mortgages that it will keep and service itself. Wells estimates that 40% of its mortgages will not meet the qualified standards. If you have shopped for a mortgage loan in the last three years, you know that qualification standards were already tough, so to shut an additional 40-50% of borrowers out of a market which has already shrunk from a three trillion dollar industry to a 1 trillion dollar industry is significant.
What the government has really succeeded in doing here is creating a new class of subprime borrower out of borrowers who were previously eligible for low rate and fee mortgages. And the new rules are going to have a massive impact as consumers find themselves forced into non-prime portfolio loans.
Assuming that your credit score is above 700, what factors could keep you from getting a qualified mortgage? Below are a few:
1. You are self-employed. Even if you earn a good living and declare all of your income on your income taxes, the requirements are so strict that if your income has declined over the past two years, the underwriter may not accept part or all of your income.
2. Part of your income is bonus or commission. Let's say you have been on your job 15 years and in addition to a base salary you earn a substantial bonus or commission. You receive the bonus every year so you have always used it as income. Unlike base pay, bonuses and commissions are averaged over a two year period, so if your bonus has fluctuated you may not have a high enough average to qualify with the new 43% debt to income ratio requirements. If your bonus were less last year than the the previous year the underwriter might not let you use it at all.
3. You co-signed a loan for somebody else. Your sister just got divorced and is struggling to support herself and her three kids. She has gotten a job but she needed a car to go to work and you helped her out by co-signing for it. She makes all the payments with checks and you could prove that by getting copies of the cancelled checks. The problem is that Fannie Mae won't accept documentation that someone else is paying this bill, so you will have to qualify with her car payment, and even a small car payment could be enough to push you over the 43% DTI guidelines. (This is also true for business debt in your name under your personal credit.)
4. You are receiving child support for four children, the oldest of whom is sixteen, while you go back to school to get your nursing license. The child support covers all of your expenses and allows you to qualify, and in a year when you graduate from nursing school you will be able to go straight to work for a hospital. Unfortunately, child support can only be considered if it will continue for three years, and in the case of the sixteen year old it doesn't so even though you wanted to get that house now while the interest rates and home prices are still low, you won't qualify. You can either take the higher-priced non-qualified loan or you can wait and hope that when you get your nursing job you have not been priced out of the market.
The ultimate irony of the new rules is that it allows banks to profit from higher costs and fees to a newly created class of subprime borrowers who are actually a very good credit risk but can't meet the tight new requirements. Wells Fargo and others can create a set of products to meet this need that is greatly more profitable than the loans being sold to Fannie and Freddie and FHA and they can expect to have a large demand for them.
If you are one of the nearly fifty percent of credit worthy borrowers who can no longer qualify for a Fannie/Freddie conforming mortgage what can you expect?
1. Higher interest rates and more fees. The new rules say that a lender making a non-qualified mortgage must retain at least 5% of the balance of that mortgage for life. In reality, probably most of these loans will be "portfolio mortgages"--private label mortgages written to each lender's individual specifications which they retain for the life of the loan. By the end of 2014, mortgage rates are expected to be about 5%, so a portfolio mortgage might range anywhere from 5.5 - 7-5% or higher depending on the underwriting guidelines and level of risk. Keep in mind that they have to be more expensive because in addition to the cost of servicing the loan, the lenders have the added risk of not being able to foreclose if the loan is determined to be predatory at a later date.
2. Adjustable rate mortgages. Nobody is saying much about this yet, but the thirty year fixed rate mortgage (or the fifteen year fixed rate) is really a function of a government backed guarantee which is what Fannie, Freddie, FHA and VA provided. Portfolio loans often don't offer fixed rates. Often these loans are structured to be fixed for anywhere from 2-10 years and then the rate adjusts after that. This allows the lender to qualify the borrower at a lower initial rate and then adjust the rate upward at the end of the fixed term. Not being able to secure a fixed rate mortgage for the life of the loan is going to be a big surprise for a lot of Americans who have grown up in a world where this was standard. The irony is that the adjustable rate feature of many subprime loans was blamed for much of the mortgage crisis because as the rates adjusted homeowners could not pay the new costs, but now we can expect to see a resurgence of this product.
4. Higher down payments. The government toyed with requiring 20% downpayment as part of the qualified mortgages, but in the end they did not institute this. (If they had added a 20% downpayment requirement, according to the Corelogic Credco study, a full 60% of borrowers who qualified in 2010 would not have met the new guidelines.) Typically, though, portfolio loans require more downpayment than agency loans (agency loans are loans sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.) Lenders mitigate the risk of foreclosure by requiring more downpayment, and in a world where they have to service the loan forever that can be very helpful. Also, if a borrower does decide to take the lender to court because of a foreclosure action, the lender can argue more successfully that they followed conservative lending standards when they required more cash up front. In my experience, we should expect fifteen to twenty percent downpayments to become standard for the new class of subprime.
Elizabeth Warren says that the rules will show all Americans that the government can fix problems. In reality, these rules have not "fixed" anything. Just as Obamacare has caused millions of insured Americans to lose their coverage, so the QMs are going to force millions of Americans into subprime higher cost loans. Here's a message for Washington: Stop fixing things for us. We can't take much more of this.
When the mafia extorts money from you to allow you to live, they call it "protection money." When the government does it, they call it "consumer protection." Either way, you are paying for protection from someone who has the power to take everything you have.
January 8, 2014
Dodd Frank--Protecting You Right into an 11% Mortgage
On December 19, 2013, I sold the office building which for 10 and a half years had housed my mortgage company. The closing was held at a "fee office" for one of the local title companies--this particular fee office is operated by a local real estate attorney who handles a lot of transactions for the local lenders. As we signed the closing docs, he chatted pleasantly about the surge in private equity lending that is happening and he expressed surprise at the quality of borrowers who are now using private money lenders rather than traditional mortgages. "You look at some of these people--they have great credit and great income and you think, 'Why is this guy taking an 11% mortgage?' But they do."
I left that closing and that conversation very sure that my decision to exist the loan origination industry nine months ago (on my company's fifteenth year anniversary) had been exactly the right one. In July of 2010, when Obama and the Democrats pushed through the Dodd-Frank bill--with the help of four Republican Senators--the bill was touted as a consumer protection bill that would prevent any more bailouts and end "too big to fail," as an excuse for squandering taxpayer's money. Three and a half years later we know for certain that none of those promises was true. None of the "too big to fail" issues has been addressed at all. What has happened is that the 858 page bill with its 398 regulatory requirements is generating massive new regulations that are squeezing ordinary consumers out of credit markets completely. So far, Dodd-Frank has generated 42 words of regulation for every word of text in the original bill, and only about 50% of the regulations have been written. Sixty-three percent of the regulatory deadlines have been missed. As with its big government counterpart Obamacare, it has delivered none of what it promised. What it has delivered is an enormous new bureaucracy in the form of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which has no Congressional oversight. Housed in Janet Yellen's Federal Reserve, the CFPB answers to no one but the president, but the agency has unprecedented powers not only to regulate and even close private businesses, but also to monitor and spy on Americans down to the last dollar in your bank account and that cup of coffee you charged on your credit card yesterday at Starbucks. This is the agency responsible for getting rid of all of the bad lenders and the bad mortgages and making sure that every consumer is treated fairly every time.
Part of this new regulatory landscape includes four thousand pages of new mortgage regulations. Two of the most anticipated (or maybe that word should be "dreaded") deadlines come this week: on January 10, the qualified mortgage rules and the ability to repay rules will both take effect. This is a deadline many mortgage lenders were hoping to miss, but repeated calls from the industry to CFPB director Richard Cordray for a stay of these rules were ignored.
The qualified mortgages provide strict guidelines for lenders in making residential mortgage loans. The consumer must have demonstrated an ability to repay, his or her total percentage of debt to income cannot exceed 43%, and the total points and fees on the loan cannot exceed 3% of the loan amount. The APR of the mortgage loan cannot be more than 1.5% above the annual prime rate. As long as lenders comply with these mortgage guidelines, they are protected, though not shielded completely, from borrower lawsuits alleging misconduct.
Loans that do not meet these strict standards may qualify for a higher cost mortgage that still offers some protections under the ability-to-repay rule. If the lender has demonstrated that the consumer has the ability to repay the mortgage and that the total debt to income does not exceed 43% of the borrower's verified income, the lender can still argue that they have acted in good faith. Loans that fall outside of these boundaries are non-qualified mortgages. On a non-qualified mortgage, the lender must retain at least 5% of the loan for the life of the loan without ever selling it. In addition, if the borrower proves in court that his rights were violated, the lender has to pay back all of the interest and fees to the borrower and cannot ever foreclose. On a $200,000 mortgage, the lender would have to permanently retain at least $10,000 of the mortgage for the life of the loan--something many institutional lenders are not in a position to do. These are very high risk loans for the lenders, so they are going to be very expensive for the consumers. Since most banking entities are not going to take on this much risk, these loans will fall to private lenders who are willing to take the risk in exchange for an 11% interest rate and high fees. In addition to your local private money lender, Wall Street hedge funds are exploring the possibilities of making non-qualified mortgages because of the high yields in the form of interest rates and fees. (But wait--I thought hedge funds were among the evil entities the government wanted to stop. Perhaps not.)
The attorney who was visiting with me said that he had made numerous phone calls to the CFPB in helping his clients get into compliance on the new rules. At first they were very responsive, but now they have "gone dark" on him and no longer return calls. The CFPB is apparently not very interested in providing regulatory guidance to those seeking to comply with the new rules. Why would they be? They have just written 4000 pages of regulations that will ultimately be interpreted by the courts. And in the meantime, they can order audits, including IRS audits on practically any lender, large or small, and impose fines and fees without restriction on anyone who violates the new rules.
The Obama Administration is pretending that the qualified mortgages will not restrict lending. They optimistically hope aloud that lenders will be flexible in their lending guidelines and that they will continue to look at loans on a case-by-case basis. The problem is that Dodd Frank's guidelines do not allow for this. As Jeff Taylor, managing partner of Digital Wire, points out frankly in Housing Wire, Dodd Frank "draws a hard line in the sand and removes all subjectivity so that lenders cannot consider compensating factors." That means that your lender no longer has the power to say, "you might be a little bit outside of the box, but you are still a good loan."
Bloomberg is reporting today that Wells Fargo projects that 40% of their loans will not meet qualified mortgage standards, and they have created a SWAT team of 400 underwriters to underwrite the loans they decide to portfolio themselves. We can expect that Wells will price these loans considerably above the QMs but enough below the hedge funds and private investors to scoop up the choice borrowers who no longer qualify for optimal financing.
So who are the losers in this?
1. Consumers who don't quite fit into said tiny, narrow box. Mark Savitt, former president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, current president of the National Association of Housing Independent Professionals and a long-time mortgage veteran in West Virginia, is reporting that problems have already begun. In the Mortgage Professional's Association newsletter, Savitt explains that one of his borrowers was just declined by Fannie Mae for a mortgage loan because she was exceeded the guidelines of the qualified mortgage. (Even though the official start date is Friday, in practical terms lenders began using these guidelines weeks ago because of their deadlines for selling to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) This woman, who has been on her job for twenty years, has a 732 credit score and was making a $79,000 downpayment on her new home purchase. She was financing only $50,000, but because her debt-to-income ratio was 47%, Fannie Mae declined the loan as being "high risk." As Savitt explained, the only way she is going to get that loan now is to get a non-qualified mortgage with considerably higher points and fees. Her cost of borrowing has just gone way up because of Dodd Frank's consumer protections.
2. The self-employed. The ability to repay provisions greatly favor W-2d employees. For the self-employed mortgages, are going to be increasingly more difficult to obtain and increasingly expensive if they can be obtained at all. Before I left the industry I began to see institutional lenders setting guidelines that would not accept any of a borrower's income if the income had decreased over the last two years. If you are one of those few lucky individuals who owns a business that has made more money over the last two years than in the past, I congratulate you heartily. If not, you are probably not going to qualify for a "qualified mortgage."
3. Sellers. All sellers. Why? If you want or need to sell your home, you need to find a borrower who can actually qualify to get a mortgage loan so that you can move on. Being able to sell your house may mean the difference between being able to relocate to a new city or being able to move to a new job across country. If your situation is dire enough, it may even be the difference between foreclosure and keeping your credit in tact. Cutting off access to mortgage credit can have major impacts on the society as a whole.
Who are the winners?
1. Wall Street. Wall Street can price the risk for these non-qualified mortgages into the new loans and they can afford attorneys to keep the homeowner tied up in court for years. 2. Big government. Unlike Obamacare, Dodd Frank does not have widespread public outrage. The government can sanctimoniously tell consumers that it is protecting them from "bad mortgages" they can't afford with very little opposition. And they can use the fines and fees they are extracting from businesses to continue to grow an agency whose average salary is six figures--all in the name of "saving the people."3. The leftists in our society who increasingly fight property rights because private property ownership does not fit well into their new vision of what America should be. These activists want to see an end to single family homes, suburbs, private automobiles, and all of other traditional amenities of our society because our way of life is not eco-friendly. Their ultimate goal is to see all Americans living in densely-packed rental housing and taking public transportation. The qualified mortgage is just the first step.
When the mafia extorts money from you to allow you to live, they call it "protection money." When the government does it, they call it "consumer protection." Either way, you are paying for protection from someone who has the power to take everything you have.
I left that closing and that conversation very sure that my decision to exist the loan origination industry nine months ago (on my company's fifteenth year anniversary) had been exactly the right one. In July of 2010, when Obama and the Democrats pushed through the Dodd-Frank bill--with the help of four Republican Senators--the bill was touted as a consumer protection bill that would prevent any more bailouts and end "too big to fail," as an excuse for squandering taxpayer's money. Three and a half years later we know for certain that none of those promises was true. None of the "too big to fail" issues has been addressed at all. What has happened is that the 858 page bill with its 398 regulatory requirements is generating massive new regulations that are squeezing ordinary consumers out of credit markets completely. So far, Dodd-Frank has generated 42 words of regulation for every word of text in the original bill, and only about 50% of the regulations have been written. Sixty-three percent of the regulatory deadlines have been missed. As with its big government counterpart Obamacare, it has delivered none of what it promised. What it has delivered is an enormous new bureaucracy in the form of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which has no Congressional oversight. Housed in Janet Yellen's Federal Reserve, the CFPB answers to no one but the president, but the agency has unprecedented powers not only to regulate and even close private businesses, but also to monitor and spy on Americans down to the last dollar in your bank account and that cup of coffee you charged on your credit card yesterday at Starbucks. This is the agency responsible for getting rid of all of the bad lenders and the bad mortgages and making sure that every consumer is treated fairly every time.
Part of this new regulatory landscape includes four thousand pages of new mortgage regulations. Two of the most anticipated (or maybe that word should be "dreaded") deadlines come this week: on January 10, the qualified mortgage rules and the ability to repay rules will both take effect. This is a deadline many mortgage lenders were hoping to miss, but repeated calls from the industry to CFPB director Richard Cordray for a stay of these rules were ignored.
The qualified mortgages provide strict guidelines for lenders in making residential mortgage loans. The consumer must have demonstrated an ability to repay, his or her total percentage of debt to income cannot exceed 43%, and the total points and fees on the loan cannot exceed 3% of the loan amount. The APR of the mortgage loan cannot be more than 1.5% above the annual prime rate. As long as lenders comply with these mortgage guidelines, they are protected, though not shielded completely, from borrower lawsuits alleging misconduct.
Loans that do not meet these strict standards may qualify for a higher cost mortgage that still offers some protections under the ability-to-repay rule. If the lender has demonstrated that the consumer has the ability to repay the mortgage and that the total debt to income does not exceed 43% of the borrower's verified income, the lender can still argue that they have acted in good faith. Loans that fall outside of these boundaries are non-qualified mortgages. On a non-qualified mortgage, the lender must retain at least 5% of the loan for the life of the loan without ever selling it. In addition, if the borrower proves in court that his rights were violated, the lender has to pay back all of the interest and fees to the borrower and cannot ever foreclose. On a $200,000 mortgage, the lender would have to permanently retain at least $10,000 of the mortgage for the life of the loan--something many institutional lenders are not in a position to do. These are very high risk loans for the lenders, so they are going to be very expensive for the consumers. Since most banking entities are not going to take on this much risk, these loans will fall to private lenders who are willing to take the risk in exchange for an 11% interest rate and high fees. In addition to your local private money lender, Wall Street hedge funds are exploring the possibilities of making non-qualified mortgages because of the high yields in the form of interest rates and fees. (But wait--I thought hedge funds were among the evil entities the government wanted to stop. Perhaps not.)
The attorney who was visiting with me said that he had made numerous phone calls to the CFPB in helping his clients get into compliance on the new rules. At first they were very responsive, but now they have "gone dark" on him and no longer return calls. The CFPB is apparently not very interested in providing regulatory guidance to those seeking to comply with the new rules. Why would they be? They have just written 4000 pages of regulations that will ultimately be interpreted by the courts. And in the meantime, they can order audits, including IRS audits on practically any lender, large or small, and impose fines and fees without restriction on anyone who violates the new rules.
The Obama Administration is pretending that the qualified mortgages will not restrict lending. They optimistically hope aloud that lenders will be flexible in their lending guidelines and that they will continue to look at loans on a case-by-case basis. The problem is that Dodd Frank's guidelines do not allow for this. As Jeff Taylor, managing partner of Digital Wire, points out frankly in Housing Wire, Dodd Frank "draws a hard line in the sand and removes all subjectivity so that lenders cannot consider compensating factors." That means that your lender no longer has the power to say, "you might be a little bit outside of the box, but you are still a good loan."
Bloomberg is reporting today that Wells Fargo projects that 40% of their loans will not meet qualified mortgage standards, and they have created a SWAT team of 400 underwriters to underwrite the loans they decide to portfolio themselves. We can expect that Wells will price these loans considerably above the QMs but enough below the hedge funds and private investors to scoop up the choice borrowers who no longer qualify for optimal financing.
So who are the losers in this?
1. Consumers who don't quite fit into said tiny, narrow box. Mark Savitt, former president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, current president of the National Association of Housing Independent Professionals and a long-time mortgage veteran in West Virginia, is reporting that problems have already begun. In the Mortgage Professional's Association newsletter, Savitt explains that one of his borrowers was just declined by Fannie Mae for a mortgage loan because she was exceeded the guidelines of the qualified mortgage. (Even though the official start date is Friday, in practical terms lenders began using these guidelines weeks ago because of their deadlines for selling to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) This woman, who has been on her job for twenty years, has a 732 credit score and was making a $79,000 downpayment on her new home purchase. She was financing only $50,000, but because her debt-to-income ratio was 47%, Fannie Mae declined the loan as being "high risk." As Savitt explained, the only way she is going to get that loan now is to get a non-qualified mortgage with considerably higher points and fees. Her cost of borrowing has just gone way up because of Dodd Frank's consumer protections.
2. The self-employed. The ability to repay provisions greatly favor W-2d employees. For the self-employed mortgages, are going to be increasingly more difficult to obtain and increasingly expensive if they can be obtained at all. Before I left the industry I began to see institutional lenders setting guidelines that would not accept any of a borrower's income if the income had decreased over the last two years. If you are one of those few lucky individuals who owns a business that has made more money over the last two years than in the past, I congratulate you heartily. If not, you are probably not going to qualify for a "qualified mortgage."
3. Sellers. All sellers. Why? If you want or need to sell your home, you need to find a borrower who can actually qualify to get a mortgage loan so that you can move on. Being able to sell your house may mean the difference between being able to relocate to a new city or being able to move to a new job across country. If your situation is dire enough, it may even be the difference between foreclosure and keeping your credit in tact. Cutting off access to mortgage credit can have major impacts on the society as a whole.
Who are the winners?
1. Wall Street. Wall Street can price the risk for these non-qualified mortgages into the new loans and they can afford attorneys to keep the homeowner tied up in court for years. 2. Big government. Unlike Obamacare, Dodd Frank does not have widespread public outrage. The government can sanctimoniously tell consumers that it is protecting them from "bad mortgages" they can't afford with very little opposition. And they can use the fines and fees they are extracting from businesses to continue to grow an agency whose average salary is six figures--all in the name of "saving the people."3. The leftists in our society who increasingly fight property rights because private property ownership does not fit well into their new vision of what America should be. These activists want to see an end to single family homes, suburbs, private automobiles, and all of other traditional amenities of our society because our way of life is not eco-friendly. Their ultimate goal is to see all Americans living in densely-packed rental housing and taking public transportation. The qualified mortgage is just the first step.
When the mafia extorts money from you to allow you to live, they call it "protection money." When the government does it, they call it "consumer protection." Either way, you are paying for protection from someone who has the power to take everything you have.
December 23, 2013
The Best Gift Ever
As a child, I loved Christmas, as I think most children do. To me, Christmas meant delicious food and toys. Growing up in a large middle class family in the 1970's, we did not have extravagant gifts, but I remember many Christmases fondly. There was the year that I received the baby doll in the pink blanket, and the year that I got the little record player that played Christmas songs on 45s. One year, my brother received a set of plastic cowboys and Indians complete with plastic cows and horse corrals, and we could not wait to get up to start playing with them at the crack of dawn Christmas morning.
We always opened our presents on Christmas Eve, and then my mother would read the Christmas story to us from the Bible while we ate candy and treats. It was the most wonderful day of the year.
I am reminded of that joy now as I purchase gifts for my nieces and nephews. Their wish lists are a lot different than mine were since they are a lot more technologically savvy than I ever was--maybe than I still am--but the excitement over Christmas is the same.
It seems to me that as we get older, the Christmas spirit is a little harder to catch. For those of us who are self-employed, the holidays are an especially stressful time of year as we try to adjust to ever changing demands of an economy that does not want to cooperate. This is my 16th Christmas self-employed and it seems that every year there is additional stress at the holidays. This year the stress has come from selling my office building which housed our company for 10 and a half years. Our final day here will be December 30th. I have spent the month of December packing a decade of experiences and memories into cardboard boxes and looking back at all we accomplished here. As I look in 2014 I see the likelihood of relocating to a new city and starting a new life--a prospect which is filled with both opportunity and difficulties.
Add to this stress the normal stressors of packed malls, packed streets--I work relatively close to a major shopping mall so traffic can be a real headache--and the invariable stresses of work and finances, and it can all combine to make the most dedicated lover of Christmas throw up his or her hands and shout "Bah Humbug".
But it is at those moments that I force myself to take a deep breath and to remember that Christmas is still the most wonderful day ever. Although my nephews and nieces would take exception to this, the best gift ever is not a video game, or a doll, or a toy, or a car or a vacation. The best gift ever is the gift of Christmas itself, which reminds us that we always have hope and that miracles happen no matter how bleak the world may seem. For those of us who are Christians, Christmas is a powerful reminder that God is with us and we don't have to fear the future, even if at times it looks scary. It is a reminder that we are loved. "For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." (John 3:17). And it is a chance to express love and kindness in real terms to people around us and to those we are blessed to have love us in return. And all of those things are priceless and worth celebrating.
Merry Christmas.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
We always opened our presents on Christmas Eve, and then my mother would read the Christmas story to us from the Bible while we ate candy and treats. It was the most wonderful day of the year.
I am reminded of that joy now as I purchase gifts for my nieces and nephews. Their wish lists are a lot different than mine were since they are a lot more technologically savvy than I ever was--maybe than I still am--but the excitement over Christmas is the same.
It seems to me that as we get older, the Christmas spirit is a little harder to catch. For those of us who are self-employed, the holidays are an especially stressful time of year as we try to adjust to ever changing demands of an economy that does not want to cooperate. This is my 16th Christmas self-employed and it seems that every year there is additional stress at the holidays. This year the stress has come from selling my office building which housed our company for 10 and a half years. Our final day here will be December 30th. I have spent the month of December packing a decade of experiences and memories into cardboard boxes and looking back at all we accomplished here. As I look in 2014 I see the likelihood of relocating to a new city and starting a new life--a prospect which is filled with both opportunity and difficulties.
Add to this stress the normal stressors of packed malls, packed streets--I work relatively close to a major shopping mall so traffic can be a real headache--and the invariable stresses of work and finances, and it can all combine to make the most dedicated lover of Christmas throw up his or her hands and shout "Bah Humbug".
But it is at those moments that I force myself to take a deep breath and to remember that Christmas is still the most wonderful day ever. Although my nephews and nieces would take exception to this, the best gift ever is not a video game, or a doll, or a toy, or a car or a vacation. The best gift ever is the gift of Christmas itself, which reminds us that we always have hope and that miracles happen no matter how bleak the world may seem. For those of us who are Christians, Christmas is a powerful reminder that God is with us and we don't have to fear the future, even if at times it looks scary. It is a reminder that we are loved. "For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." (John 3:17). And it is a chance to express love and kindness in real terms to people around us and to those we are blessed to have love us in return. And all of those things are priceless and worth celebrating.
Merry Christmas.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
December 5, 2013
Don't Wait for 2014; Vote with Your Dollars Now
Last night I kept a year-old promise. Last year when Hobby Lobby began its battle to uphold the family-owned business' Christian values by battling the contraceptive mandate of Obamacare, I mentally promised that if the company were still open at Christmas 2013, I would buy my Christmas candles there rather than at one of their competitors. Our Christmas decorations involve a lot of pieces that require candles, so every year after we set out the decorations at the office and the house I inventory the candle supply and go pick up whatever we need at one of the stores nearby.
I never shop at Hobby Lobby. It's not that I don't like the store or that they are inconveniently located--actually there is a large store that is located pretty much on my way home and sits directly next to the Sam's Club that I frequent. I have never had any sort of a problem with Hobby Lobby--it's just simply that I never think about purchasing anything from them. I am singularly untalented at any type of crafts projects--I can't arrange flowers; I don't have any hobbies; so in the past when I have heard the name I have dismissed it as a merchant for somebody else. I have bought my candles at a store where I can pick up lipstick and a frozen turkey on the same trip.
This year is different. Hobby Lobby has been embroiled in a year long battle that threatens their very existence. They are fighting for a basic right that affects all of us--the right of Christian business owners, and actually all business owners of all faiths, to run their own companies in a manner that is consistent with their own values and beliefs. In spite of what President Obama thinks, those who own businesses in this country DID build them--through years of hard work and thousands of hours of toil. To have the government endanger a business through regulations that challenge the faith of the business owner is unthinkable. (In my opinion, to have the government destroy businesses through regulation, as this Administration has consistently done for the past five years, is unthinkable under any circumstances.)
So last night I trekked over to Hobby Lobby. Since the closure of my own business of fifteen years last April 1, 2013 has been an extremely difficult year for me, so my purchase was a meagerly small one, but I did it to make a statement. I had very little to spend, and I spent very little, but what I spent I spent there. My purchase alone will not help the Green family with their legal battles--a legal battle that should be completely unnecessary if it were not for this badly-written, poorly thrown together hodgepodge of a law that should never have been passed in the first place. I heard last year that there are an estimated thirty million Teaparty evangelicals in the United States. If all of us took our candle and decorative item budgets to Hobby Lobby this Christmas, that would actually would make a difference.
I shopped at Hobby Lobby last night for another reason also. I am very involved with various conservative sites. I spend time each week on Freedom Works http://www.freedomworks.org and The TeaParty Community http://www.teapartycommunity.com. A few months ago Joyce and I started a Facebook page called The Liberty Project, http://www.facebook.com/thelibertyproj where we share information from various conservative sites after a friend at church complained that she did not have time to pick through all of the information that was coming to her email every day. The Liberty Project is designed to provide insight into the key issues happening daily. I spend about an hour on Twitter every day on the The Liberty Project's Twitter @thelibertyproj, my own account @alexandraswann, and our media company account @Frontier_2000. I was on Twitter when #StandwithRand was the number 1 trending hashtag, and I tweeted for Ted Cruz during his 21 hour floor speech. Through all of this social networking I see building anticipation of the 2014 Congressional Elections. As we have watched the abysmal roll out of Obamacare followed by mounds of lies and excuses, we have seen our hopes surge. But it occurs to me that we who are conservatives, and maybe particularly those of us who are Christian conservatives (the values voters), can be doing something right now that can make an impact for our nation.
This year I have begun to think much more seriously about WHERE I spend my money. So much of the reason that the U.S. is in the mess that it is is due to cronyism. Corporations take our hard-earned dollars and use them to support candidates who are destroying our freedoms and our way of life. International non-profits do the same thing. The first person who told me that the Susan G. Koman foundation was funding Planned Parenthood was my brother Stefan. He went to an event and looked through a pamphlet that listed Planned Parenthood as an organization they supported. He never gave them a dime of assistance again and I haven't either. How many of the charitable contributions that we make to assist the needy and those in distress are actually being funneled to causes that we find repugnant?
Now, with the Christmas shopping season in full swing, is actually a good opportunity to think about where we are spending the money. I'm not talking about boycotts, although those have been effective for the AFA. I am not talking about making hard and fast rules that we can never break. For each person this is going to be a very personal decision based on your own values and priorities. I recently reviewed a list of the campaign donations of major U.S. companies and was surprised to discover that Home Depot gives a disproportionately high level of their donations to the GOP in spite of their well-known promotion of same sex lifestyles. I personally do a lot of business with Amazon although I disagree with the politics of Jeff Bezos, the CEO. I have a Facebook page although I strongly disagree with Mark Zuckerberg. To paraphrase the apostle Paul, you can't live in this world without interacting with and being around people with whom you disagree.
But where I am able to support a company that is defending the values of this nation, I am going to do so, even if it means making an extra trip or going out of my way. In the U.S. profit is a powerful indicator of public opinion. We don't have to wait until next fall to have an impact. We can start having one right now.
Through December 6th, The Planner, Alexandra's novel about the real cost of big government, is on sale for just 99 cents on Kindle.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
I never shop at Hobby Lobby. It's not that I don't like the store or that they are inconveniently located--actually there is a large store that is located pretty much on my way home and sits directly next to the Sam's Club that I frequent. I have never had any sort of a problem with Hobby Lobby--it's just simply that I never think about purchasing anything from them. I am singularly untalented at any type of crafts projects--I can't arrange flowers; I don't have any hobbies; so in the past when I have heard the name I have dismissed it as a merchant for somebody else. I have bought my candles at a store where I can pick up lipstick and a frozen turkey on the same trip.
This year is different. Hobby Lobby has been embroiled in a year long battle that threatens their very existence. They are fighting for a basic right that affects all of us--the right of Christian business owners, and actually all business owners of all faiths, to run their own companies in a manner that is consistent with their own values and beliefs. In spite of what President Obama thinks, those who own businesses in this country DID build them--through years of hard work and thousands of hours of toil. To have the government endanger a business through regulations that challenge the faith of the business owner is unthinkable. (In my opinion, to have the government destroy businesses through regulation, as this Administration has consistently done for the past five years, is unthinkable under any circumstances.)
So last night I trekked over to Hobby Lobby. Since the closure of my own business of fifteen years last April 1, 2013 has been an extremely difficult year for me, so my purchase was a meagerly small one, but I did it to make a statement. I had very little to spend, and I spent very little, but what I spent I spent there. My purchase alone will not help the Green family with their legal battles--a legal battle that should be completely unnecessary if it were not for this badly-written, poorly thrown together hodgepodge of a law that should never have been passed in the first place. I heard last year that there are an estimated thirty million Teaparty evangelicals in the United States. If all of us took our candle and decorative item budgets to Hobby Lobby this Christmas, that would actually would make a difference.
I shopped at Hobby Lobby last night for another reason also. I am very involved with various conservative sites. I spend time each week on Freedom Works http://www.freedomworks.org and The TeaParty Community http://www.teapartycommunity.com. A few months ago Joyce and I started a Facebook page called The Liberty Project, http://www.facebook.com/thelibertyproj where we share information from various conservative sites after a friend at church complained that she did not have time to pick through all of the information that was coming to her email every day. The Liberty Project is designed to provide insight into the key issues happening daily. I spend about an hour on Twitter every day on the The Liberty Project's Twitter @thelibertyproj, my own account @alexandraswann, and our media company account @Frontier_2000. I was on Twitter when #StandwithRand was the number 1 trending hashtag, and I tweeted for Ted Cruz during his 21 hour floor speech. Through all of this social networking I see building anticipation of the 2014 Congressional Elections. As we have watched the abysmal roll out of Obamacare followed by mounds of lies and excuses, we have seen our hopes surge. But it occurs to me that we who are conservatives, and maybe particularly those of us who are Christian conservatives (the values voters), can be doing something right now that can make an impact for our nation.
This year I have begun to think much more seriously about WHERE I spend my money. So much of the reason that the U.S. is in the mess that it is is due to cronyism. Corporations take our hard-earned dollars and use them to support candidates who are destroying our freedoms and our way of life. International non-profits do the same thing. The first person who told me that the Susan G. Koman foundation was funding Planned Parenthood was my brother Stefan. He went to an event and looked through a pamphlet that listed Planned Parenthood as an organization they supported. He never gave them a dime of assistance again and I haven't either. How many of the charitable contributions that we make to assist the needy and those in distress are actually being funneled to causes that we find repugnant?
Now, with the Christmas shopping season in full swing, is actually a good opportunity to think about where we are spending the money. I'm not talking about boycotts, although those have been effective for the AFA. I am not talking about making hard and fast rules that we can never break. For each person this is going to be a very personal decision based on your own values and priorities. I recently reviewed a list of the campaign donations of major U.S. companies and was surprised to discover that Home Depot gives a disproportionately high level of their donations to the GOP in spite of their well-known promotion of same sex lifestyles. I personally do a lot of business with Amazon although I disagree with the politics of Jeff Bezos, the CEO. I have a Facebook page although I strongly disagree with Mark Zuckerberg. To paraphrase the apostle Paul, you can't live in this world without interacting with and being around people with whom you disagree.
But where I am able to support a company that is defending the values of this nation, I am going to do so, even if it means making an extra trip or going out of my way. In the U.S. profit is a powerful indicator of public opinion. We don't have to wait until next fall to have an impact. We can start having one right now.
Through December 6th, The Planner, Alexandra's novel about the real cost of big government, is on sale for just 99 cents on Kindle.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
November 21, 2013
Give Thanks
Every Thanksgiving for as many years as I can remember, my mother had a tradition at Thanksgiving dinner. After my father prayed over the food, my mother asked each of us to name one thing that had happened in the last year that we were thankful for. As I got older, knowing that I would have to state what I was grateful for, I started thinking about the year a couple of weeks in advance of the holiday, and I found that even in difficult years, I had a lot to be thankful for. My mother's tradition, which she continues to this day, has helped me to really think about the meaning of Thanksgiving each year.
For many of us, 2013 has been an exceptionally tough year. Last Thanksgiving, as I looked at 2013 knowing that Obama had been re-elected and there was no chance of stopping the onslaught of new regulations which would--and did--close my mortgage company of fifteen years, I had very little hope. In fact, 2013 turned out to be a brutal year, for me and for a lot of other people. With 90 million unemployed and underemployed Americans and the lowest participation in the workforce in decades, it might be very easy for a lot of us to focus on the problems rather than our blessings. So in the spirit of Thanksgiving I have compiled a list of some items for which I personally am grateful.
1. Obamacare is now in serious danger. After years of warnings that Obamacare would spike premiums, raise the cost of health care, and limit access to good medical care for millions of Americans, the whole nation is now having to admit what we have known all along. Finally even the mainstream media is starting to line up against this mess--the new issue of Time Magazine is featuring a realistic portrayal of the long-term consequences of President Obama's signature law. In addition to the five million people who have lost their individual plans, there are as many as 100 million more Americans who stand to lose their employer-sponsored health plans next year.
Don't misunderstand--I am not glad that people are losing their health coverage. But I am glad that this nation is finally waking up to the real-world consequences of socialist big government. The truth is that Obamacare is desolating the U.S. economy. It is transforming Americans into a nation of part-time and temporary workers with no hope of bettering their situations. Unfortunately, most Americans overlooked the obvious problems with this law until they could see how it was going to personally affect them. Now, with Obamacare's popularity at just 31%, we might have a real chance for a full repeal, and that could turn around our entire economy.
2. The captain is sinking with his ship. None of President Obama's scandals or leadership failures has ever stuck in the past, but it is really hard to run away from a piece of legislation that in popular usage bears your name. The epic failure of the roll out of Obamacare has exposed in embarrassing detail just how out of touch and removed from reality President Obama really is. As his personal approval tanks along with approval for his law, he is going to have a much harder time steam rolling through other massive pieces of big government legislation, such as amnesty and gun control. The more weakened he is personally, the less damage he is able to do to the country.
3. For the first time in a long time we have a good number of solid, true conservatives in and out of government who are standing on principle fighting for the Constitution and smaller government. I am very encouraged by the work of Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah who have stood up against this government's most egregious abuses without fear or apology. And now there are others--Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, for instance. My own Congressional representative, Congressman Steve Pearce of New Mexico, is one of the lesser known, unsung heroes of the conservative movement. We have a solid block of conservatives who are willing to face ridicule and criticism and fight for the Constitution and that is something for which I, personally, am very thankful.
Not all of the champions of conservatism are in government. When Jim DeMint announced last December that he was leaving the Senate to take over leadership of the Heritage Foundation, I was depressed. DeMint was, for a long time, a lone voice for conservatism in the Senate, and I was sure that without him there would be no one at all to stand up for conservative values (a fear which proved to be completely unfounded.) While I agreed with his assertion that we lost the 2012 elections because we had failed to properly articulate our message to the American people, I did not believe that DeMint would be able to "sell" Americans on conservative values. I was wrong. Under DeMint's leadership, the Heritage Foundation's presence has grown dramatically. Some of this growth is easy to measure--Heritage has gained more than half a million new followers on Facebook this year. I share their material every morning and I can see that through a steady production of posters, pictures, videos and blogs, DeMint is explaining, clearly and concisely, why freedom is preferable to socialism, why small government is preferable to Big Brother, and how Americans can once again be exceptional. DeMint is a powerful reminder that one person who is completely focused can make an enormous difference. He is also a reminder that conservative principles DO make sense because they work in the real world--we just have to go out and share our message with everyone around us.
4. We are still alive, and we are not alone! "Don't worry about things--food, drink and clothes. For you already have life and a body--and they are more important than what to eat and what to wear. Look at the birds! They don't worry about what to eat--they don't need to sow or reap or store up food--for your heavenly Father feeds them...And why worry about your clothes? Look at the field lilies! They don't worry about theirs. Yet King Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as beautifully as they. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't He more surely care for you....So don't be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time." (Matthew 6: 25-34 TLB)
Now that's something we can be thankful for every day! Happy Thanksgiving.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
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Goodreads Book Giveaway
The Force
by Alexandra Swann
Enter to win
For many of us, 2013 has been an exceptionally tough year. Last Thanksgiving, as I looked at 2013 knowing that Obama had been re-elected and there was no chance of stopping the onslaught of new regulations which would--and did--close my mortgage company of fifteen years, I had very little hope. In fact, 2013 turned out to be a brutal year, for me and for a lot of other people. With 90 million unemployed and underemployed Americans and the lowest participation in the workforce in decades, it might be very easy for a lot of us to focus on the problems rather than our blessings. So in the spirit of Thanksgiving I have compiled a list of some items for which I personally am grateful.
1. Obamacare is now in serious danger. After years of warnings that Obamacare would spike premiums, raise the cost of health care, and limit access to good medical care for millions of Americans, the whole nation is now having to admit what we have known all along. Finally even the mainstream media is starting to line up against this mess--the new issue of Time Magazine is featuring a realistic portrayal of the long-term consequences of President Obama's signature law. In addition to the five million people who have lost their individual plans, there are as many as 100 million more Americans who stand to lose their employer-sponsored health plans next year.
Don't misunderstand--I am not glad that people are losing their health coverage. But I am glad that this nation is finally waking up to the real-world consequences of socialist big government. The truth is that Obamacare is desolating the U.S. economy. It is transforming Americans into a nation of part-time and temporary workers with no hope of bettering their situations. Unfortunately, most Americans overlooked the obvious problems with this law until they could see how it was going to personally affect them. Now, with Obamacare's popularity at just 31%, we might have a real chance for a full repeal, and that could turn around our entire economy.
2. The captain is sinking with his ship. None of President Obama's scandals or leadership failures has ever stuck in the past, but it is really hard to run away from a piece of legislation that in popular usage bears your name. The epic failure of the roll out of Obamacare has exposed in embarrassing detail just how out of touch and removed from reality President Obama really is. As his personal approval tanks along with approval for his law, he is going to have a much harder time steam rolling through other massive pieces of big government legislation, such as amnesty and gun control. The more weakened he is personally, the less damage he is able to do to the country.
3. For the first time in a long time we have a good number of solid, true conservatives in and out of government who are standing on principle fighting for the Constitution and smaller government. I am very encouraged by the work of Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah who have stood up against this government's most egregious abuses without fear or apology. And now there are others--Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, for instance. My own Congressional representative, Congressman Steve Pearce of New Mexico, is one of the lesser known, unsung heroes of the conservative movement. We have a solid block of conservatives who are willing to face ridicule and criticism and fight for the Constitution and that is something for which I, personally, am very thankful.
Not all of the champions of conservatism are in government. When Jim DeMint announced last December that he was leaving the Senate to take over leadership of the Heritage Foundation, I was depressed. DeMint was, for a long time, a lone voice for conservatism in the Senate, and I was sure that without him there would be no one at all to stand up for conservative values (a fear which proved to be completely unfounded.) While I agreed with his assertion that we lost the 2012 elections because we had failed to properly articulate our message to the American people, I did not believe that DeMint would be able to "sell" Americans on conservative values. I was wrong. Under DeMint's leadership, the Heritage Foundation's presence has grown dramatically. Some of this growth is easy to measure--Heritage has gained more than half a million new followers on Facebook this year. I share their material every morning and I can see that through a steady production of posters, pictures, videos and blogs, DeMint is explaining, clearly and concisely, why freedom is preferable to socialism, why small government is preferable to Big Brother, and how Americans can once again be exceptional. DeMint is a powerful reminder that one person who is completely focused can make an enormous difference. He is also a reminder that conservative principles DO make sense because they work in the real world--we just have to go out and share our message with everyone around us.
4. We are still alive, and we are not alone! "Don't worry about things--food, drink and clothes. For you already have life and a body--and they are more important than what to eat and what to wear. Look at the birds! They don't worry about what to eat--they don't need to sow or reap or store up food--for your heavenly Father feeds them...And why worry about your clothes? Look at the field lilies! They don't worry about theirs. Yet King Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as beautifully as they. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't He more surely care for you....So don't be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time." (Matthew 6: 25-34 TLB)
Now that's something we can be thankful for every day! Happy Thanksgiving.
Alexandra Swann is the author of No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master's Degree at Age Sixteen and several other books. Her novel, The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
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Goodreads Book Giveaway
The Force
by Alexandra Swann
Giveaway ends December 12, 2013.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Enter to win
November 15, 2013
A Whole Drawer Full of Good Ideas--That Don't Work
My brother Chris has been on his job for over twenty years. For at least a decade of that time he has worked in management. He worked his way up from an entry-level photo journalist when he was nineteen years old to an operations manager of the top television station in El Paso with a very simple philosophy--a manager should know the jobs of those he manages. He was able to train news photographers because he had been a news photographer. He was able to manage IT because he has worked in IT. When he took over management of master control, he spent hours running master control himself so that he knew what the job entailed. As he explained to me this last weekend, this approach to management has multiple benefits--one of which being that he is able to "fill in" in case of staff shortages--but the primary benefit is that when one of his employees comes to him with a story about why something is not working or why a deadline has been missed or what they need to do to fix a problem, he knows immediately whether they are being honest or merely making up some excuse. He has the hands-on experience to dissect excuses and to determine whether a particular story is the truth.
Yesterday as I watched President Obama stumble through that painful presser with a series of apologies and excuses (you know it's really bad when ABC News describes the president as "deflated"), I was reminded of the value of my brother's words. President Obama started out by assuring us over and over and over that everyone who had liked their insurance policy and doctor could keep them; more recently, he and his surrogates also promised that the disastrous healthcare.gov website would be fixed by the end of November. Yesterday he finally admitted that neither of those promises was true--as of yesterday he says that the website will be working substantially better on November 30 than it was on October 1st, which even POTUS admits is a very "low bar" and that a year from now it should be working still better. As for the Americans who lost their coverage, he proposes an administrative fix to allow insurance companies to continue to sell the plans that don't conform to the Affordable Care Act for an additional year.
As experts immediately pointed out, the problem with these cancelled policies is just not that simple. Insurance companies have already begun cancelling these policies in order to comply with the ACA--the people who have been dropped are not going to be able to just turn around and go back on. What Obama really did was punt--he left it up to the insurance commissioners in each state to determine whether they would allow companies in their individual states to continue to sell these policies for another year. Within hours of his comments, Washington State Insurance Commission Mike Kreidler had announced that his state will not provide cover for the White House by allowing the continued sale of these policies because to do so is not fair to the insurance companies in the state. (The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has also said that the fix will not work.) And, of course, Obama said nothing about the very real issue of potential increases in premiums for policies that are allowed to continue in effect.
Even Huffington Post led with an article about the intense criticism of Obama's demeanor, his apologies, and his approach to fixing this mess. The real problem with Obama's policies--other than the fact that he leans slightly to the left of Karl Marx--is that he has no practical experience whatsoever, and it is really starting to show. One reason he becomes so "deflated" when faced with problems like the growing backlash over his signature health care law is that he has never solved any problems. He went from being a "community organizer" and cheerleader of all things socialist to having to try to implement his ideas in the real world. Now he is finding out that all of that liberal theory doesn't work out so well in real life, and he is at a complete loss as to what to do next.
Just over a week ago, Obama made a speech in which he said that he wanted the GOP to get to work on the other items on his agenda--immigration reform, climate change, etc. and that if they did not do so he was going to start implementing his ideas through executive order. Saying that his Administration has a "whole drawer full of good ideas", some of which he has the power to implement on his own, he threatened to circumvent Congress wherever he can. Yesterday's attempted "fix" was one such circumvention. Obama is still thinking and talking like an academic who only has to propose theories that may never get tested in real world situations. His "drawer full of good ideas" is not unlike a "pocket full of miracles". In a perfect utopia--what my mother always described as "the land of chocolate soldiers and wax lips" everyone can have health insurance that works perfectly; a university education can be free to all and all can benefit from such an education equally and tap their fullest potential to "be all that they can be"; and all energy can be produced by an endless supply of solar power. In utopia, birds are not killed by windmills and solar panels; in utopia, declaring war on coal does not lead to increased unemployment in coal-producing states and increased energy costs nationwide; in utopia, quantitative easing does not cause inflation so that low interest rates which benefit Wall Street lead in turn to higher prices on everything else which elevate costs for average Americans. In utopia Americans don't need to borrow money for mortgages so when leftest ideologues like Elizabeth Warren help to craft bills like Dodd Frank and agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which constrict lending and the flow of money there are no adverse consequences. In utopia, good ideas abound because they don't have to face the litmus test of real world problems.
In real life, entitlements discourage personal initiative; artificially low interest rates DO cause inflation; restrictive lending policies make it harder for Americans to own their own homes and start their own businesses, and insurance for all is ending up as insurance for none. By the Obama Administration's own admission, fewer than 107,000 Americans have signed up for Obamacare, while five million Americans who were previously insured have lost their health care coverage because of this new law. Far from increasing the number of insured Americans, Obamacare is causing more and more Americans to end up uninsured. Rather than addressing the legislation that caused all of these problems, Obama is trying to patch it with a "fix" that doesn't work any better than the original law--a patch that he undoubtedly pulled out of his "drawer full of good ideas". It is just a real shame that he lacks the experience to understand that just because something sounds like a good idea does not mean it will actually work.
Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
Yesterday as I watched President Obama stumble through that painful presser with a series of apologies and excuses (you know it's really bad when ABC News describes the president as "deflated"), I was reminded of the value of my brother's words. President Obama started out by assuring us over and over and over that everyone who had liked their insurance policy and doctor could keep them; more recently, he and his surrogates also promised that the disastrous healthcare.gov website would be fixed by the end of November. Yesterday he finally admitted that neither of those promises was true--as of yesterday he says that the website will be working substantially better on November 30 than it was on October 1st, which even POTUS admits is a very "low bar" and that a year from now it should be working still better. As for the Americans who lost their coverage, he proposes an administrative fix to allow insurance companies to continue to sell the plans that don't conform to the Affordable Care Act for an additional year.
As experts immediately pointed out, the problem with these cancelled policies is just not that simple. Insurance companies have already begun cancelling these policies in order to comply with the ACA--the people who have been dropped are not going to be able to just turn around and go back on. What Obama really did was punt--he left it up to the insurance commissioners in each state to determine whether they would allow companies in their individual states to continue to sell these policies for another year. Within hours of his comments, Washington State Insurance Commission Mike Kreidler had announced that his state will not provide cover for the White House by allowing the continued sale of these policies because to do so is not fair to the insurance companies in the state. (The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has also said that the fix will not work.) And, of course, Obama said nothing about the very real issue of potential increases in premiums for policies that are allowed to continue in effect.
Even Huffington Post led with an article about the intense criticism of Obama's demeanor, his apologies, and his approach to fixing this mess. The real problem with Obama's policies--other than the fact that he leans slightly to the left of Karl Marx--is that he has no practical experience whatsoever, and it is really starting to show. One reason he becomes so "deflated" when faced with problems like the growing backlash over his signature health care law is that he has never solved any problems. He went from being a "community organizer" and cheerleader of all things socialist to having to try to implement his ideas in the real world. Now he is finding out that all of that liberal theory doesn't work out so well in real life, and he is at a complete loss as to what to do next.
Just over a week ago, Obama made a speech in which he said that he wanted the GOP to get to work on the other items on his agenda--immigration reform, climate change, etc. and that if they did not do so he was going to start implementing his ideas through executive order. Saying that his Administration has a "whole drawer full of good ideas", some of which he has the power to implement on his own, he threatened to circumvent Congress wherever he can. Yesterday's attempted "fix" was one such circumvention. Obama is still thinking and talking like an academic who only has to propose theories that may never get tested in real world situations. His "drawer full of good ideas" is not unlike a "pocket full of miracles". In a perfect utopia--what my mother always described as "the land of chocolate soldiers and wax lips" everyone can have health insurance that works perfectly; a university education can be free to all and all can benefit from such an education equally and tap their fullest potential to "be all that they can be"; and all energy can be produced by an endless supply of solar power. In utopia, birds are not killed by windmills and solar panels; in utopia, declaring war on coal does not lead to increased unemployment in coal-producing states and increased energy costs nationwide; in utopia, quantitative easing does not cause inflation so that low interest rates which benefit Wall Street lead in turn to higher prices on everything else which elevate costs for average Americans. In utopia Americans don't need to borrow money for mortgages so when leftest ideologues like Elizabeth Warren help to craft bills like Dodd Frank and agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which constrict lending and the flow of money there are no adverse consequences. In utopia, good ideas abound because they don't have to face the litmus test of real world problems.
In real life, entitlements discourage personal initiative; artificially low interest rates DO cause inflation; restrictive lending policies make it harder for Americans to own their own homes and start their own businesses, and insurance for all is ending up as insurance for none. By the Obama Administration's own admission, fewer than 107,000 Americans have signed up for Obamacare, while five million Americans who were previously insured have lost their health care coverage because of this new law. Far from increasing the number of insured Americans, Obamacare is causing more and more Americans to end up uninsured. Rather than addressing the legislation that caused all of these problems, Obama is trying to patch it with a "fix" that doesn't work any better than the original law--a patch that he undoubtedly pulled out of his "drawer full of good ideas". It is just a real shame that he lacks the experience to understand that just because something sounds like a good idea does not mean it will actually work.
Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
November 8, 2013
5 Things Obama Should be Apologizing for, but Isn't
This week President Obama "apologized" to the American public on NBC for his Obamacare mantra, which he repeated as many as 36 times, "If you like your health insurance; you can keep it. If you like your doctor; you can keep him." We all now know for certain what we conservatives strongly suspected all along--this was a patently untrue statement. As the Obamacare rollout has taken place, millions of Americans are getting notices that their health insurance policies, which they did actually like very much, are being cancelled because they don't comply with the new law. In the effort to make everything "fair" and everyone "equal" we now have young men paying for maternity care and people who are childless covering the cost of pediatrics as part of the cost-spreading wealth redistributing policies of the Obama Administration.
Obama's apology on NBC was not unlike the old joke where somebody calls another person an idiot and then, when forced to apologize says, "I'm sorry that you're an idiot." If you listen carefully to what he actually said, he apologized for not making it clear that some Americans might lose their coverage. If you read between the lines a little you will hear a loud and clear, "I'm sorry you weren't smart enough to understand how this was going to work and now you're mad." The President whose most famous tag line is "Let me be clear," is apologizing for not being clear enough in a statement made over and over about how his signature health care law would work. He's not apologizing for lying to everyone; nor is he apologizing for ruining the health care of millions--he is merely apologizing to the American public because they believed what he said in the first place.
With that in mind, I have compiled a list of five things that I believe Obama should apologize to the American people for. I do this with the clear understanding that such an apology is not coming--now or ever. But that in no way changes the fact that an apology--followed by action--is owed.
1. Obamacare. No, not just the rollout or the "misstatements" about Americans losing their coverage. Obama should be apologizing for the entire debacle. This is a law that was passed with backroom deals by politicians who did not even bother to read it before voting for it. We need a heartfelt sincere "I'm sorry" for giving the IRS power over our lives and health care, for causing the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans, for forcing millions more into part-time employment under 29 hours a week and for raising costs of insurance. If he wants to apologize for misinforming the American people, he could apologize for convincing millions of Americans that they were going to get something for nothing--that somewhere on this planet there actually is a free lunch. Only now are Americans beginning to understand that the "free" health care they were promised is actually very expensive. Obamacare is a disaster that will only get worse with time; an apology won't fix it but sincere contrition for this mess would be a good starting point to getting some real solutions.
2. Dodd Frank: The OTHER huge piece of legislation from 2010 is also just beginning to make itself felt. In two months the qualified mortgages will go into effect, along with the 3% caps on points and fees. Small business people who make their livings originating mortgage loans are finally waking up to the fact that caps on points and fees in the QMs are not workable with a small business model and will in fact drive them out of business. Dodd Frank makes the Wall Street banks too big to fail, makes the small business owners too small to succeed and eliminates the dream of homeownership for nearly 50% of Americans who qualified to purchase homes in 2010. In 2014 as this law fully takes effect, the ramifications will echo through the housing and mortgage markets for a long time.
3. The NSA surveillance program: Not only is the government recording all of OUR phone calls and Internet communications; apparently they are recording all the whole world's phone calls and Internet communications. This is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment in our country, and a slap in the face to world leaders who are supposed to be our allies. Obama should apologize to the American people on two fronts: First for violating our Constitutional rights and second for making us the laughingstock of the world by letting our security protocols be exposed.
4. Climate Change Regulations/War on Coal: At a time when American businesses and individuals are struggling, Obama is working to make energy more expensive via his climate change regulations and his war on coal. Without control of both houses of Congress, Obama has had no chance of passing his climate change bill, so in the absence of such a bill, he is enacting more and more climate change regulations through executive order and administrative action. Through these regulations, and particularly his newest executive order issued last Friday, Obama is using the power of the presidency to remake the nation into a socialist urban utopia where energy is scarce and expensive, housing is limited and expensive and the American dream of a home and car is just a vague distant memory.
5. $17 Trillion Deficit--and Counting... Whereas Senator Obama told us that high deficits were unpatriotic, President Obama has hosted a five year spending spree, which includes presiding over the largest debt increase in one day in our nation's history--$328 billion incurred on October 17, 2013 after the standoff over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown ended. Under the terms of the deal made with Congress, the president has the power to borrow as much money as he likes between now and February when the debt ceiling battle begins again. Experts predict that we will see a total of $700 billion in new debt by that date--taking us close to the $18 trillion dollar mark. We can expect about $21 trillion in debt by the end of Obama's second term. This massive debt is the result of government bailouts to big corporations, expansion of welfare entitlement programs and expansion of government itself, all at a time that many middle class Americans lost their homes, businesses and savings, jobs and futures. We are going to spend the next several decades paying for a party that we did not even get to attend. For that, Obama owes this entire country an apology.
Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
Obama's apology on NBC was not unlike the old joke where somebody calls another person an idiot and then, when forced to apologize says, "I'm sorry that you're an idiot." If you listen carefully to what he actually said, he apologized for not making it clear that some Americans might lose their coverage. If you read between the lines a little you will hear a loud and clear, "I'm sorry you weren't smart enough to understand how this was going to work and now you're mad." The President whose most famous tag line is "Let me be clear," is apologizing for not being clear enough in a statement made over and over about how his signature health care law would work. He's not apologizing for lying to everyone; nor is he apologizing for ruining the health care of millions--he is merely apologizing to the American public because they believed what he said in the first place.
With that in mind, I have compiled a list of five things that I believe Obama should apologize to the American people for. I do this with the clear understanding that such an apology is not coming--now or ever. But that in no way changes the fact that an apology--followed by action--is owed.
1. Obamacare. No, not just the rollout or the "misstatements" about Americans losing their coverage. Obama should be apologizing for the entire debacle. This is a law that was passed with backroom deals by politicians who did not even bother to read it before voting for it. We need a heartfelt sincere "I'm sorry" for giving the IRS power over our lives and health care, for causing the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans, for forcing millions more into part-time employment under 29 hours a week and for raising costs of insurance. If he wants to apologize for misinforming the American people, he could apologize for convincing millions of Americans that they were going to get something for nothing--that somewhere on this planet there actually is a free lunch. Only now are Americans beginning to understand that the "free" health care they were promised is actually very expensive. Obamacare is a disaster that will only get worse with time; an apology won't fix it but sincere contrition for this mess would be a good starting point to getting some real solutions.
2. Dodd Frank: The OTHER huge piece of legislation from 2010 is also just beginning to make itself felt. In two months the qualified mortgages will go into effect, along with the 3% caps on points and fees. Small business people who make their livings originating mortgage loans are finally waking up to the fact that caps on points and fees in the QMs are not workable with a small business model and will in fact drive them out of business. Dodd Frank makes the Wall Street banks too big to fail, makes the small business owners too small to succeed and eliminates the dream of homeownership for nearly 50% of Americans who qualified to purchase homes in 2010. In 2014 as this law fully takes effect, the ramifications will echo through the housing and mortgage markets for a long time.
3. The NSA surveillance program: Not only is the government recording all of OUR phone calls and Internet communications; apparently they are recording all the whole world's phone calls and Internet communications. This is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment in our country, and a slap in the face to world leaders who are supposed to be our allies. Obama should apologize to the American people on two fronts: First for violating our Constitutional rights and second for making us the laughingstock of the world by letting our security protocols be exposed.
4. Climate Change Regulations/War on Coal: At a time when American businesses and individuals are struggling, Obama is working to make energy more expensive via his climate change regulations and his war on coal. Without control of both houses of Congress, Obama has had no chance of passing his climate change bill, so in the absence of such a bill, he is enacting more and more climate change regulations through executive order and administrative action. Through these regulations, and particularly his newest executive order issued last Friday, Obama is using the power of the presidency to remake the nation into a socialist urban utopia where energy is scarce and expensive, housing is limited and expensive and the American dream of a home and car is just a vague distant memory.
5. $17 Trillion Deficit--and Counting... Whereas Senator Obama told us that high deficits were unpatriotic, President Obama has hosted a five year spending spree, which includes presiding over the largest debt increase in one day in our nation's history--$328 billion incurred on October 17, 2013 after the standoff over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown ended. Under the terms of the deal made with Congress, the president has the power to borrow as much money as he likes between now and February when the debt ceiling battle begins again. Experts predict that we will see a total of $700 billion in new debt by that date--taking us close to the $18 trillion dollar mark. We can expect about $21 trillion in debt by the end of Obama's second term. This massive debt is the result of government bailouts to big corporations, expansion of welfare entitlement programs and expansion of government itself, all at a time that many middle class Americans lost their homes, businesses and savings, jobs and futures. We are going to spend the next several decades paying for a party that we did not even get to attend. For that, Obama owes this entire country an apology.
Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
5 Things Obama Should be Apologizing for, but Isn't
This week President Obama "apologized" to the American public on NBC for his Obamacare mantra, which he repeated as many as 36 times, "If you like your health insurance; you can keep it. If you like your doctor; you can keep him." We all now know for certain what we conservatives strongly suspected all along--this was a patently untrue statement. As the Obamacare rollout has taken place, millions of Americans are getting notices that their health insurance policies, which they did actually like very much, are being cancelled because they don't comply with the new law. In the effort to make everything "fair" and everyone "equal" we now have young men paying for maternity care and people who are childless covering the cost of pediatrics as part of the cost-spreading wealth redistributing policies of the Obama Administration.
Obama's apology on NBC was not unlike the old joke where somebody calls another person an idiot and then, when forced to apologize says, "I'm sorry that you're an idiot." If you listen carefully to what he actually said, he apologized for not making it clear that some Americans might lose their coverage. If you read between the lines a little you will hear a loud and clear, "I'm sorry you weren't smart enough to understand how this was going to work and now you're mad." The President whose most famous tag line is "Let me be clear," is apologizing for not being clear enough in a statement made over and over about how his signature health care law would work. He's not apologizing for lying to everyone; nor is he apologizing for ruining the health care of millions--he is merely apologizing to the American public because they believed what he said in the first place.
With that in mind, I have compiled a list of five things that I believe Obama should apologize to the American people for. I do this with the clear understanding that such an apology is not coming--now or ever. But that in no way changes the fact that an apology--followed by action--is owed.
1. Obamacare. No, not just the rollout or the "misstatements" about Americans losing their coverage. Obama should be apologizing for the entire debacle. This is a law that was passed with backroom deals by politicians who did not even bother to read it before voting for it. We need a heartfelt sincere "I'm sorry" for giving the IRS power over our lives and health care, for causing the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans, for forcing millions more into part-time employment under 29 hours a week and for raising costs of insurance. If he wants to apologize for misinforming the American people, he could apologize for convincing millions of Americans that they were going to get something for nothing--that somewhere on this planet there actually is a free lunch. Only now are Americans beginning to understand that the "free" health care they were promised is actually very expensive. Obamacare is a disaster that will only get worse with time; an apology won't fix it but sincere contrition for this mess would be a good starting point to getting some real solutions.
2. Dodd Frank: The OTHER huge piece of legislation from 2010 is also just beginning to make itself felt. In two months the qualified mortgages will go into effect, along with the 3% caps on points and fees. Small business people who make their livings originating mortgage loans are finally waking up to the fact that caps on points and fees in the QMs are not workable with a small business model and will in fact drive them out of business. Dodd Frank makes the Wall Street banks too big to fail, makes the small business owners too small to succeed and eliminates the dream of homeownership for nearly 50% of Americans who qualified to purchase homes in 2010. In 2014 as this law fully takes effect, the ramifications will echo through the housing and mortgage markets for a long time.
3. The NSA surveillance program: Not only is the government recording all of OUR phone calls and Internet communications; apparently they are recording all the whole world's phone calls and Internet communications. This is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment in our country, and a slap in the face to world leaders who are supposed to be our allies. Obama should apologize to the American people on two fronts: First for violating our Constitutional rights and second for making us the laughingstock of the world by letting our security protocols be exposed.
4. Climate Change Regulations/War on Coal: At a time when American businesses and individuals are struggling, Obama is working to make energy more expensive via his climate change regulations and his war on coal. Without control of both houses of Congress, Obama has had no chance of passing his climate change bill, so in the absence of such a bill, he is enacting more and more climate change regulations through executive order and administrative action. Through these regulations, and particularly his newest executive order issued last Friday, Obama is using the power of the presidency to remake the nation into a socialist urban utopia where energy is scarce and expensive, housing is limited and expensive and the American dream of a home and car is just a vague distant memory.
5. $17 Trillion Deficit--and Counting... Whereas Senator Obama told us that high deficits were unpatriotic, President Obama has hosted a five year spending spree, which includes presiding over the largest debt increase in one day in our nation's history--$328 billion incurred on October 17, 2013 after the standoff over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown ended. Under the terms of the deal made with Congress, the president has the power to borrow as much money as he likes between now and February when the debt ceiling battle begins again. Experts predict that we will see a total of $700 billion in new debt by that date--taking us close to the $18 trillion dollar mark. We can expect about $21 trillion in debt by the end of Obama's second term. This massive debt is the result of government bailouts to big corporations, expansion of welfare entitlement programs and expansion of government itself, all at a time that many middle class Americans lost their homes, businesses and savings, jobs and futures. We are going to spend the next several decades paying for a party that we did not even get to attend. For that, Obama owes this entire country an apology.
Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
Obama's apology on NBC was not unlike the old joke where somebody calls another person an idiot and then, when forced to apologize says, "I'm sorry that you're an idiot." If you listen carefully to what he actually said, he apologized for not making it clear that some Americans might lose their coverage. If you read between the lines a little you will hear a loud and clear, "I'm sorry you weren't smart enough to understand how this was going to work and now you're mad." The President whose most famous tag line is "Let me be clear," is apologizing for not being clear enough in a statement made over and over about how his signature health care law would work. He's not apologizing for lying to everyone; nor is he apologizing for ruining the health care of millions--he is merely apologizing to the American public because they believed what he said in the first place.
With that in mind, I have compiled a list of five things that I believe Obama should apologize to the American people for. I do this with the clear understanding that such an apology is not coming--now or ever. But that in no way changes the fact that an apology--followed by action--is owed.
1. Obamacare. No, not just the rollout or the "misstatements" about Americans losing their coverage. Obama should be apologizing for the entire debacle. This is a law that was passed with backroom deals by politicians who did not even bother to read it before voting for it. We need a heartfelt sincere "I'm sorry" for giving the IRS power over our lives and health care, for causing the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans, for forcing millions more into part-time employment under 29 hours a week and for raising costs of insurance. If he wants to apologize for misinforming the American people, he could apologize for convincing millions of Americans that they were going to get something for nothing--that somewhere on this planet there actually is a free lunch. Only now are Americans beginning to understand that the "free" health care they were promised is actually very expensive. Obamacare is a disaster that will only get worse with time; an apology won't fix it but sincere contrition for this mess would be a good starting point to getting some real solutions.
2. Dodd Frank: The OTHER huge piece of legislation from 2010 is also just beginning to make itself felt. In two months the qualified mortgages will go into effect, along with the 3% caps on points and fees. Small business people who make their livings originating mortgage loans are finally waking up to the fact that caps on points and fees in the QMs are not workable with a small business model and will in fact drive them out of business. Dodd Frank makes the Wall Street banks too big to fail, makes the small business owners too small to succeed and eliminates the dream of homeownership for nearly 50% of Americans who qualified to purchase homes in 2010. In 2014 as this law fully takes effect, the ramifications will echo through the housing and mortgage markets for a long time.
3. The NSA surveillance program: Not only is the government recording all of OUR phone calls and Internet communications; apparently they are recording all the whole world's phone calls and Internet communications. This is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment in our country, and a slap in the face to world leaders who are supposed to be our allies. Obama should apologize to the American people on two fronts: First for violating our Constitutional rights and second for making us the laughingstock of the world by letting our security protocols be exposed.
4. Climate Change Regulations/War on Coal: At a time when American businesses and individuals are struggling, Obama is working to make energy more expensive via his climate change regulations and his war on coal. Without control of both houses of Congress, Obama has had no chance of passing his climate change bill, so in the absence of such a bill, he is enacting more and more climate change regulations through executive order and administrative action. Through these regulations, and particularly his newest executive order issued last Friday, Obama is using the power of the presidency to remake the nation into a socialist urban utopia where energy is scarce and expensive, housing is limited and expensive and the American dream of a home and car is just a vague distant memory.
5. $17 Trillion Deficit--and Counting... Whereas Senator Obama told us that high deficits were unpatriotic, President Obama has hosted a five year spending spree, which includes presiding over the largest debt increase in one day in our nation's history--$328 billion incurred on October 17, 2013 after the standoff over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown ended. Under the terms of the deal made with Congress, the president has the power to borrow as much money as he likes between now and February when the debt ceiling battle begins again. Experts predict that we will see a total of $700 billion in new debt by that date--taking us close to the $18 trillion dollar mark. We can expect about $21 trillion in debt by the end of Obama's second term. This massive debt is the result of government bailouts to big corporations, expansion of welfare entitlement programs and expansion of government itself, all at a time that many middle class Americans lost their homes, businesses and savings, jobs and futures. We are going to spend the next several decades paying for a party that we did not even get to attend. For that, Obama owes this entire country an apology.
Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
5 Things Obama Should be Apologizing for, but Isn't
This week President Obama "apologized" to the American public on NBC for his Obamacare mantra, which he repeated as many as 36 times, "If you like your health insurance; you can keep it. If you like your doctor; you can keep him." We all now know for certain what we conservatives strongly suspected all along--this was a patently untrue statement. As the Obamacare rollout has taken place, millions of Americans are getting notices that their health insurance policies, which they did actually like very much, are being cancelled because they don't comply with the new law. In the effort to make everything "fair" and everyone "equal" we now have young men paying for maternity care and people who are childless covering the cost of pediatrics as part of the cost-spreading wealth redistributing policies of the Obama Administration.
Obama's apology on NBC was not unlike the old joke where somebody calls another person an idiot and then, when forced to apologize says, "I'm sorry that you're an idiot." If you listen carefully to what he actually said, he apologized for not making it clear that some Americans might lose their coverage. If you read between the lines a little you will hear a loud and clear, "I'm sorry you weren't smart enough to understand how this was going to work and now you're mad." The President whose most famous tag line is "Let me be clear," is apologizing for not being clear enough in a statement made over and over about how his signature health care law would work. He's not apologizing for lying to everyone; nor is he apologizing for ruining the health care of millions--he is merely apologizing to the American public because they believed what he said in the first place.
With that in mind, I have compiled a list of five things that I believe Obama should apologize to the American people for. I do this with the clear understanding that such an apology is not coming--now or ever. But that in no way changes the fact that an apology--followed by action--is owed.
1. Obamacare. No, not just the rollout or the "misstatements" about Americans losing their coverage. Obama should be apologizing for the entire debacle. This is a law that was passed with backroom deals by politicians who did not even bother to read it before voting for it. We need a heartfelt sincere "I'm sorry" for giving the IRS power over our lives and health care, for causing the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans, for forcing millions more into part-time employment under 29 hours a week and for raising costs of insurance. If he wants to apologize for misinforming the American people, he could apologize for convincing millions of Americans that they were going to get something for nothing--that somewhere on this planet there actually is a free lunch. Only now are Americans beginning to understand that the "free" health care they were promised is actually very expensive. Obamacare is a disaster that will only get worse with time; an apology won't fix it but sincere contrition for this mess would be a good starting point to getting some real solutions.
2. Dodd Frank: The OTHER huge piece of legislation from 2010 is also just beginning to make itself felt. In two months the qualified mortgages will go into effect, along with the 3% caps on points and fees. Small business people who make their livings originating mortgage loans are finally waking up to the fact that caps on points and fees in the QMs are not workable with a small business model and will in fact drive them out of business. Dodd Frank makes the Wall Street banks too big to fail, makes the small business owners too small to succeed and eliminates the dream of homeownership for nearly 50% of Americans who qualified to purchase homes in 2010. In 2014 as this law fully takes effect, the ramifications will echo through the housing and mortgage markets for a long time.
3. The NSA surveillance program: Not only is the government recording all of OUR phone calls and Internet communications; apparently they are recording all the whole world's phone calls and Internet communications. This is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment in our country, and a slap in the face to world leaders who are supposed to be our allies. Obama should apologize to the American people on two fronts: First for violating our Constitutional rights and second for making us the laughingstock of the world by letting our security protocols be exposed.
4. Climate Change Regulations/War on Coal: At a time when American businesses and individuals are struggling, Obama is working to make energy more expensive via his climate change regulations and his war on coal. Without control of both houses of Congress, Obama has had no chance of passing his climate change bill, so in the absence of such a bill, he is enacting more and more climate change regulations through executive order and administrative action. Through these regulations, and particularly his newest executive order issued last Friday, Obama is using the power of the presidency to remake the nation into a socialist urban utopia where energy is scarce and expensive, housing is limited and expensive and the American dream of a home and car is just a vague distant memory.
5. $17 Trillion Deficit--and Counting... Whereas Senator Obama told us that high deficits were unpatriotic, President Obama has hosted a five year spending spree, which includes presiding over the largest debt increase in one day in our nation's history--$328 billion incurred on October 17, 2013 after the standoff over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown ended. Under the terms of the deal made with Congress, the president has the power to borrow as much money as he likes between now and February when the debt ceiling battle begins again. Experts predict that we will see a total of $700 billion in new debt by that date--taking us close to the $18 trillion dollar mark. We can expect about $21 trillion in debt by the end of Obama's second term. This massive debt is the result of government bailouts to big corporations, expansion of welfare entitlement programs and expansion of government itself, all at a time that many middle class Americans lost their homes, businesses and savings, jobs and futures. We are going to spend the next several decades paying for a party that we did not even get to attend. For that, Obama owes this entire country an apology.
Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
Obama's apology on NBC was not unlike the old joke where somebody calls another person an idiot and then, when forced to apologize says, "I'm sorry that you're an idiot." If you listen carefully to what he actually said, he apologized for not making it clear that some Americans might lose their coverage. If you read between the lines a little you will hear a loud and clear, "I'm sorry you weren't smart enough to understand how this was going to work and now you're mad." The President whose most famous tag line is "Let me be clear," is apologizing for not being clear enough in a statement made over and over about how his signature health care law would work. He's not apologizing for lying to everyone; nor is he apologizing for ruining the health care of millions--he is merely apologizing to the American public because they believed what he said in the first place.
With that in mind, I have compiled a list of five things that I believe Obama should apologize to the American people for. I do this with the clear understanding that such an apology is not coming--now or ever. But that in no way changes the fact that an apology--followed by action--is owed.
1. Obamacare. No, not just the rollout or the "misstatements" about Americans losing their coverage. Obama should be apologizing for the entire debacle. This is a law that was passed with backroom deals by politicians who did not even bother to read it before voting for it. We need a heartfelt sincere "I'm sorry" for giving the IRS power over our lives and health care, for causing the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans, for forcing millions more into part-time employment under 29 hours a week and for raising costs of insurance. If he wants to apologize for misinforming the American people, he could apologize for convincing millions of Americans that they were going to get something for nothing--that somewhere on this planet there actually is a free lunch. Only now are Americans beginning to understand that the "free" health care they were promised is actually very expensive. Obamacare is a disaster that will only get worse with time; an apology won't fix it but sincere contrition for this mess would be a good starting point to getting some real solutions.
2. Dodd Frank: The OTHER huge piece of legislation from 2010 is also just beginning to make itself felt. In two months the qualified mortgages will go into effect, along with the 3% caps on points and fees. Small business people who make their livings originating mortgage loans are finally waking up to the fact that caps on points and fees in the QMs are not workable with a small business model and will in fact drive them out of business. Dodd Frank makes the Wall Street banks too big to fail, makes the small business owners too small to succeed and eliminates the dream of homeownership for nearly 50% of Americans who qualified to purchase homes in 2010. In 2014 as this law fully takes effect, the ramifications will echo through the housing and mortgage markets for a long time.
3. The NSA surveillance program: Not only is the government recording all of OUR phone calls and Internet communications; apparently they are recording all the whole world's phone calls and Internet communications. This is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment in our country, and a slap in the face to world leaders who are supposed to be our allies. Obama should apologize to the American people on two fronts: First for violating our Constitutional rights and second for making us the laughingstock of the world by letting our security protocols be exposed.
4. Climate Change Regulations/War on Coal: At a time when American businesses and individuals are struggling, Obama is working to make energy more expensive via his climate change regulations and his war on coal. Without control of both houses of Congress, Obama has had no chance of passing his climate change bill, so in the absence of such a bill, he is enacting more and more climate change regulations through executive order and administrative action. Through these regulations, and particularly his newest executive order issued last Friday, Obama is using the power of the presidency to remake the nation into a socialist urban utopia where energy is scarce and expensive, housing is limited and expensive and the American dream of a home and car is just a vague distant memory.
5. $17 Trillion Deficit--and Counting... Whereas Senator Obama told us that high deficits were unpatriotic, President Obama has hosted a five year spending spree, which includes presiding over the largest debt increase in one day in our nation's history--$328 billion incurred on October 17, 2013 after the standoff over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown ended. Under the terms of the deal made with Congress, the president has the power to borrow as much money as he likes between now and February when the debt ceiling battle begins again. Experts predict that we will see a total of $700 billion in new debt by that date--taking us close to the $18 trillion dollar mark. We can expect about $21 trillion in debt by the end of Obama's second term. This massive debt is the result of government bailouts to big corporations, expansion of welfare entitlement programs and expansion of government itself, all at a time that many middle class Americans lost their homes, businesses and savings, jobs and futures. We are going to spend the next several decades paying for a party that we did not even get to attend. For that, Obama owes this entire country an apology.
Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
5 Things Obama Should be Apologizing for, but Isn't
This week President Obama "apologized" to the American public on NBC for his Obamacare mantra, which he repeated as many as 36 times, "If you like your health insurance; you can keep it. If you like your doctor; you can keep him." We all now know for certain what we conservatives strongly suspected all along--this was a patently untrue statement. As the Obamacare rollout has taken place, millions of Americans are getting notices that their health insurance policies, which they did actually like very much, are being cancelled because they don't comply with the new law. In the effort to make everything "fair" and everyone "equal" we now have young men paying for maternity care and people who are childless covering the cost of pediatrics as part of the cost-spreading wealth redistributing policies of the Obama Administration.
Obama's apology on NBC was not unlike the old joke where somebody calls another person an idiot and then, when forced to apologize says, "I'm sorry that you're an idiot." If you listen carefully to what he actually said, he apologized for not making it clear that some Americans might lose their coverage. If you read between the lines a little you will hear a loud and clear, "I'm sorry you weren't smart enough to understand how this was going to work and now you're mad." The President whose most famous tag line is "Let me be clear," is apologizing for not being clear enough in a statement made over and over about how his signature health care law would work. He's not apologizing for lying to everyone; nor is he apologizing for ruining the health care of millions--he is merely apologizing to the American public because they believed what he said in the first place.
With that in mind, I have compiled a list of five things that I believe Obama should apologize to the American people for. I do this with the clear understanding that such an apology is not coming--now or ever. But that in no way changes the fact that an apology--followed by action--is owed.
1. Obamacare. No, not just the rollout or the "misstatements" about Americans losing their coverage. Obama should be apologizing for the entire debacle. This is a law that was passed with backroom deals by politicians who did not even bother to read it before voting for it. We need a heartfelt sincere "I'm sorry" for giving the IRS power over our lives and health care, for causing the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans, for forcing millions more into part-time employment under 29 hours a week and for raising costs of insurance. If he wants to apologize for misinforming the American people, he could apologize for convincing millions of Americans that they were going to get something for nothing--that somewhere on this planet there actually is a free lunch. Only now are Americans beginning to understand that the "free" health care they were promised is actually very expensive. Obamacare is a disaster that will only get worse with time; an apology won't fix it but sincere contrition for this mess would be a good starting point to getting some real solutions.
2. Dodd Frank: The OTHER huge piece of legislation from 2010 is also just beginning to make itself felt. In two months the qualified mortgages will go into effect, along with the 3% caps on points and fees. Small business people who make their livings originating mortgage loans are finally waking up to the fact that caps on points and fees in the QMs are not workable with a small business model and will in fact drive them out of business. Dodd Frank makes the Wall Street banks too big to fail, makes the small business owners too small to succeed and eliminates the dream of homeownership for nearly 50% of Americans who qualified to purchase homes in 2010. In 2014 as this law fully takes effect, the ramifications will echo through the housing and mortgage markets for a long time.
3. The NSA surveillance program: Not only is the government recording all of OUR phone calls and Internet communications; apparently they are recording all the whole world's phone calls and Internet communications. This is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment in our country, and a slap in the face to world leaders who are supposed to be our allies. Obama should apologize to the American people on two fronts: First for violating our Constitutional rights and second for making us the laughingstock of the world by letting our security protocols be exposed.
4. Climate Change Regulations/War on Coal: At a time when American businesses and individuals are struggling, Obama is working to make energy more expensive via his climate change regulations and his war on coal. Without control of both houses of Congress, Obama has had no chance of passing his climate change bill, so in the absence of such a bill, he is enacting more and more climate change regulations through executive order and administrative action. Through these regulations, and particularly his newest executive order issued last Friday, Obama is using the power of the presidency to remake the nation into a socialist urban utopia where energy is scarce and expensive, housing is limited and expensive and the American dream of a home and car is just a vague distant memory.
5. $17 Trillion Deficit--and Counting... Whereas Senator Obama told us that high deficits were unpatriotic, President Obama has hosted a five year spending spree, which includes presiding over the largest debt increase in one day in our nation's history--$328 billion incurred on October 17, 2013 after the standoff over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown ended. Under the terms of the deal made with Congress, the president has the power to borrow as much money as he likes between now and February when the debt ceiling battle begins again. Experts predict that we will see a total of $700 billion in new debt by that date--taking us close to the $18 trillion dollar mark. We can expect about $21 trillion in debt by the end of Obama's second term. This massive debt is the result of government bailouts to big corporations, expansion of welfare entitlement programs and expansion of government itself, all at a time that many middle class Americans lost their homes, businesses and savings, jobs and futures. We are going to spend the next several decades paying for a party that we did not even get to attend. For that, Obama owes this entire country an apology.
Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
Obama's apology on NBC was not unlike the old joke where somebody calls another person an idiot and then, when forced to apologize says, "I'm sorry that you're an idiot." If you listen carefully to what he actually said, he apologized for not making it clear that some Americans might lose their coverage. If you read between the lines a little you will hear a loud and clear, "I'm sorry you weren't smart enough to understand how this was going to work and now you're mad." The President whose most famous tag line is "Let me be clear," is apologizing for not being clear enough in a statement made over and over about how his signature health care law would work. He's not apologizing for lying to everyone; nor is he apologizing for ruining the health care of millions--he is merely apologizing to the American public because they believed what he said in the first place.
With that in mind, I have compiled a list of five things that I believe Obama should apologize to the American people for. I do this with the clear understanding that such an apology is not coming--now or ever. But that in no way changes the fact that an apology--followed by action--is owed.
1. Obamacare. No, not just the rollout or the "misstatements" about Americans losing their coverage. Obama should be apologizing for the entire debacle. This is a law that was passed with backroom deals by politicians who did not even bother to read it before voting for it. We need a heartfelt sincere "I'm sorry" for giving the IRS power over our lives and health care, for causing the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans, for forcing millions more into part-time employment under 29 hours a week and for raising costs of insurance. If he wants to apologize for misinforming the American people, he could apologize for convincing millions of Americans that they were going to get something for nothing--that somewhere on this planet there actually is a free lunch. Only now are Americans beginning to understand that the "free" health care they were promised is actually very expensive. Obamacare is a disaster that will only get worse with time; an apology won't fix it but sincere contrition for this mess would be a good starting point to getting some real solutions.
2. Dodd Frank: The OTHER huge piece of legislation from 2010 is also just beginning to make itself felt. In two months the qualified mortgages will go into effect, along with the 3% caps on points and fees. Small business people who make their livings originating mortgage loans are finally waking up to the fact that caps on points and fees in the QMs are not workable with a small business model and will in fact drive them out of business. Dodd Frank makes the Wall Street banks too big to fail, makes the small business owners too small to succeed and eliminates the dream of homeownership for nearly 50% of Americans who qualified to purchase homes in 2010. In 2014 as this law fully takes effect, the ramifications will echo through the housing and mortgage markets for a long time.
3. The NSA surveillance program: Not only is the government recording all of OUR phone calls and Internet communications; apparently they are recording all the whole world's phone calls and Internet communications. This is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment in our country, and a slap in the face to world leaders who are supposed to be our allies. Obama should apologize to the American people on two fronts: First for violating our Constitutional rights and second for making us the laughingstock of the world by letting our security protocols be exposed.
4. Climate Change Regulations/War on Coal: At a time when American businesses and individuals are struggling, Obama is working to make energy more expensive via his climate change regulations and his war on coal. Without control of both houses of Congress, Obama has had no chance of passing his climate change bill, so in the absence of such a bill, he is enacting more and more climate change regulations through executive order and administrative action. Through these regulations, and particularly his newest executive order issued last Friday, Obama is using the power of the presidency to remake the nation into a socialist urban utopia where energy is scarce and expensive, housing is limited and expensive and the American dream of a home and car is just a vague distant memory.
5. $17 Trillion Deficit--and Counting... Whereas Senator Obama told us that high deficits were unpatriotic, President Obama has hosted a five year spending spree, which includes presiding over the largest debt increase in one day in our nation's history--$328 billion incurred on October 17, 2013 after the standoff over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown ended. Under the terms of the deal made with Congress, the president has the power to borrow as much money as he likes between now and February when the debt ceiling battle begins again. Experts predict that we will see a total of $700 billion in new debt by that date--taking us close to the $18 trillion dollar mark. We can expect about $21 trillion in debt by the end of Obama's second term. This massive debt is the result of government bailouts to big corporations, expansion of welfare entitlement programs and expansion of government itself, all at a time that many middle class Americans lost their homes, businesses and savings, jobs and futures. We are going to spend the next several decades paying for a party that we did not even get to attend. For that, Obama owes this entire country an apology.
Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
