I wrote a story for Time.com about our nation’s new housing-rescue plan, but it’s not online yet. So for now I’ll leave you with a link to this story, the fact sheet from Treasury (it’s a PDF), and a Q&A about how you might benefit (another PDF).
UPDATE: Here’s where you can read my full story.
One thing that struck me while going …
Taking a page from the Hyundai playbook, JetBlue is now offering to refund airfare for people who lose their jobs and let the airline know at least two weeks before take-off. It’s not the world’s easiest thing to get your refund–you’ve got to mail a notarized letter and send a fax and there are plenty of restrictions. But maybe helpful …
As if we needed any more reminders that when someone offers you “improbable, if not impossible” investment returns, you should run the other way, we now have the SEC complaint (PDF) against R. Allen Stanford for allegedly defrauding investors by telling them that their certificates of deposit were invested in safe, highly liquid …
There’s immediate help for out-of-work people collecting unemployment in the massive stimulus bill President Obama signed into law this afternoon: an extra $25 dollars a week, an exemption from income tax on the first $2,400 collected, a 65% subsidy for staying on your old employer’s health insurance.
Then there is the part that looks …
Happy Presidents Day from western PA! I am here, about an hour south of Pittsburgh, to help my grandmother pack up her house. Her house–which she sold after it was on the market for two weeks. So maybe I’m not that smart after all. I guess it’s still true that all real estate is local. And a house on the road to Newell is a hot …
Step 1. Know what has—and hasn’t—worked in the past.
Friends of the Curious Capitalist will be familiar with how much I like to go on and on about how there’s no good data showing which sorts of mortgage rewrites keep struggling borrowers out of foreclosure in the long-term. And how it would be nice, before we spend $50 billion …
Seems GE is going to start paying its employees to quit smoking. There’s been a fair amount of (inconclusive) research about whether paying people to quit smoking—or lose weight, or eat better—works in the long-run. Apparently, this study, conducted with GE employees and published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine, convinced …
On Time.com, our colleague Steve Gandel writes:
A financial milestone was achieved on October 27, 2004 with the birth of Strata 2004-8. If you haven’t made arrangements for the five-year anniversary this fall, don’t worry. Few people will be celebrating.
Strata is one of the many so-called toxic assets clogging the nation’s financial
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I wrote a story about loan modifications. Which I’ve never ever done before. Ever. The latest installment starts:
The Obama administration wants to spend up to $100 billion on efforts to help homeowners, especially those facing foreclosure. But one of the leading ideas on how to do that — rewriting home loans to make mortgages
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Did you know that Time.com also offers podcasts? Yes, it’s true. This isn’t your grandmother’s Time magazine!
Each week, Katherine Lanpher interviews the likes of me and Justin and contributing editor John Curran about what’s going on in the economy. You can listen to the most recent installment by clicking here and scrolling down to …
Cheap mortgages are back. Rather, the idea of the government standing behind cheap mortgages in order to get people to buy houses and prop up home prices is back. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell starting trumpeting the notion in full force today. The argument: that a 4% fixed-rate loan for “any credit-worthy borrower”—whether …
A couple weeks back, Justin liked Jack Guttentag’s explanation of why banks receiving TARP money shouldn’t be made to immediately lend it out. This morning I am equally impressed with Bert Ely’s opinion piece in the WSJ about why pressuring banks to lend could backfire. Among the points that bear repeating:
Lost in too many discussions
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