From Housingwire:
Radian now offering an industry first – job loss insurance
Radian Guaranty, the mortgage insurance subsidiary of Radian Group (RDN), is offering a new program that’s the first of its kind in the industry – job loss insurance.
Radian’s new program, called Radian MortgageAssure, will pay a borrower’s mortgage if they suffer an involuntary job loss and fall behind on their mortgage payments. Plus the program will be automatically provided to certain borrowers with no additional cost to the borrower.
According to Radian, the program is designed to “provide homeowners peace of mind” after an involuntary job loss. Radian notes that the program has dual benefits, for both the borrower and the lender, because the program reduces the risk of job loss-related late or missed mortgage payments, while offering lenders further protection against default.
Radian said that its new MortgageAssure program is the only program of its kind currently offered by a mortgage insurer and will be offered exclusively to Radian’s lending partners.
Under the program, if a participating homeowner falls behind on their mortgage payments due to an involuntary job loss and meets the conditions of the program, Radian MortgageAssure will provide up to six monthly mortgage payments, with a maximum monthly benefit of up to $1,500, or total protection of $9,000 during the two-year coverage period.
“At Radian, we are continually innovating to help Americans realize the dream of affordable, sustainable homeownership,” said Brien McMahon, chief franchise officer, Radian. “As the spring buying season begins, we are pleased to be able to offer a new level of protection – at no additional cost – that is designed to provide peace of mind to those interested in purchasing a home.”
Given the amount of uncertainty with employment these days, seems like this would make perfect sense. I’m sure you could argue that you should have enough savings to cover a protracted period of unemployment, but this would seem to be helpful even if you had the savings. Now, we don’t know what the cost is, if it costs $3000 for $9000 of coverage, it’s probably not worth it, but if the premium is reasonable, this seems like a great product.
What am I missing?
Guy up my block hasn’t made a mortgage payment in 7 years (“pre-foreclosure” on Zillow) , but did buy a new Lexus RX 350. I have last laugh, my 2001 Sienna Van still starts!?
I’m still trying to drive from the earth to the moon in my BMW. Up to 160k miles, need to do some work, oil leaks, some rear suspension gremlins, etc etc. Fixed my coolant and heating issues during the winter, but it seems that she’s giving up. Not sure I’ll make it to 239k miles, but I’m sure going to try.
It really is a pain in the ass to work on, and for as brilliant as the German engineers are supposed to be, they really do some stupid shit.
Need to remove the front bumper and grille, as well as the entire headlight assembly, to change the bulb in the headlight. Yes, you read that correctly. The dealer will charge well above $500 for just the labor to replace the headlight bulb, not to mention the bulb which costs about $150 a pop. You really need to do both at the same time, otherwise the color will be off, or you’ll just be disassembling the car to do it. Not to mention that to do it, you need to go through have a box of one-time-use pop rivets, because they’ll all break. Not to mention you need to disassemble the headlight on your workbench to actually install the bulb. In defense, these are the adaptive headlights that move left and right, and up and down. The assembly is a very precise gimbal with some very fancy servos. Clear they never considered what to do when you needed to change the bulb.
This whole BMW thing with the oil filter on the top of the motor makes no damn sense at all. People have told me, look how easy, the filter right here, you don’t have go get dirty. You still need to jack the car and drain the pan, you are under the car anyway, what’s the point? Well, the oil leak is coming from where the filter housing attaches to the block, which is apparently a very common problem. No problem, just a $1.00 worth of gaskets. But you need to take half the damn car apart to replace that dollar’s worth of gaskets, argh. Bumper, radiator, fans, alternator, intake assembly and a number of manifold components, throttle body, belts, tensioners, etc etc etc etc. Surprised I don’t need to remove the headlights. Might be easier to just let it leak.
Made it to 207,000 with my truck. Finally sold it. Needed anothe rear differential as the junkyard diff I had the mechanic put on two years ago gave out.
Really the only way to keep a car going that long is to have a good understanding of how it works and to be able to do much of the routine maintenance yourself. Otherwise, you could have your “mechanic friend” or someone you trust work on it…but that’s rare. Labor costs will kill you.
Carmakers Want To Use Copyright Law To Make Working On Your Car Illegal
http://jalopnik.com/carmakers-want-to-make-working-on-your-car-illegal-beca-1699132210
#3..this is what I have heard about German cars…maybe I will lease a BMW one day…all maintenance included…..all my 2001 Van and 2006 TL take are oil changes and rotations for about $50 twice a year. (excluding tires as needed). I went through repair bills through my 20’s and 30’s…no need for that in my 50’s…
5 – Funny, because the dealer told me I couldn’t change the bulb myself. They told me that it wouldn’t work, because the headlights need to be reprogramed with a special cable, and that I wouldn’t be able to get the cable. It would still cost me $250 to have them reprogram the headlight.
Subaru, by far, the easiest and most logical car to work on. Pretty much the exact opposite of a BMW.
3. Having owned two Bimmers. Never again. They are essentially a great marketing company with mediocre cars.
won’t ever own another german car. too hard to work on, too expensive to repair, and things always breaking.
I’ve gone back to japanese. Acura’s approach is to not give you info so you feel compelled to go to a dealer, but in the internet age, that fails spectacularly.
Grim,
credit insurance, and this is what this is, is usually quite expensive as insurance goes. Still, if the premium is right, and if your occupation isn’t stable (and whose is?), it may be worth it. But it comes with a lot of caveats, such as making only min. payments until you get back to work, or worse, capitalizing interest. In the case of the latter, its a sucker bet.
Honda is no better. We had to jack the car up, take the front wheel off, and remove the splash guards from under the wheel well in order to change the headlight bulb on his civic.
Older Nissans were always fairly easy. I loved my old 4 cylinder 4×4 pickup. Most things were easy to change, spark plugs were right up top in the front of the motor and could be done in 15 minutes. You didn’t even need to jack up the car to get underneath it with a creeper.
What car do you buy these days? My new Pathfinder looks godawful. I’m not looking forward to working on it at all. Very comfortable car though. Not like the pathfinders my family owned in the 90’s. It’s not a truck anymore…but it’s perfectly suited for soccer moms.
Something interesting I noticed, technology originally applied to hybrids and electric cars is making it into gasoline powered models. For instance, the power steering is no longer powered by a pulley attached to a belt driven directly by the motor. It’s now an electric hydraulic pump. Online forum discussions suggest this is to aid with the gas mileage.
I posted this because I tried to do the same thing and was denied by my mortgage company. I essentially wanted to prepay future mortgage payments in bulk, and then simply continue payment as normal. Basically, they said if I tried to do this, they would apply the overpayments to principal, great, but the next month payment would still be due. This was back when they still did the payment book where you tore out the slip and mailed it in. I said, what if I just tear them all out, send them all in, and then just keep paying as normal? Nope, the current payment would be applied as normal, the other 11 payments would go to principal, and I’d still be expected to make the next monthly payment in full.
Sillyness – it would be relatively easy to make your own insurance policy simply by overpaying by a few hundred bucks every month – and I don’t even care about prepaying the interest payment, which is the idiotic part. Hell, even if they could just add it to the escrow funds that they are already holding, what’s the big deal, decrement the mortgage payment from escrow if you don’t receive it.
I know that this is absolutely no different than just saving the money. But there is something somewhat comforting to know that money is banked there, and I (or maybe not I, but my family) could ride out 12 months without even having to think about it. It’s not a financial-savvy thing, it’s a peace-of-mind thing.
I was considering buying one of the last body on frame pathfinders used, while you could still get one in nice condition. Agree, I’d avoid the new one.
Car maintenance is for those same chumps who pay their mortgages. 10 years and 100,000 miles on the Corolla and the hood is rusted shut, thanks very much.
A couple of BMW acronyms for you Grim: brutal money waster, breaking my wallet
14 – The trouble with that model is that they put a transmission cooler inside the radiator. They frequently corrode and fail, pumping coolant into the transmission destroying it.
Break My Window. Back in 1988-1992 everytime you saw a BMW in Brooklyn or Queens you had to break a window. Damm Yuppies
All the major things were covered under warranty, the work I’ve done was minor and my own sweat.
Headlights I did for $200 or so, using aftermarket bulbs – the bulbs are expensive anyway, but hell, they lasted more than 100k miles.
Coolant issue cost me about $40 in parts to fix.
Leaking washer fluid pump, $12 or so.
Oil leak will cost me $1 for the gasket.
Suspension gremlin I suspect is a busted coil spring in the rear. I really just haven’t had the time to rip it apart to see. Cost for the dealer to do it, probably $1000, cost for me to do it? $200, at most.
I think advanced auto will let you borrow the spring compressor for free if you buy the part from them.
19 – don’t forget your time is money.
I was into imports and a nice Alfa Romeo turned my head on Hemmings just yesterday.
http://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/alfa_romeo/gtv_2000/1659002.html
But then I wake up and remember….the bad roads, the expensive mechanics and parts….and the endless days spent waiting for the thing to be ‘ready’….
3- I know of some Hondas & GM’s where the bumper cover has to come of to change the headlights
Question for the Legal Eagles here:
I was given a ticket for failing to move into the left lane while passing a PA State Trooper who had someone pulled over.
*Was respectful, compliant, had all my paperwork, up to date inspection sticker and
going under the speed limit by 10 MPH.
First time I’ve been pulled over since the 80s!
Anyway, went online to pay the fine. Couldn’t (what?). So, went to the Magistrates office (Northhampton County) to get it done. Told the clerk “I plead guilty how much do I owe?”. She says “Are you sure?”. $250 plus 15 days loss of license! WHAT!? She told me to plead not guilty get a court date and try to work out something with the officer prior to appearing before the judge that day.
BTW – I live in NJ but work in PA.
Any advice is appreciated.
FYI – My record is PERFECT with not even a parking ticket!
22 – Cheaper to just hire your own personal dominatrix, because either way you are going to take it in the ass in style.
unmod
You went into limbo, sorry.
What? Now you’re running a Conga line?
[24] njt
PA troopers are generally a-holes. Haven’t dealt with them in decades and don’t want to.
Go into court and fight it. Be as specific regarding facts as you can be about time, place, geography, conditions.
Read the statute and determine if it makes sense. I don’t know what you got stopped for but it sounds like a pissed-off cop to decided to cram a square peg into a round hole by “interpreting” a statute a certain way. For example, if you were cited for failing to move over for an obstruction, Title 33, chp. 3301(a), that is a highly subjective statute. In that case, you would argue that there was no obstruction and that the characterization of a trooper pulling a car over in a breakdown lane as an obstruction is arbitrary and capricious.
Or perhaps the statute is completely inapplicable–I beat a ticket once for passing in a breakdown lane. But I got the cop to acknowledge that there wasn’t a breakdown lane in that location. Ticket dismissed.
I always fight these because your time value is almost always as great as the cost, and the number of tickets that get tossed or reduced is pretty high. And for me, it’s good practice.
(For informational purposes only. This does not constitute legal advice nor does it create an attorney-client relationship. I am not admitted to practice law in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania).
[29] redux
OK, here is what they got you on:
Ҥ 3327. Duty of driver in emergency response areas.
(a) General rule.–When approaching or passing an emergency response area, a person, unless otherwise directed by an emergency service responder, shall:
(1) pass in a lane not adjacent to that of the emergency response area, if possible; or
(2) if passing in a nonadjacent lane is impossible, illegal or unsafe, pass the emergency response area at a careful and prudent reduced speed reasonable for safely passing the emergency response area.
(b) Penalty.–Any person violating subsection (a) commits a summary offense and shall, upon conviction, pay a fine of not more than $250. . . .
So, the out here is the phrase “if possible.” This is the big out here. You work with that. Was it possible to move over safely? Did you have sufficient time to see him? Were there cars passing you at that time? Even if you are both in disagreement, the judge has to consider whether you are right.
Another possibility is that the cop did not have rear flashing lights on. If there is no display of emergency controls, such as lights, then there is no emergency.
Basically, you parse the statute and overlay your facts and circumstances.
Finally, don’t let him change the charge in court. That is a standard trick. Don’t fall for it.
(same disclaimer as above applies here as if stated herein)
[30] redux
Here is the complete statute. There is quite a lot to work with here . . .
§ 3327. Duty of driver in emergency response areas.
(a) General rule.–When approaching or passing an emergency response area, a person, unless otherwise directed by an emergency service responder, shall:
(1) pass in a lane not adjacent to that of the emergency response area, if possible; or
(2) if passing in a nonadjacent lane is impossible, illegal or unsafe, pass the emergency response area at a careful and prudent reduced speed reasonable for safely passing the emergency response area.
(b) Penalty.–Any person violating subsection (a) commits a summary offense and shall, upon conviction, pay a fine of not more than $250.
(b.1) Suspension of operating privilege.–The department shall suspend the operating privilege of any person for 90 days upon receiving a certified record of the driver’s conviction, adjudication of delinquency or admission into a preadjudication program for a violation of subsection (a), if the certified conviction indicates the violation resulted in serious bodily injury to another person. The license shall be surrendered in accordance with section 1540 (relating to surrender of license).
(c) Marking.–An emergency response area shall be clearly marked with road flares, caution signs or any other traffic-control device which law enforcement officials may have at their immediate disposal or visual signals on vehicles meeting the requirements of Subchapter D of Chapter 45 (relating to equipment of authorized and emergency vehicles).
(d) Reports by emergency service responders.–
(1) An emergency service responder observing a violation of subsection (a) may prepare a written, signed report which indicates that a violation has occurred. To the extent possible, the report shall include the following information:
(i) Information pertaining to the identity of the alleged violator.
(ii) The license number and color of the vehicle involved in the violation.
(iii) The time and approximate location at which the violation occurred.
(iv) Identification of the vehicle as an automobile, station wagon, motor truck, motor bus, motorcycle or other type of vehicle.
(2) Within 48 hours after the violation occurs, the emergency service responder shall deliver a copy of the report to a police officer having authority to exercise police power in the area where the violation occurred. If the police officer believes that the report established a sufficient basis for the issuance of a citation, the officer shall file a citation and a copy of the report with the issuing authority. If the issuing authority determines that the report and citation establish a sufficient basis for the issuance of a summons, a summons shall be issued in accordance with general rules governing the institution of proceedings in summary traffic offense cases. The issuing authority shall send the defendant a copy of the citation, together with a statement that it was filed by the police officer named in the citation on the basis of information received.
(3) A person may institute a proceeding pursuant to this subsection or in accordance with any means authorized by the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure.
(e) Fines to be doubled.–In addition to any penalty as provided in subsection (b), the fine for any of the following violations when committed in an emergency response area manned by emergency service responders shall be double the usual amount:
Section 3102 (relating to obedience to authorized persons directing traffic).
Section 3111 (relating to obedience to traffic-control devices).
Section 3114 (relating to flashing signals).
Section 3302 (relating to meeting vehicle proceeding in opposite direction).
Section 3303 (relating to overtaking vehicle on the left).
Section 3304 (relating to overtaking vehicle on the right).
Section 3305 (relating to limitations on overtaking on the left).
Section 3306 (relating to limitations on driving on left side of roadway).
Section 3307 (relating to no-passing zones).
Section 3310 (relating to following too closely).
Section 3312 (relating to limited access highway entrances and exits).
Section 3323 (relating to stop signs and yield signs).
Section 3325 (relating to duty of driver on approach of emergency vehicle).
Section 3361 (relating to driving vehicle at safe speed).
Section 3707 (relating to driving or stopping close to fire apparatus).
Section 3710 (relating to stopping at intersection or crossing to prevent obstruction).
Section 3714 (relating to careless driving).
Section 3736 (relating to reckless driving).
Section 3802 (relating to driving under influence of alcohol or controlled substance).
(e.1) Public awareness.–The department shall educate the public of the provisions of this section as it deems appropriate.
(f) Definition.–As used in this section, the term “emergency response area” means the area in which emergency service responders render emergency assistance to individuals on or near a roadway or a police officer is conducting a traffic stop or systematic check of vehicles or controlling or directing traffic as long as the emergency vehicle is making use of visual signals meeting the requirements of Subchapter D of Chapter 45.
(June 26, 2001, P.L.734, No.75, eff. 60 days; Sept. 30, 2003, P.L.120, No.24, eff. Feb. 1, 2004; July 10, 2006, P.L.1086, No.113, eff. 60 days; Oct. 19, 2010, P.L.557, No.81, eff. 60 days)
Top 10 Most Expensive Real Estate Tax Bills Found In Just 2 States
The top 10 most expensive counties, as determined by Zillow, for real estate taxes are as follows:
Westchester, NY $13,842
Rockland, NY $10,550
Bergen, NJ $9,546
Essex, NJ $9,288
Nassau, NY $9,091
Passaic, NJ $8,978
Union, NJ $8,926
Morris, NJ $8,549
Hudson, NJ $8,407
Hunterdon, NJ $8,392
Seven of ten of those counties are in the Garden State and the remaining three in New York State. In the top (Westchester), the average real estate tax bill works out to $1,153.50 per month – more than many folks paid on their mortgage.
By comparison, with the exception of my own home state of Pennsylvania, most of the least expensive counties for real estate taxes are spread across the South. They are:
Tunica, MS $216
Bibb, AL $228
Walker, AL $244
Blount, AL $344
Amelia, VA $358
Butler, PA $397
Lincoln, OK $402
Fayette, TN $410
Meriwether, GA $457
Saint Clair, AL $470
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2015/04/23/top-10-most-expensive-real-estate-tax-bills-found-in-just-2-states/
32- That must be a hell hole. My water bill for the year costs more than that. What kind of services could you be getting if you are only paying $216 dollars a year in property taxes in a town that probably has only a 1,ooo people, if that. These must be some really crappy places to live.
Dashcam. Get one.
Not that I have looked at it closely, but it seems like these budgets are done in a semi-formal way and can be improved.
Bergen County executive unveils proposed 2015 budget, blaming fixed costs for tax hike
HACKENSACK — Bergen County Executive James J. Tedesco presented his budget to the freeholders Thursday afternoon, showing that a combination of mandated expenses and debt coming due would mean a $17 million increase to the tax levy.
For the owner of the average home in the county, assessed at $324,000, that translates to a property tax increase of $12.73.
Tedesco illustrated that figure as the cost of two foam-topped Starbuck’s specialty coffee drinks with extra expresso shots and caramel — drinks that he placed on the freeholders’ round table.
Under Tedesco’s $531 million spending plan, the total $387 million tax levy would mean the county portion of the tax bill on an average home would be $762.28, up 1.7 percent from 2014.
The county executive pointed to mandated increases not under the county’s control, such as increased costs in healthcare, pension, Social Security and nearly double the usual cost of salting county roadways during a hard winter.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/bergen-county-executive-unveils-proposed-2015-budget-blaming-fixed-costs-for-tax-hike-1.1317335
I’ve had my bmw for 10 years (06 bought in may of 05). Tires are the most expensive thing. Still haven’t had to change the brakes and it’s at 90,000 miles. I have the gasket leak, but have ignored it for 3 years. It doesn’t drip on the ground, so I could care less. Not going to fix it. Have never really run into any major problems yet. Do oil changes every 15,000 miles…I think they boosted it to 17,000 on my last change. I really don’t think the car is that big of money pit in terms of maintenance. I mean compared to a 20,000 new car, yea it costs more to fix, but if you want a higher quality car it’s going to cost you.
My wife’s lexus which is a year younger (2007) has a bunch of problems and they are supposed to be more reliable. We are not even going to fix the problems because the list has grown so long and instead will be getting rid of it this year for prob the new volvo xc90. Still debating between a few suvs. Audi looks like they screwed up their suv, looks more like a large station wagon. Hate how suvs are looking more like cars.
36. No one gets 90k miles on the same brakes .
Sell to Whom? Millennial edition.
http://www.app.com/story/news/local/how-we-live/millenials/2015/04/22/millennials-want-live/26207969/
#37
Actually Fred Flinstone does.
And idiot’s grandma probably was paying for his routine maintenance so he didn’t know they’ve been replaced.
It’s still going. Probably have another couple thousand miles to go. I drive stick, so I do a lot of breaking with my engine.
Essex says:
April 24, 2015 at 10:50 am
36. No one gets 90k miles on the same brakes .
#32 Im surprised the state of Misery (MO) is not on the bottom ten.
iphone dashcam app
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVkuVioKwpM
Aren’t cops/prosecutors provided sole discretion on whether to charge you with certain lower level offenses (like traffic stuff)? Unless I’m missing something, instead of changing the charge… can’t they just dismiss the initial and add another?
Comrade Nom Deplume, who needs to stop screwing around and get back to work says:
April 24, 2015 at 9:53 am
Finally, don’t let him change the charge in court. That is a standard trick. Don’t fall for it.
I’ve got 75,000 on my last set of pads and rotors on my bmw, the light should be coming on any day now. Given the ridiculous amount of brake dust generated, you would think the brakes would be gone in a week. That said, the front rotors are absolutely massive.
Alabama and Mississippi….
Right
That “move over” law is now in effect in NJ
37. Hybrids do better on brakes than non-hybrids.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/04/mapping_njs_unofficial_north_central_and_south_jer.html#incart_river
Rex NuttingGet email alerts
Opinion: How the stock market destroyed the middle class
Published: Apr 24, 2015 12:41 p.m. ET
850 1235
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Share buybacks encourage executives to loot companies, stall innovation and depress wages
By
RexNutting
Columnist
MarketWatch
Share
Nonfinancial corporations haven’t raised any net capital in the stock market for 21 straight years.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — There’s something seriously wrong with an economy that nurtures a few billionaires but can’t sustain the middle class.
Many factors have been blamed for the plummeting fortunes of the American middle class: globalization, technology, deregulation, easy credit, the winner-take-all economy, and even the inevitable tide of history.
But one under-appreciated factor is a pervasive business model that encourages top managers of American corporations to loot their company for short-term gains, depriving those companies of the funds they need to build and enlarge, and invest in their workers for the long haul.
How do they loot their company? By using large stock buybacks to manage the short-term objectives that trigger higher compensation for themselves. By using those stock buybacks to manipulate the share price, which allows them to use inside information to time their own stock sales. By using buybacks to funnel most of the company’s profits back to shareholders (including themselves).
They use the stock market to loot their companies.
“The ‘buyback corporation’ is in large part responsible for a national economy characterized by income inequality, employment instability, and diminished innovative capacity,” wrote William Lazonick, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell in a new paper published by the Brookings Institution.
Lazonick argues that corporations — which once retained a sizable share of profits to reinvest (including investing in their workforce by paying them enough to get them to stay) — have adopted a “downsize-and-distribute” model.
It’s not just lefty academics and pundits who think buybacks are ruining America. Last week, the CEOs of America’s 500 biggest companies received a letter from Lawrence Fink, CEO of BlackRock BLK, +0.51% the largest asset manager in the world, saying exactly the same thing.
49- Posted a similar article yesterday.
The Great Pumpkin says:
April 23, 2015 at 9:55 pm
Good article. Def worth reading in entirety. Focuses on the dangers of short term profit. This passage highlights how short term profit seeking through the vehicle of off shoring has destroyed our ability to make things. These idiots should be shot for picking the low hanging fruit and jeopardizing the future of industry in this country.
“Nor is there any mention of the fact that the pursuit of short-run profits has led to decades of foreign outsourcing that have destroyed not only individual businesses but also whole segments of the American economy, thereby undermining the capacity of American industry to invent the next generation of products and services. The words “outsourcing” or “offshoring” do not appear in the book.
As a result of pursuing a primary focus on maximizing short-term profits through efficiency gains achieved through offshoring, “the U.S. has lost or is on the verge of losing its ability to develop and manufacture a slew of high-tech products,” as explained by Gary Pisano and Willy Shih In “Restoring American Competitiveness” (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2009). Today, Amazon couldn’t make a Kindle in the U.S., even if it wanted to.
One would never guess from this book the frighteningly long list of industries of industries that were “already lost” to the USA in 2009:
Fabless chips”; compact fluorescent lighting; LCDs for monitors, TVs and handheld devices like mobile phones; electrophoretic displays; lithium ion, lithium polymer and NiMH batteries; advanced rechargeable batteries for hybrid vehicles; crystalline and polycrystalline silicon solar cells, inverters and power semiconductors for solar panels; desktop, notebook and netbook PCs; low-end servers; hard-disk drives; consumer networking gear such as routers, access points, and home set-top boxes; advanced composite used in sporting goods and other consumer gear; advanced ceramics and integrated circuit packaging.
The list of industries “at risk” is even longer and more worrisome.
The learned professors see their book as “providing students with the tools… that they need to make sound managerial decisions.” The professors continue: “Sadly, billions of dollars are lost each year because many existing managers fail to use basic tools.” What they don’t point out is that many billions of dollars are lost each year precisely because they use the tools the professors recommend.
If the esteemed professors had addressed the issue of offshoring (which this book doesn’t), they would presumably have argued, like other traditional economists, that these losses represent the normal and beneficent process of the global economy working through national “comparative advantage”. The problem is that when you outsource manufacturing in a foreign country far away, you are not just losing jobs. You risk losing something more important: knowledge. And even more important than that: the capacity to innovate. When knowledge and innovation are involved, you’re not just relocating a business. You may be relocating your future. When all large businesses do it, based on the economics they have been taught at business schools, whole sectors of the economy disappear permanently.
The conventional economic thinking that we find in this book, as Pisano and Shih point out, “ignores the fact that new cutting-edge high-tech products often depend in some critical way on the commons of a mature industry. Lose that commons, and you lose the opportunity to be the home of the hot new businesses of tomorrow.””
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/22/how-modern-economics-is-built-on-the-worlds-dumbest-idea/
How long have I been beating this drum on the state of the economy. Maybe 3 years? Of course I was labeled a lefty and a jealous individual of the 1%. Clearly not the case, I was just able to see what the bottom line thing was wrong with the economy. I then proposed, based on this issue, that wage inflation was inevitable due to the fact that it is the only way to fix the economy (by putting money back into the hands of the consumer from the 1%/corporate world that has become drunk on greed) and was laughed at. Can’t wait to see this economy either get wage inflation or go up in smoke when the riots start. It’s one or the other, you need to understand that.
“Lazonick argues that corporations — which once retained a sizable share of profits to reinvest (including investing in their workforce by paying them enough to get them to stay) — have adopted a “downsize-and-distribute” model.
It’s not just lefty academics and pundits who think buybacks are ruining America. Last week, the CEOs of America’s 500 biggest companies received a letter from Lawrence Fink, CEO of BlackRock BLK, +0.51% the largest asset manager in the world, saying exactly the same thing.”
Great minds….and all….
Couple relevant items of discussion:
About a year ago, a Clinton cop (the aholes of Hunterdon, btw) pulls out behind us after my wife and I left a liquor store. My wife is driving. We were on our way to a BYOB restaurant. He follows us from rte 22 to 31N. It’s a two lane in each direction at that point and he is following us for a mile by then. We see another Clinton ahole on the shoulder, lights on, having pulled someone over. We are in the right lane, slow down at that point to let the cop following us pass. He doesn’t. He turns on the cherries soon as we pass the pulled over cop. My wife pulls over, bewildered. Cop states ‘why didn’t you move to the left’? I state ‘because you were following us and we slowed down to let you pass’. Young punk didn’t see me as I was hiding, sort of, in the front seat. Cop runs back to the car and takes off. If it wasn’t for my presence, he most likely would have ticketed my wife. I knew these laws were in effect, but everyone in NJ ignores them. That’s not the case in NY, though. They pull to the left.
And for something different – Brake wear, I had an e34 BMW 5 series that had pads swapped out every 110k miles. The car, a station wagon, lasted me 267k with hardly a problem. No leaks, nothing, just rear shocks changed. Sold it to a Pennsyltuckian who wanted to use it for towing. Consumer Reports rated the brakes, at that time, as having the best ever on any mass production car.
51- For people that think saving and cutting jobs is the way out of this mess (fast eddies and rags of the world), please tell me exactly how saving and cutting jobs will improve the economy. Please explain in detail because I understand that it is impossible to improve this economy through cutting and saving. It will only make it worst. Wishful thinking with no logic applied to the analysis of the problem. Yes, just cut and save our way to economic growth. That might happen. Growth comes from reinvestment in the economy. Demand for investment comes from consumer spending which creates demand in the economy. Without demand, you have no growth. So keep creating a few more billionariares that will lead to the creation of millions of new poor with no money to create demand. Everyone will be worst off for this type of policy.
Austerity is a proven path to disaster, but if you have yours, who care?
Why? because this great nation was founded on giving things away that didn’t belong to it. No give-a-ways? No American Dream…..
If Austerity, if defined as cutting govt spending/govt jobs, actions in which never occurred is to blame… I don’t know what to tell you.
Let’s just keep calling things something completely different than their definitions (Free Trade, Patriot Act, etc) and then blaming the underlying principles of their words/titles/actual meanings.
Grim,
I can guess why they didn’t allow you to pay your mortgage that way.
These mortgages get sliced and diced into tranches, people buy different slices betting on prepayments speed. Depending on which slice they bought, one guy wins when you pay early, another guy loses. But the arrangement for this slicing and dicing, and betting on which slice wins, is set in advance, and they don’t want you complicating this away from their set formula.
Pumpkin,
You keep on repeating this over and over. You’re wrong. And you will always be wrong as long as you believe this.
“Demand for investment comes from consumer spending which creates demand in the economy.”
Say’s law hasn’t been repealed. It’s just been turned into a straw man and become unfashionable, especially with the set of masterminds who want to “manage” economies. Here’s a link to a cartoon book on economics that even you should be able to understand:
http://www.libertarianismo.org/livros/pshaegawic.pdf
[49] essex,
Want to know one reason that corporations buy back shares?
26 U.S.C. sec. 531. Imposition of Accumulated Earnings Tax
In addition to other taxes imposed by this chapter, there is hereby imposed for each taxable year on the accumulated taxable income (as defined in section 535) of each corporation described in section 532, an accumulated earnings tax equal to 20 percent of the accumulated taxable income.
26 U.S.C. sec. 535
(a) Definition
For purposes of this subtitle, the term “accumulated taxable income” means the taxable income, adjusted in the manner provided in subsection (b), minus the sum of the dividends paid deduction (as defined in section 561) and the accumulated earnings credit (as defined in subsection (c)).
Basically, corporations aren’t allowed to hoard cash over a certain amount, and if they do, they get hit with an accumulated earnings tax. One way to avoid the tax: buy back shares. Another way? Buy another company.
One more way that the tax code distorts behavior.
Here’s another (the predecessor)
http://freedom-school.com/money/how-an-economy-grows.pdf
Ragnar… when you said here’s a cartoon I didn’t know it was for P. Schiff’s story, but I immediately thought of Irwin Schiff’s cartoon story. Funny.
59
Good thing you’re in favor of eliminating the code. Or at least simplifying it.
[43] joyce,
“Unless I’m missing something, instead of changing the charge… can’t they just dismiss the initial and add another?”
I can’t speak for every jurisdiction, but in general, no.
[61] Joyce,
“Good thing you’re in favor of eliminating the code. Or at least simplifying it.”
What on earth ever gave you that idea? That’s the last thing I want.
63
sarcasm
62
Agreed, jurisdictions vary (greatly, at times)… but I thought a cop could within a certain time frame like 7 days or 30 days mail out another citation he didn’t issue immediately at the scene. Of course, I would hope the judge et al would look at additional citations with great skepticism. And similarly, I thought prosecutors could interpret the police report and find additional infractions.
I am always amazed at how much driving folks in NJ do. Guy I work here has a 2005 car he drives to bus and errands and around town. He has 130K on car and he bought it new. I replaced a 13 year old station car he also bought new with 165k.
He does not drive to work. His wife is a stay at home Mom. His wife is also driving around 11k a year.
I drive on average 1-2k a year and my wife on average 4-5k. Remember I take train to work and wife is a SAHM. Now when I was single and I went skiing regularly and drove to Hamptons 16 times a year and football games I was driving 10K a year. But that was a lot of driving. I mean it is all pleasure driving. I lived walking distance to train.
Yet this guy is driving 13k a year. He then told me out in Hunterdoom driving to Bus roundtrip if he gets home early enough might drive one kid to a game, other kid to religion maybe go to Costco and that could be 60 miles that day.
I am like if I drive to train, then drive two kids to stuff and go to store that is like a total of 4 miles. I was amazed that he will run an erand that is a 20 mile trip. WTF. How much of a hidden tax on consumers in NJ is the driving. I mean when I bought my hosue in 2000 my neighbors had the same cars that were distroyed in Sandy in 2012. One car was like a 1988 Taurus. But think about it that 24 year old car most likely had 50-60K miles on it. In NJ my buddy would have drove at least 300K miles and worn out three cars. And for a husband and wife that would be 600k miles over 24 years and six cars.
My caddie with 9k miles on it I should roll the odometer at 100k in the year 2061.
about #58 Ragnar
From Jesse Crossroad’s Cafe site, a few weeks ago and your Say’s Law:
SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts – China Bubble and the Canard That Is ‘Say’s Law’
Stocks gave up about half of the drifting higher advance of the prior nine days.
China took actions to dampen the very obvious equity bubble in their markets. Their dilemma is the same as most areas: they wish to stimulate growth, without creating dangerous asset bubbles.
Almost everyone is failing at this, because the plutocrats and oligarchs keep stimulating through the top down financial sectors, which are still fairly corrupt and predatory, and then cannot understand why growth isn’t feed through to the masses in order to create more aggregate demand.
You might have heard of something called Say’s Law from classical economics. It states that increased production is the source of growth in demand. According to Say’s Law, when an individual produces a product or service, he or she gets paid for that work, and is then able to use that pay to demand other goods and services.
A product is no sooner created, than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value.
As each of us can only purchase the productions of others with his own productions – as the value we can buy is equal to the value we can produce, the more men can produce, the more they will purchase.
This is the typical kind of theoretically compact, model bound, hair-splitting nonsense that economists like to put forward, and is related to memes like the wealthy few are the job creators. This a more elegant way of saying ‘build it and they will come to buy.’ And they will buy because you have paid them equitable wages, and they will want what you happen to build.
It makes no allowance for fraud, theft, financial oppression, slavery, and all the panoply of human vagaries that do not fit into perfectly rational models that propellers heads can dream up.
I don’t suppose Monsieur Say every considered labor arbitrage, predatory management, and global arbitrage in his fantasy, or the propensity of producers to pay as little as they dare by some fairly untoward means and methods. I don’t want to bet much on the rational benevolence of those who are motivated primarily by greed.
Given the stagnation of real wages for the past thirty years, I would suggest that anyone who still puts this forward should be shamed out of the room. See the utopian assumption in there? Whoever builds things will pay a living wage and increase those wages as productivity increases.
It had its latest incarnation as ‘supply side economics.’ Which is a load of rubbish especially in a global economy.
Economics is so often such a carney game.
Here is Jesse’s Law.
Unregulated greed will rise to exceed and overwhelm all rational expectations of theoretical market behavior over time, always and everywhere, because men are no angels. And since money is power, the greater the concentration of money in a society, the less free it will become, and the less reliable all decision based market-based models of it will be. Rational expectations, and therefore market forces, will fail when undermined by the unbridled greed for money and power. Passion and obsession will trump reason, unless reason arms itself against the excesses of human nature. History proves this.
Have a pleasant evening.
[66] ragarian
I agree about the propellerheadedness of economics. Now, in order to implement a command and control economy, where all economic decisions conform to the preordained optimal, you need to insure that decisions can’t deviate from the optimal. To accomplish this, you need a police state, and one in which the state can view (or, preferably, preauthorize) every transaction.
In our current state, we are already well along toward that goal. It wouldn’t be a huge stretch to complete the transition. But methinks you are gonna have to bend a few constitutional guarantees along the way. And no police state to date has successfully done this; regulatory capture occurs even among the guardians of regulation.
[64] joyce
“but I thought a cop could within a certain time frame like 7 days or 30 days mail out another citation he didn’t issue immediately at the scene.”
Possibly, but that isn’t the same as changing a charging document.
“Of course, I would hope the judge et al would look at additional citations with great skepticism.”
Not in Montgomery County, MD. But then, MD has a strict law against changing a charging document and the appeals court takes a dim view of that practice. You do have to guard against it.
“And similarly, I thought prosecutors could interpret the police report and find additional infractions.”
I can see a whole host of procedural and due process problems with that.
For rags. I’m posting this in three parts. It won’t get past the filter and I don’t know why. I didn’t type anything that should be getting this blocked.
“Your little fish story (hence, your Austr!an focused econom!c thinking) only works at beginning stages of the economy. Yes, it certainly works with a simple little story like that. That is what is wrong with the way you think (the Austr!an school) about economics. You seriously being too simple minded in the approach. That way of thinking works on a simple level, it does not work in an advanced economy. There are too many factors at play in an advanced economy for this type of econom!c thought to work. That’s why auster!ty has been proven over and over again that it doesn’t work, it makes things worst. “
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah
terrible grammar
baseless and illogical rhetoric
blah blah blah
troll troll troll
For example, that simple fish story is predicated on a fxed monetary system. What the hell does that story have to do with a fiat based monetary system? Nothing at all!! So what lesson is it really teaching? A simple island economy as an example for how the complex economies of today should be run? I wish it was that simple.
This is where the Austr!ans fall off the cliff. They fall in love or I should say obsess with simple econom!c principles. It’s like their mind won’t allow them to escape econom!cs 101 for the more advanced levels of thought on economics. So they can never make the leap to understand that consumers drive/create demand in an advanced mature economy. For myself, it’s easy to understand. For an Austrian obsessed with simple dark ages economic theories, I guess it’s impossible to understand why the govt should create jobs during an econom!c reces!ion. Feel bad that they are incapable of understanding this simple principle.
The worst is when they get into govt and ALWAYS come barking with their auster!ty measures during economic downturns. Because the Austr!an school is easier to understand and common sense says to go with the Austrian school when presented with the Keyn:s vs Austr!an option, the general public during down turns in the economy always ends up supporting these politicians pushing their auster!ty measures, only to watch them fail miserably. Wish people were capable of learning from past mistakes, but obviously it’s not going to happen.
Dude, this post is the definition of trolling. You take my name. You attack my character with claims that I’m pushing some sort of political rhetoric. To top it off, you attack my grammar. Do you think I have time to sit here and proof read? I’m firing posts of the top of my head. How much time do you think I have?
The Driveling Pumpkin says:
April 24, 2015 at 4:44 pm
blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah
terrible grammar
baseless and illogical rhetoric
blah blah blah
troll troll troll
It isn’t an attack. It is an observation.
Rags and fast Eddie, can you understand this in your rally for the creation of more billionaires? Sad, you are unable to see how every single billionaire is sickened with greed and a lust for power.
“Unregulated greed will rise to exceed and overwhelm all rational expectations of theoretical market behavior over time, always and everywhere, because men are no angels. And since money is power, the greater the concentration of money in a society, the less free it will become, and the less reliable all decision based market-based models of it will be. Rational expectations, and therefore market forces, will fail when undermined by the unbridled greed for money and power. Passion and obsession will trump reason, unless reason arms itself against the excesses of human nature. History proves this.”
Thanks for posting this.
This is the problem with Austrians and hardcore conservatives like the tea bangers. They are relying on a simple economic model that does not apply to today’s economy. They are completely blind to the fact that there are too many factors at play to adhere to an Austrian view of the economy. Everything will fix itself, right? Just lower taxes and eliminate govt, then the magic hand does the rest, right? Keeping cutting and saving your way to economic growth.
“This is the typical kind of theoretically compact, model bound, hair-splitting nonsense that economists like to put forward, and is related to memes like the wealthy few are the job creators. This a more elegant way of saying ‘build it and they will come to buy.’ And they will buy because you have paid them equitable wages, and they will want what you happen to build.
It makes no allowance for fraud, theft, financial oppression, slavery, and all the panoply of human vagaries that do not fit into perfectly rational models that propellers heads can dream up.
I don’t suppose Monsieur Say every considered labor arbitrage, predatory management, and global arbitrage in his fantasy, or the propensity of producers to pay as little as they dare by some fairly untoward means and methods. I don’t want to bet much on the rational benevolence of those who are motivated primarily by greed.”
Here’s to hoping that pumpkin never changes his bmw brakes and that they give out on the parkway. Cheers and happy Friday.
So do I, doesn’t mean they don’t or can’t. And I’m not trying to argue any point. Again, I’m speaking mainly of traffic court right now … and as we all know, traffic court is a bastion of glorious due process. (“quasi-criminal” ha!)
Comrade Nom Deplume, who needs to stop screwing around and get back to work says:
April 24, 2015 at 3:46 pm
I can see a whole host of procedural and due process problems with that.
Retard #2
“Unregulated greed will rise to exceed and overwhelm all rational expectations of theoretical market behavior over time, always and everywhere, because men are no angels. And since money is power, the greater the concentration of money in a society, the less free it will become, and the less reliable all decision based market-based models of it will be. Rational expectations, and therefore market forces, will fail when undermined by the unbridled greed for money and power. Passion and obsession will trump reason, unless reason arms itself against the excesses of human nature. History proves this.”
Yeah, it’s not we’ve had a good century plus of central bank/government interference. But please place the blame everyth
“And since money is power, the greater the concentration of money in a society, the less free it will become, and the less reliable all decision based market-based models of it will be.”
So then let’s keep promoting the policies to continue these trends. Check
Yeah, it’s not like we’ve had a good century plus of central bank/government interference. But please place the blame everywhere but there.
the general public during down turns in the economy always ends up supporting these politicians pushing their auster!ty measures, only to watch them fail miserably.
Could you please cite the last time the US politicians or the general public pushed austerity in the face of a recession? It hasn’t happened since the early 1920s. Since then every single president has consistently expanded government and spent more.
Question for the Legal Eagles here:
I was given a ticket for failing to move into the left lane while passing a PA State Trooper who had someone pulled over.
*Was respectful, compliant, had all my paperwork, up to date inspection sticker and
going under the speed limit by 10 MPH.
First time I’ve been pulled over since the 80s!
Anyway, went online to pay the fine. Couldn’t (what?). So, went to the Magistrates office (Northhampton County) to get it done. Told the clerk “I plead guilty how much do I owe?”. She says “Are you sure?”. $250 plus 15 days loss of license! WHAT!? She told me to plead not guilty get a court date and try to work out something with the officer prior to appearing before the judge that day.
BTW – I live in NJ but work in PA.
Any advice is appreciated.
FYI – My record is PERFECT with not even a parking ticket!
They got you. Go to court, cop a plea, pay a smaller fine and move on.
“In Washington, politicians were quick to distance themselves from the stimulus package; at the same time, most of the stimulus was negated by all of the forced austerity at the state level. By 2010, both American and European politicians of every major party were burnishing their austerity credentials.
Meanwhile, academic economists began to seriously revisit how to measure the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus for the first time in a generation. Researchers have devoted more attention to studying the effectiveness of fiscal policy in the wake of the Great Recession than at any other point in the past 50 years. Experts in the field have created richer datasets, more-precise measures of policy changes, and new theoretical and empirical techniques. Informed expert opinion has moved in the opposite direction from politicians in both parties: In academic departments across the United States, economists have come to the conclusion that stimulus is actually more powerful—and austerity more harmful—than even many stimulus proponents thought a decade ago. Economists have also significantly shifted their thinking about what happens to the U.S. economy after recessions, and many have come to the conclusion that failure to stimulate the economy and push out of recessions has irreversible, negative, long-term effects on the economy.
There are three major lessons for policymakers from this research:
Direct government intervention during recessions, either through deficit-financed tax cuts or deficit-financed increases in government spending, is a more powerful tool for fighting recessions than we realized before the Great Recession.
In a slack economy, or one that is operating below its potential, austerity—taking money out of the economy to balance government budgets—is especially bad policy. Whether via tax hikes or cuts in government spending, contracting the government’s budget during a recession reduces gross domestic product, or GDP, by more than the size of the cuts—possibly as much as three times more.
The costs of doing nothing can be permanent and much higher than we previously thought: U.S. GDP is currently 10 percent below its prerecession 2014 projection, and many economists believe that we have reached a new normal. If this is true, austerity could cost the U.S. economy more than $1 trillion in economic activity every year, even after we have fully recovered from the Great Recession.
The most important development in economic research during this recession has been a better understanding of how short-term labor markets affect the long-run size of the economy. It is simply not the case that recessions have only transitory effects on an economy. This is a profound, if counterintuitive, lesson for policymakers: The prudent approach during a recession may be much more aggressive fiscal and monetary activism than we are used to.
This issue brief is an attempt to bring policymakers up to speed with the latest academic research on how policy should broadly respond to economic downturns. The first section begins with a brief discussion of the challenges of studying fiscal stimulus. This is followed by a discussion of research on structural changes in the U.S. economy, including the increasingly accepted finding that austerity in the wake of the Great Recession has permanently reduced both U.S. employment and GDP. We also look at how our new understanding of the way the U.S. economy recovers from recessions suggests that there are fewer risks to fiscal activism than previously thought. The brief concludes with a summary of how recent theoretical work on macroeconomics has helped our understanding of fiscal policy’s effectiveness during recessions, as well as a survey of some of the empirical work that has informed the emerging consensus view that activist fiscal policy is an important policy tool.”
Ben says:
April 24, 2015 at 8:13 pm
the general public during down turns in the economy always ends up supporting these politicians pushing their auster!ty measures, only to watch them fail miserably.
Could you please cite the last time the US politicians or the general public pushed austerity in the face of a recession? It hasn’t happened since the early 1920s. Since then every single president has consistently expanded government and spent more.
83-
“Conclusion
Since the onset of the Great Recession, fiscal policy has become a much more widely studied topic in academic circles. The broad conclusions of recent work are surprisingly consistent for the field. Fiscal multipliers are larger than we thought, at least in slack economies. Even some of the sharper critics of activist fiscal policy have concluded that “the US aggregate multiplier for a temporary, deficit financed increase in government purchases … is probably between 0.8 and 1.5. Reasonable people can argue that the data do not reject 0.5 and 2.” Supporters suggest that multipliers as large as 3 are possible in a slack economy and that fiscal policy is perhaps even more important in light of the new understanding of how the long-term potential GDPs of advanced economies are affected by recessions.
This research does not indicate that deficits do not matter or that stimulus is always the answer. Instead, the greater consensus around larger fiscal multipliers suggests that fiscal stimulus has fewer risks than we thought and is a very powerful and important tool for boosting short-term economic growth in a way that monetary policy cannot replicate. Turning to austerity before robust economic growth occurs can be self-defeating, depressing economic growth and increasing budget deficits in both the short term and the long term. Considering fiscal policy in a vacuum is a mistake, and it is important to consider the role of the central bank, which has better tools to address too much stimulus than it does to address too much austerity.
More importantly, economic research has developed a new understanding that prolonged, short-run unemployment decreases long-run GDP. The consensus on the costs of inaction has changed dramatically within the field: While many academic researchers thought of the costs of recessions as a rounding error a generation ago, the emerging view is that failing to lift an economy out of recession could permanently reduce its size. In the United States, this could reduce GDP by something on the order of $1 trillion each year.
The takeaway for policymakers is simple. Fiscal stimulus is a much more powerful tool in today’s economy than we previously thought, and the austerity policies we have been pursuing are even more costly. Most importantly, the comforting belief that policymakers can, without causing harm, do nothing while they wait for the economy to rebound is mistaken. The failure to break out of the deep recession and the anemic growth still engulfing Western economies has resulted in significant long-term damage to them. That damage continues to pile up as policymakers ignore the need to get their respective economies back to full employment.”
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2014/05/30/90621/what-have-we-learned-about-austerity-since-the-great-recession/
84- Rags and fast eddies, highlighting this paragraph specifically for you.
“This research does not indicate that deficits do not matter or that stimulus is always the answer. Instead, the greater consensus around larger fiscal multipliers suggests that fiscal stimulus has fewer risks than we thought and is a very powerful and important tool for boosting short-term economic growth in a way that monetary policy cannot replicate. Turning to austerity before robust economic growth occurs can be self-defeating, depressing economic growth and increasing budget deficits in both the short term and the long term. Considering fiscal policy in a vacuum is a mistake, and it is important to consider the role of the central bank, which has better tools to address too much stimulus than it does to address too much austerity.”
Nom – almost no one will have a reference point, but there was a European print car ad, 30 or so years ago, for a Mitsubishi Galant, I believe. The full page ad had just a picture of the car against a black background with large White font that simply said:
“If it wasn’t so reliable, you’d think it was German.”
won’t ever own another german car. too hard to work on, too expensive to repair, and things always breaking.
I’ve gone back to japanese. Acura’s approach is to not give you info so you feel compelled to go to a dealer, but in the internet age, that fails spectacularly.
grim – JPM Chase did the opposite with us. As we over-paid our mortgage, they correctly applied against principle, which was not surprising. What was surprising was that they keep sending us monthly statements saying “next payment due” continuing farther points in the future. We even took advantage of it a couple times, just skipping mortgage payments. They would just send another payment notice the next month still saying our next payment was due years in the future. I should probably note our mortgage was originally with WAMU, so maybe they applied different legacy algorithm. What your mortgage company told you is exactly how I always understood the “rules”; Pay as much as you want this month, but don’t miss next month’s payment.
I posted this because I tried to do the same thing and was denied by my mortgage company. I essentially wanted to prepay future mortgage payments in bulk, and then simply continue payment as normal. Basically, they said if I tried to do this, they would apply the overpayments to principal, great, but the next month payment would still be due. This was back when they still did the payment book where you tore out the slip and mailed it in. I said, what if I just tear them all out, send them all in, and then just keep paying as normal? Nope, the current payment would be applied as normal, the other 11 payments would go to principal, and I’d still be expected to make the next monthly payment in full.
Sillyness – it would be relatively easy to make your own insurance policy simply by overpaying by a few hundred bucks every month – and I don’t even care about prepaying the interest payment, which is the idiotic part. Hell, even if they could just add it to the escrow funds that they are already holding, what’s the big deal, decrement the mortgage payment from escrow if you don’t receive it.
I know that this is absolutely no different than just saving the money. But there is something somewhat comforting to know that money is banked there, and I (or maybe not I, but my family) could ride out 12 months without even having to think about it. It’s not a financial-savvy thing, it’s a peace-of-mind thing.
Retard,
Find me a primary source that shows the US or EU or Japan or etc etc that actually reduced their government spending/overall involvement year over year or even in the last 5 years?
Don’t post an article blaming austerity, show me proof that there was austerity. Your f-cked up articles aren’t complaining cause they cut spending; they’re complaining cause they didn’t spend enough.
You know nothing you child.
Keynesian … MMT … fairy tale b.s.
assume a can opener
81. If i am not mistaken the government sector acty shed jobs in the last recession. Which was unusual.
#82 (and all others that replied):
First, thanks for the advice as I’m an IT engineering professional with little experience and education re: Law. The last time I was charged with anything was for speeding back in 1982 (lost my license for six months).
“They got you. Go to court, cop a plea, pay a smaller fine and move on.”
That’s what I plan to do. I would have pled guilty and paid the fine but losing my license! NO WAY! CAN’T. That’d cost me too much (even for 15 days). I could/probably would, lose my job! (not because I wouldn’t be able to get there, I would).
I don’t get it. The Troopers undoubtedly looked up my life history on the ‘net and came back with Mr. Clean. Why so harsh?
Just a few years to go until retirement from the rat race…can’t wait.
“The Great Recession led to deep cuts in state and local government jobs — much deeper than any other recession in the last five decades.”
http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/government_finance/2013-01-09-State-Local_Government_Employment.pdf
joyce says:
April 24, 2015 at 8:57 pm
Retard,
Find me a primary source that shows the US or EU or Japan or etc etc that actually reduced their government spending/overall involvement year over year or even in the last 5 years?
Don’t post an article blaming austerity, show me proof that there was austerity. Your f-cked up articles aren’t complaining cause they cut spending; they’re complaining cause they didn’t spend enough.
You know nothing you child.
It’s not only about overall govt spending. It’s about the jobs. When you cut all those govt jobs, you contribute to the problem in more ways than one.
It’s like this, the govt doesn’t have a spending problem, it has a revenue problem from a lack of demand in the economy due to consumers not spending because they don’t have enough disposable income to support a healthy economy.
$100 says you didn’t read past the title before you posted.
MMT says the government doesn’t need revenue, it can print forever… so what’s the problem?
93
at least you admitted the spending didn’t go down. it just didn’t continue on it’s meteoric rise
[91] njt
You can do that but it is such a subjective charge, there are a lot of ways to attack it.
God, I’d have some fun with that one. By the time I was done with the cop, I’d be assured that they spent any times the $250 on me.
Comrade, it IS tempting but…I’m not a gambler when I know the deck is stacked against me. Now, if my life, wife’s or kids was on the line…well…Oh, wait, they all are! How did such a petty thing get to loom so large?
I could trade in a card but…I’m saving it if anything SERIOUS ever happens.
Eh, what’s $250. My change jug probably has double that (not counting the real silver coins given to me by chumps).
– Rationalization on