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In Shades of the 2008 Financial Crisis Murphy Administration Pushes State Bank

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, former Goldman Sachs Executive, Gov. Phil Murphy is planning to sign an executive order that will create a 14-member “implementation board” to advance his goal of establishing a public bank in New Jersey. The basic premise of such an institution is to hold the millions of dollars in taxpayer deposits that are normally kept in commercial banks and leverage them instead to serve some sort of public purpose. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Continue reading In Shades of the 2008 Financial Crisis Murphy Administration Pushes State Bank
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Wells Fargo launches 3% down payment mortgage

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Diana Olick | @DianaOlick

First-time buyers and low- to moderate-income buyers have largely been sidelined by today’s housing recovery.

The common cry is too-tight credit. Lenders have kept the credit box restrictive because they are gun-shy from the billions of dollars in buy backs and judicial settlements stemming from the mortgage crisis that they still face today. Now, the nation’s largest lender, Wells Fargo, says it is opening that box with a new low down payment loan — a loan it claims is low-risk to the bank.

“We are fully underwriting the borrowers, we are partnering with Fannie Mae to originate and sell these loans, we are ensuring the borrowers have an ability to repay and that they’re qualified for home ownership, but we’re simplifying things for the homebuyer,” said Brad Blackwell, executive vice president and portfolio business manager at Wells Fargo.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/26/wells-fargo-launches-3-down-payment-mortgage.html

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Insanity Defined: Feds Unveil Plan to Help High-Risk Homebuyers Take On Massive Debt. Again.

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file photo Boyd Loving

Insanity Defined: Feds Unveil Plan to Help High-Risk Homebuyers Take On Massive Debt. Again.

Stephanie Slade|Oct. 22, 2014 4:28 pm

“Low Down Payments Are Coming Back,” screams a headline from The Wall Street Journal today. The story details two steps federal regulators apparently have in the works:

On Monday, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt announced that mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would start backing loans with down payments as low as 3%.

And on Tuesday, three federal agencies approved a loosened set of mortgage-lending rules, removing a requirement for a 20% down payment for a class of high-quality loan known as a “qualified residential mortgage.”

Loans with little to no down payment were a common feature of the lax lending practices that were prevalent during the housing market’s bubble years.

Of course, those bubble years eventually came to an end, causing an economic meltdown of jawdropping magnitude. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama responded by running up the national debt from $10 trillion before the recession to more than $17.5 trillion today. And “experts” everywhere laid the blame at Wall Street’s feet, lambasting the banks for making reckless loans they should have known were destined to go bad.

https://reason.com/blog/2014/10/22/feds-unveil-plan-to-help-high-risk-ameri