Miscellaneous News. - Page 6

I don't why (kinda do), but this cracked me up-

"Hyperspectral images of a draft of the Declaration of Independence reveal that it originally used the word 'subjects' instead of 'citizens' at a critical juncture. After writing "our fellow subjects," author Thomas Jefferson scrubbed it out and replaced it with the familiar alternative."
~ http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/03...-of-indep.html

What's the word I'm looking for, premonition?

That's what I thought too, just a mistake.....but imagine if it wasn't...imagine if he thought "Mine all mine!" Just kidding.

Reading the comments there it does seem that "subjects" was at that time actually the right word to use. I'm not 100% sure though and am curious, if it was right, why it was changed. I guess this could be America's first case of PR spin.

It turns out the rich are making the poor pay more for their mortgages to fund their own lavish lifestyles. Who'd have thought it.

"More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent."
~ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/bu...h.html?_r=2&hp

To a degree sure, but lots of those people will have thought that having a mortgage would be better than buying the house outright because of tax breaks etc.

No, jazzguru is saying that those who are doing this aren't truly rich whereas I am saying that isn't the case.

From the article-

"Though it is hard to prove, the CoreLogic data suggest that many of the well-to-do are purposely dumping their financially draining properties, just as they would any sour investment.

“The rich are different: they are more ruthless,” said Sam Khater, CoreLogic’s senior economist. The CoreLogic data suggest that the rich do not seem to have concerns about the civic good uppermost in their mind, especially when it comes to investment and second homes. Nor do they appear to be particularly worried about being sued by their lender or frozen out of future loans by Fannie Mae, possible consequences of default. The delinquency rate on investment homes where the original mortgage was more than $1 million is now 23 percent. For cheaper investment homes, it is about 10 percent.“ Those with high net worth have other resources to lean on if they get in trouble,” said Mr. Khater, the analyst. “If they’re going delinquent faster than anyone else, that tells me they are doing so willingly.” Willingly, but not necessarily publicly. The rapper Chamillionaire is a plain-talking exception. He recently walked away from a $2 million house he bought in Houston in 2006.

“I just decided to let it go, give it back to the bank,” he told the celebrity gossip TV show “TMZ.” “I just didn’t feel like it was a good investment.”

The rich and successful often come naturally to this sort of attitude, said Brent T. White, a law professor at the University of Arizona who has studied strategic defaults.

“They may be less susceptible to the shame and fear-mongering used by the government and the mortgage banking industry to keep underwater homeowners from acting in their financial best interest,” Mr. White said.



So it seems from the article that people who are rich and can afford their mortgage payments aren't paying them because they think that that's better financially. Of course some, like the article says have lost jobs etc, but many clearly just don't think it's a smart investment, so they stop paying.

Of course there are people who have billions etc but the people we're talking about here, many of them, are very well off, indeed rich.