Newsweek Magazine (February 16, 2009) … Lenders Add Bigger Fannie, Freddie Fee – Thanks to Payroll Tax Cut (January 15, 2012) …item 2.. Dupuy: GOP trying to sell pyrmaid scheme to voters (September 3, 2012) …
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But the model — the idea of those at the bottom sacrificing their retirement benefits (pensions, Social Security, Medicare, etc.) so that the top tier can pay even less in taxes — is what the Romney/Ryan ticket is peddling. Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes for the wealthy. Congressman Paul Ryan, the vice presidential half of the ticket, has proposed a budget that would shrink benefits to give the savings in the form of a tax cut to the highest brackets.
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The increase in the mortgage fee is to pay for the roughly billion package the Senate approved last month to extend a 2 percentage point payroll tax cut for another two months. About 160 million people benefit from that tax
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…..item 1)…. eCreditDaily … ecreditdaily.com … Your Resource for Financial Empowerment
Lenders Add Bigger Fannie, Freddie Fee – Thanks to Payroll Tax Cut
01.15.2012 by Staff
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Lenders are already adding an increase in fees on mortgages backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration to new loans – a hike that will pay for the extension of the payroll tax cut.
The fee increase of 0.1 of a percentage point is to be added to all loans that Fannie and Freddie buy from April 1 to Oct. 1, 2021.
But lenders are already adding the increased fee to loan price structuring since it can take months to close a loan and deliver it to the two mortgage-financing companies taken over by the U.S. government three years ago.
The increase in the mortgage fee is to pay for the roughly billion package the Senate approved last month to extend a 2 percentage point payroll tax cut for another two months. About 160 million people benefit from that tax cut.
But the mortgage fee increase is good for the life of new mortgages and refinancing – about 90 percent of U.S. mortgages are financed or backed by the government-sponsored companies. Existing mortgages are not affected.
“Think of it as a back-door tax increase,” writes Peter G. Miller, a syndicated real estate writer and operator of OurBroker.com. “While the public was watching the payroll debate in Washington, Congress was actually increasing the cost to finance or refinance a home.”
The Fannie/Freddie fee would rise about 0.1 percent to an average of 0.3 percentage point. It would amount to about a month more on a 0,000 mortgage – that’s 0 a year.
Congress has also directed the FHA to increase its annual mortgage insurance premium by .10 percent – from 1.15 percent to 1.25 percent for most borrowers.
Homeowners would have the fee increases worked into their mortgage.
The mortgage providers would then send that additional revenue to the U.S. Treasury, which already extends an open credit line to Fannie and Freddie to cover quarterly losses. That bailout tab is expected to reach 0 billion this year.
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…..item 2)…. Online Athens … Athens Banner-Herald … onlineathens.com/opinion …
OPINION
Dupuy: GOP trying to sell pyrmaid scheme to voters
By TINA DUPUYpublished Monday, September 3, 2012
onlineathens.com/opinion/2012-09-03/dupuy-gop-trying-sell…
A few years ago, I had a friend who didn’t want anyone to know she was going to therapy. Instead, she would announce at her place of business she was leaving to attend her Amway meeting. At one point I had to inform her, “You know that doesn’t make you look any less crazy, right?”
The classic multi-level marketing program — or pyramid scheme — is where one guy at the top convinces people at the bottom to give money to the people at the top. The hope is that the guys in the middle will recruit enough people under them to move from the middle to the top — hence the pyramid shape. The model is, clearly and provably, unsustainable. Only a couple of people (those at the top) do well. Everyone else gets ripped off.
In fairness, Amway has massaged its methods enough to not qualify as the illegal type of pyramid scheme. It’s now the more legal type of pyramid scheme.
But the model — the idea of those at the bottom sacrificing their retirement benefits (pensions, Social Security, Medicare, etc.) so that the top tier can pay even less in taxes — is what the Romney/Ryan ticket is peddling. Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes for the wealthy.
Congressman Paul Ryan, the vice presidential half of the ticket, has proposed a budget that would shrink benefits to give the savings in the form of a tax cut to the highest brackets.
What didn’t work in the Bush years to strengthen the middle-class (evident by their Lost Decade), they tell us will work this time. Or as veep-pick also-ran, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., put it, “We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots. We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.”
No, actually, we are a nation of haves and have-nots. We have the worst wealth inequality of all industrialized nations. Our poverty rate is the highest in more than 50 years at 15.7 percent. Contrast that with the top 1 percent of Americans who own nearly half — 42 percent — of the nation’s wealth. Also, that same top 1 percent only has 5 percent of the nation’s debt. So 99 percent of Americans own 58 percent of the pie and have 95 percent of the debt. We’re fatter, sicker, further in debt and using the most illegal drugs in the world — all signs that Americans have become overspent from bad economic policies.
But the haves — these demigods of capitalism — won’t trickle their wealth down to us because of “uncertainty in the market” according to Republicans. Therefore we bribe them with an even lower tax rate.
Instead of calling it “trickle down” which has been largely panned for decades — the new term is “not punishing success.”
“If your priority in this country is to punish success, vote for President Obama,” said offshore account holder Mitt Romney.
If the rich get richer, we’re not getting thinner, healthier, solvent and off the crack cocaine. If the rich get richer, the middle-class doesn’t get more stable.
If the rich get richer, the working poor don’t get pulled out of poverty. If the rich get richer — they just get richer and park their money in Luxembourg (where at least their money will be near universal health care).
We’re actually not a nation of haves at all. If you go by a simple majority — or even a supermajority — we’re a nation of have-nots. Have-nots being sold on a fantasy of wealth trickling down if we’re nice enough to the haves.
Trickle-down economics is a pyramid scheme. It’s the rich telling us if we just recruit others to believe in the con, then we will become the rich, too.
It’s a lie.
• Tina Dupuy is an award-winning writer and editor-in-chief of TheContributor.com. Send email to tinadupuy@yahoo.com.
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