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From Yahoo! Finance 6/25/09:
Waiting for mortgage rates to once again fall below 5%? Don’t bother. Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, says those days are gone for good. But, it doesn’t mean you’ve missed your chance to act. Last week, the average 30-year mortgage rate was still a relatively low 5.38%, according to Freddie Mac.
Also, don’t forget there’s always the risk of even higher rates in the near future. As McBride puts it, “It’s like someone sets a table in front of you with a stack of cash. You have to grab the money while it’s there.” He’s got a point. A $400,000 mortgage at 6% costs just shy of $2,400 a month. That same mortgage with 5.35% rate: $2,240 – a savings of $160 a month.
Mortgage rates are rising even though the rates that the Fed is charging them for credit are staying down. Rates paid to depositors are incredibly low too. Yet, the banksters are raising the rates for mortgages.
It's similar to the story on credit cards where the banksters kept upping the interest rates and the fees. With new credit card legislation passed, the banksters are responding by trying to find other ways to steal money from people.
Where is the money going? One place is excessive salaries. For example (NY Times 6/23/09):
After all those losses and bailouts, rank-and-file employees of Citigroup are getting some good news: their salaries are going up.
The troubled banking giant, which to many symbolizes the troubles in the nation’s financial industry, intends to raise workers’ base salaries by as much as 50 percent this year to offset smaller annual bonuses, according to people with direct knowledge of the plan.
The shift means that most Citigroup employees will make as much money as they did in 2008, although some might earn more and others less. The company also plans to award millions of new stock options to employees in an effort to retain workers and neutralize a precipitous drop in the value of their stock holdings.
Before the current crisis, I would have categorically opposed nationalizing the banks. Now, it is starting to look like the banksters are going to continue to lie, cheat, and steal. If this crap keeps up, we should seriously considering taking the banks away from the banksters and turning them into public utilities.
Besides, the banksters themselves have made it clear that they aren't competent run their banks.
My only thought is, why the hell hasn't the government taken them over yet? They've done it before, in the Great Depression and during the Savings and Loans crisis in the 80s. My fear is, the banks are so in bed with the government that the government will not do anything in our interest. They will simply continue to give the banks our tax dollars, with no oversight, and in the end, it will be the people who lose out.
I still find dubious the claim that they need to retain these employees. If they are truly the best and brightest, how did the banksters get into trouble in the first place? My guess is these are the people who know where all the bodies are buried and are kept on the payroll to keep the from going to the public, the police, or the regulatory agencies overseeing them.