President Obama said Thursday that he wants big Wall Street banks to pay back every last cent that's been drained from taxpayers and the federal government to fend off the financial system's collapse. The president has put forth a proposal that would impose a levy on all financial institutions with more than $50 billion in assets. He says the fees taken from these banks will yield $90 billion over the next 10 years. Obama said he's become more determined to recover taxpayers' money by "reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people."
Thursday was day two of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearings, aimed at uncovering the root causes of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. The witness list included financial regulators at both the federal and state level, who confessed that supervision and oversight was lacking and failed to head off the financial system's near-meltdown. Mortgage securitization and predatory lending were at the center of the discussion.
In an announcement Thursday, Bank of America said there are several indications of strong momentum in its efforts to help customers advance from trial modifications to completed modifications under the federal government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The program is designed to help financially distressed homeowners obtain a long-term, affordable mortgage payment, and the number of customers successfully completing trial modification requirements is growing, with special efforts to encourage and help customers return required documents for permanent status.
Home prices in 2009 rose 5.2 percent, according to latest housing market update from Altos Research LLC and Real IQ. The two California-based data providers' numbers are based on a 10-city composite index, which shows that prices effectively bottomed out in January 2009 at $470,017, and climbed throughout the first half of the year before returning to a gradual downward trend and ending at $494,426 in December.
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