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Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Follow up to "Participants will Emerge" June 2019 Part 3

Here we go again. 

With a very questionable future for an economy that has just been "put on hold" for 3 months globally, mortgage interest rates are back to all time lows.  The Fed has ramped up, or lets say tripled down on its bailout of the "Financial" Industry.  Now we all know that in the midst of what was supposed to be the longest expansion in history accompanied with extraordinarily low unemployment (well officially) that the Fed was completely and utterly unable to "normalize" interest rates or it's balance sheet as witnessed in September of 2019.  The policies adopted at that time created the perfect climate for the stock market to rocket to record highs by early 2020. After the Fed decided to perpetuate the bubble in the Private Equity / Hedge Fund / Shadow Banking world that month after already admitting it could no longer raise interest rates months before we got Part 1 of a pro-cyclical bailout driven to prop up over levered speculators.  The COVID-19 shutdown BS perpetuated by the squeamish global elites and billionaires the world over created the perfect storm for Part 2 (or you could say Part X since this has been going on for over a decade now).

The current political leadership followed through with their promise to the corporate elites to dramatically reduce taxes (part of the reason the idiot was tolerated I am sure) during what was supposed to be a "Great Recovery" in the economy, including the lowest unemployment on record, a 10 year bull stock market, corporate profits that were setting records and buybacks that were setting records instead of using the economic growth cycle to re-balance the finances of the public coffers.  Instead the decision was made to follow through with political promises and dramatically increase the public debt during an economic growth period that brought "peacetime debt levels" close to those only comparable to war time numbers. To top it all off, massive stimulus was passed by congress and more was promised, infrastructure and the like.  Meanwhile the asset bubble created in the Financial Industry had become completely unsustainable. The search for "yield" to pad the pockets of all those folks who already control over 80% of the global "wealth" had resulted in leverage not seen since just before the crash of 2008-9. 

So the follow up on the "Participants will Emerge" theme was reawakened when I decided, in this stupid interest rate environment, to look into refinancing a mortgage with 75% equity simply to lock in a rate for 15 years to make sure when the fiat system implodes I'll have a fixed rate on my then worthless mortgage.  NO PARTICIPANTS EMERGED.  That's right.  An online search through one of the largest aggregators of mortgage companies with those who desire a mortgage only resulted in one bank willing to do a refinance.  When I finally was matched by some call center person to a "mortgage lender representative", who incidentally acted like this was her first ever deal, we did not get past some stupid questions about terms and whether I knew what my "credit score" was, which I could give a rats ass about.  When I told her "I pay my bills so I am sure it's fine lets just move forward," she hung up!  The second search for a VA option resulted in one lender as well who when I spoke to her on the phone, as soon as I said it was a refinance, she said, "We are not doing refinances right now".  I was like, "OK why?"  Well I don't have to tell you why, you likely already know.  The banks are up to their eyeballs dealing with people who DON'T WANT TO PAY THEIR MORTGAGE RIGHT NOW (which she would not say) but she did say "due to the drop in interest rates..."  Well I know what that means.

Nobody in their right mind will refinance a house at 3% for 15 years when the economy was just sent off a cliff and nobody knows if it will recover, when, how strongly and BTW we have millions of calls from people who DON'T WANT TO PAY THEIR MORTGAGE RIGHT NOW. 

OK so there you have it.  No Participants have yet emerged after 12 years Mr Federal Reserve Chairman and Treasury Secretary.  No Participants willing to buy mortgages at your artificially low rates outside of YOU and the federally sanctioned, technically insolvent, Fannie and Freddy.

At what point do you think "Participants Will Emerge" now?

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