More Mortgage Forclosure News

Home foreclosure is a growing problem in Kansas and across the nation. Mortgage fraud and subprime lending have left many homeowners stuck with home loans they can no longer afford. We recently convened a task force to investigate this problem. Consumer advocates met with representatives from lending and real estate industries to determine ways we can stem the tide of home foreclosure in Kansas.

While we continues to investigate reports of mortgage fraud, there appears to be a great need for increased consumer awareness on this issue. When facing a lending crisis, homeowners can greatly reduce the number of pitfalls by following a few basic steps.

The most important advice for anyone facing foreclosure is to contact your lender or the company who sends you your bill as soon as possible. It may be possible to negotiate or re-structure the terms of your loan to make your payments more affordable.

Home foreclosure is a harsh legal process that moves quickly. Unfortunately, homeowners in this situation are often targeted by scams, including offers of assistance from “mortgage rescue” companies.
Consumers facing foreclosure should obtain legal advice immediately and never sign anything without having it reviewed by their attorney.

In addition to contacting an attorney, you may also seek advice from a housing counselor. Housing counseling agencies offer guidance on buying a home, renting, reverse mortgages and default and foreclosure prevention. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) maintains a list of approved agencies at http://www.hud.gov.

If you absolutely cannot afford to keep making your mortgage payments, check all your options before walking away from your home. You may be able to sell your home or negotiate with your lender to avoid losing any equity or tarnishing your credit record.

Home foreclosures occur for a variety of reasons. As your Attorney General, it is my duty to make sure that Kansas families are treated fairly in the home buying process. My office will continue to investigate this issue and do everything we can to safeguard homeowners.
For more information on this and other consumer issues, visit http://www.ksag.org.

WASHINGTON- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday kept the door open to further interest rate reductions, saying downside risks to economic growth remain from housing, employment and credit markets.

But he appeared more upbeat on the economy's prospects for later this year and next year when the combination of fiscal and monetary stimulus kicks in.

"At present, my baseline outlook involves a period of sluggish growth, followed by a somewhat stronger pace of growth starting later this year as the effects of monetary and fiscal stimulus begin to be felt," Mr. Bernanke said in prepared testimony to the Senate Banking Committee.

But even though he envisions "an improving picture" on the economy, Mr. Bernanke cautioned that "downside risks to growth remain, including the possibilities that the housing market or the labor market may deteriorate to an extent beyond that currently anticipated, or that credit conditions may tighten substantially further."

The Federal Open Market Committee, he said, "will act in a timely manner as needed to support growth and to provide adequate insurance against downside risks." He also signaled that policy moves in the future will depend on the Fed's medium-term forecast for growth and inflation "as well as the risks to that forecast," since policy works with a lag.

Economists expect more rate cuts in coming months as the economy hovers near recession. Recent reports including a drop in January payrolls and a contraction in the Institute for Supply Management's service-sector survey last month raised recession alarms. However, a better-than-expected retail sales report for January, released Wednesday, suggested the economy may be able to eke out some expansion this quarter.

The FOMC has lowered the fed funds rate at which banks lend to each other "aggressively," Mr. Bernanke said, by 2.25 percentage points to 3% since September, including 1.25 percentage points in reductions over an eight-day period in January.

Meanwhile, a surprising drop in the December trade deficit reported Thursday suggests fourth-quarter growth will be revised up from its initial estimate of 0.6%.

But Mr. Bernanke cautioned that consumers face headwinds in coming months. Labor markets have "softened," he said -- citing the decline in January payrolls. Plus, higher energy costs, lower equity prices and falling home values "seem likely to weigh on consumer spending in the near term," he said. More homebuilding cutbacks, meanwhile, "are likely," he added.

However, consumer and business spending should get some support in the second half of this year and into 2009 from the recently approved fiscal stimulus package, Mr. Bernanke said.

Turning to inflation, Mr. Bernanke said a "key development" in 2007 was the "steep" rise in oil prices. Food prices also increased "exceptionally rapidly" while "the foreign exchange value of the dollar weakened," Mr. Bernanke said.

Mr. Bernanke said he expects inflation to moderate, "and the public's longer-term inflation expectations should remain reasonably well anchored."

But he warned that "any tendency of inflation expectations to become unmoored or for the Fed's inflation-fighting credibility to be eroded could greatly complicate the task of sustaining price stability and reduce the central bank's policy flexibility to counter shortfalls in growth in the future."

by Brian Blackstone, Dow Jones Newswires

VA Requests $94 Billion for Veterans in FY ’09 Budget

Peake: VA Will Provide Timely, Accessible and High-Quality Care

WASHINGTON – Honoring the nation’s commitment to care for the newest generation of combat veterans and service members from other conflicts and eras, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake announced today President Bush is seeking a budget of $93.7 billion in fiscal year 2009 for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with health care and disability compensation receiving most of the funding.

If Congress accepts the White House’s budget request, VA’s budget would be $3.4 billion more than the current spending level and nearly double the budget in effect when President Bush took office seven years ago.

“This budget builds on VA’s past successes in providing veterans with timely, accessible delivery of high-quality benefits and services earned through their sacrifice and service in defense of freedom,” Peake said.

The FY ‘09 budget proposal calls for $47.2 billion in discretionary funding, mostly for health care. It also would provide $46.4 billion in mandatory funding for compensation, pension, educational assistance, home loan guaranties and other benefit programs.

Peake said the budget proposal will provide funding to ensure high-quality care to VA’s highest priority patients -- veterans of the Global War on Terror, those with service-connected disabilities, lower-income veterans, and veterans with special health care needs.

Under the new budget, VA will strengthen its collaboration with the Department of Defense (DoD) for world-class health care and benefits to veterans, service members and their families, including progress toward the development of secure electronic patient health care records that can be used by both departments.

This proposed budget will also allow VA to continue implementing the recommendations of the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors (Dole-Shalala Commission). Peake said the commission’s report provides “a powerful blueprint to move forward with ensuring that service men and women injured during the Global War on Terror receive the health care and benefits necessary to allow them to return to full and productive lives as quickly as possible.”

The budget request includes:

$1.3 billion to meet the health care needs of an estimated 330,000 veterans returned from service in Iraq and Afghanistan;

$3.9 billion for mental health services;

$762 million for non-institutional long-term care; and

$1.5 billion for prosthetics and sensory aids.
The President’s budget request contains $252 million devoted to research projects focused specifically on veterans returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. This includes research in traumatic brain injury, polytrauma, spinal cord injury, prosthetics, burn injury, pain, and post-deployment mental health.

A major challenge in improving the delivery of compensation and pension benefits is the steady and sizeable increase in workload. The volume of claims is projected to reach 872,000 in 2009 -- a 51 percent increase since 2000. VA will address its ever-growing workload challenges by acquiring greater access to DoD’s online medical information, by working to reduce the Department’s reliance upon paper-based claims folders and by aggressively hiring new staff. By the beginning of 2009, VA expects to complete a two-year effort to hire 3,100 new staff.

The President’s budget request includes $181 million in operations and maintenance for the National Cemetery Administration, a 71 percent increase from the resources available to the Department’s memorial program when the President took office. The budget request includes an additional $5 million to begin interment operations at six new national cemeteries -- Bakersfield, Calif.; Birmingham, Ala.; Columbia-Greenville, S.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Sarasota, Fla.; and southeastern Pennsylvania.

The President’s 2009 budget would provide more than $2.4 billion for the Department’s information technology (IT) program. This is $389 million, or 19 percent above VA’s 2008 budget, and reflects the realignment of all IT operations and functions under the control of the chief information officer. The proposal contains $93 million to uphold VA’s cyber-security program to support the commitment to make the Department the gold standard in data security within the federal government. VA continues to take aggressive steps to ensure the safety of veterans’ personal information, including training and educating employees on the critical responsibility they have to protect personal and health information.

Highlights of the VA budget are available on the Internet at: http://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=1448

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