Survey suggests we're still optimistic about economic recovery
Filed under: Banks
I get a lot of surveys sent to me. Some of them are actually interesting.Digital Insight just released one. It's a company that provides banking services to mid-market banks and credit unions, and is owned by Intuit, the company that makes Quicken and TurboTax and other financial and software products.
The report, called the Digital Insight Second Annual Online Financial Management Survey, (or DISAOFMS? Naw, forget it...) surveyed 1,000 adults and 500 small business owners across the nation. Among the most interesting findings:
- More men than women responded that they're "very likely" to leave their current financial institution for one that offers online tools to help them improve their overall financial well-being.
- In order of how we worry about money, the concerns are: living within our means and paying bills (42%), saving for a rainy day (only 15%), saving for retirement (14%) and getting out of credit card debt (13%).
- Most of us are optimistic that our financial situation will improve within the next 12 to 24 months.
- 16% strongly agree that things will turn around
- 36% agree
- 38% feel neutral
- 8% disagree
- 2% strongly disagree
More sobering is to note the more than one-third of respondents taking a wait-and-see attitude. Still, with just over 10% viewing the economy as dismal, I must agree with Digital Insight's position that a lack of negativity is a positive in the end.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-04-2009 @ 5:35PM
MyKisa said...
,,,,with 53% carrying the 47& that don`t pay taxes, there is obviously a lot of dummies that could believe anything
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10-04-2009 @ 5:42PM
MyKisa said...
...until the parasitic fed is rooted out, it can never really get better....never
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10-08-2009 @ 3:02AM
Thomas said...
Recovering from this recession is easy, it starts with lower gas prices. this is something the government has to step in on. Raising prices so high is a form or domestic terrorism, our military should be stepping in taking down this rich oil execs. the second is now that gas prices are low, lowering prices on goods, stores and big business should be held accountable for this. they are not going to want to lower their inflated prices knowing that we can and will pay it. there should be great fines for not lowering the prices that they have raised due to higher fuel/shipping costs. and finally, buy American. we need to reinvest our money back into our own econmony. not that of china, or any of the numerous third world countries that will make the products we need, just inferior and at lower prices.
also note, that in a recession a budget cut that can never be made is taking away our police officers/ this only leads to more crime and makes our world a more dangerous place.
and finally. ARM America. put the guns in the hands of the good guys.
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10-13-2009 @ 10:37PM
Jim said...
If you are in or near foreclosure, you may want to possibly consult a real estate attorney to fight the foreclosure using the following information.
BACKGROUND
Mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) are simply shares of a home loan sold to investors. They work like this: A bank lends a borrower the money to buy a house and collects monthly payments on the loan. This loan and a number of others -- perhaps hundreds -- are sold to a larger bank that packages the loans together into a mortgage-backed security. The larger bank then issues shares of this security, called tranches (French for "slices"), to investors who buy them and ultimately collect the dividends in the form of the monthly mortgage payments. These tranches can be further repackaged and sold again as other securities, called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Home loans in 2008 were so divided and spread across the financial spectrum, it was entirely possible a given homeowner could unwittingly own shares in his or her own mortgage.
Eventually, the most desirable, qualified customers dried up; they all had homes. So banks turned to customers they'd traditionally shunned -- subprime borrowers. These are borrowers with low credit ratings who pose a high risk of defaulting on their loan. But lenders of all stripes bent over backwards in the early 2000s to get this type of borrower into homes. The no-document loan was created, a type of loan for which the lender didn't ask for any information and the borrower didn't offer it. People who may have been unemployed as far as the lender knew received loans for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why?
One answer is that, with the introduction of MBSs, lenders no longer assumed the risk of a loan default. They simply issued the loan and promptly sold it to others who ultimately took the risk if payments stopped. And since MBSs created early on were based on mortgages granted to the more dependable prime borrowers, the securities performed well. They performed so well that investors clamored for more. In response, lenders loosened their restrictions for mortgage applicants and borrowed heavily to create cash flow for loans in order to create more mortgages. Without mortgages, after all, there are no mortgage-backed securities.
THE QUESTION
As mortgages were packaged/bundled into mortgage back securities (MBS) and sold to investors and since these MBSs were bought by investors, with some mortgages being split and owned by several institutions or people (tranches), how can the homeowner/borrower know who actually owns their mortgage? If the homeowner /borrower does not know who actually owns their mortgage, then how does the foreclosure court know who actually owns the mortgage and CAN actually proceed with the foreclosure?
The real estate attorneys representing these possible foreclosed homeowners should request that the foreclosing institution show that they ACTUALLY own the mortgage and can bring foreclosure action to court and are not just the mortgage servicer.
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