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Greed: Check Out Maps of Home Foreclosures in Your Area

By JesusBeWithUs
Published April 23rd, 2008

15 Then He (Christ) said to them, “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.” LUKE 12:15

HOTPADS.COM has “heat maps” showing homes in foreclosure throughout the United States. Above is a snapshot for the Washington DC Metro area. Each home above may represent 1 to 100 homes. You can zoom all the way down to a local street to see which specific houses are in foreclosure, or you can zoom out and look at other areas of the country. What you can’t see is how much sorrow this mess is causing.

Look at the map below. This is ONE NEIGHBORHOOD in Detroit, MI. There’s a park there, see it? It’s the Corrigan Playground. There’s also a elementary school not shown.

What must it be like in this neighborhood as homes are foreclosed on and people abandon them one by one? As you drive by house upon empty house, weeds growing in the yards?

What must that children’s playground be like? And how sad must that local school be and the children in it?

If you look at other parts of Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami or even Herndon, VA, you will see ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOODS, street by street, of homes that are being foreclosed on. Nothing in the press can demonstrate to you the extent of the housing crisis that these maps can. But how and why did this happen?

GREED

The bank or mortgage company that sold you your mortage usually doesn’t keep it. Most mortgages are bundled by the thousands and huge packages of these mortgages are sold to overseas investors.

Why do foreign investors buy our mortage bundles? Because American homeowners have a PLATINUM record of repaying our debts. Our reputation was so good that American mortgage bundles were almost as risk-free an investment as U.S. Government Treasury Bonds, the safest investment on the planet. Not anymore more given the worldwide financial collapse in mortgages.

But why?

A few years ago, a clever, greedy fellow on Wall Street decided to bundle mortages in a new way. What he did is rather complicated, but essentially he divided mortgages into bundles based on how risky the BORROWERS were. Packages of low risk borrowers’ mortgages paid less interest to the overseas investor buying the bundle. Packages of high risk borrowers’ mortgages paid higher returns to the investor. What he failed to disclose, however, was the risk of the bundles being sold.

Overseas investors thought they were getting typical, low risk, quality American mortgage bundles — that is, packages of solid American homeowners who would pay their mortgage with interest so the investor could get his principal and interest back.

But again, this clever Wall Street fellow didn’t tell overseas investors they were buying the mortgages of high-risk borrowers. He made a greedy, unethical decision and made a lot of money doing it.

So what? What can one greedy fellow cause? An avalanche, that’s what. When other Wall Street financiers noticed his tactic and the profits his company were making, they started selling the same high-risk packages.

Demand went up overseas for these high-paying mortgage packages and cheap money literally POURED into the U.S. Remember, foreign investors thought they were buying quality mortgage loans.

As money flowed into the U.S. and became cheaper, nationwide mortgage brokers took notice and started pushing risky people into loans they couldn’t afford in the long term. And builders built neighborhoods of homes that shouldn’t have been built. And real estate agents sold big houses to families they knew wouldn’t be able to afford the house in the long term. And so on until the mess you see today in the maps above.

The greedy, unethical decision of ONE MAN started it all. And it was followed by conscious, unethical decisions of TENS OF THOUSANDS of other people in the finance and housing business to participate in this pyramid scheme.

The lesson. One act of greed, one act of evil can have HUGE consequences. The greedy, solo Wall Street act, followed by others, ended up in foreign investors losing their money and families losing homes they couldn’t afford.

But everyone in between the foreign investor and the American family buying a house — the Wall Street financier, the mortgage broker, the real estate agent, the appraiser, the closing companies — well, they made money. Lots of it. Of course not all blame lies in between. Some overseas investors were greedy and some people bought homes they knew the couldn’t afford. But one greedy Wall Street man made it all possible.

The greed of this one man also ruined American homebuyer’s reputation for being good borrowers in and the long term, we’ll all pay the consequences as overseas investors become more suspicious and less willing to lend us money to build our houses.

We may also pay as taxpayers if the U.S. government decides to bail out risky borrowers.

Greed. It costs dearly on earth. And it will cost even more in the afterlife.

24“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” MATTHEW 19:24

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Palm Sunday: A Triumphal Entrance, A Warning, and a Promise

By JesusBeWithUs
Published March 11th, 2008

(MAR 11) Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others greenery which they had cut in the fields. And those who went in front and those who followed were all shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who is coming in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of David our father! Hosanna in the highest heavens!’ NJB Mark 11:8-10

This Sunday is Palm Sunday, marking the triumphal entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem as the people spread cloaks and palm cuttings in front of Him. They honored Him by covering the dirt beneath Him as he made His way to the city. Palm Sunday also marks one of Christ’s most important teachings on the contrast between the poor and the rich.

As Jesus road into Jerusalem, he was fulfilling the prophecy in Zechariah 9.9 which says “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold your king is coming, sitting on an ass’s colt”.

Indeed, Jerusalem was about to meet its king and those showering His path with palms knew that. But there were others, the high and mighty of that city, who wanted anything but a new king on their doorstep.

So why a donkey for a King? Why did Jesus, the King of Kings, not ride in on a mighty horse, its head held high? Why did He arrive in Jerusalem on a donkey, the lowly animal of the poor working masses?

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