Defending the 30-Year Fixed-Rate Mortgage

I am prone to write stinging rebukes to poorly written garbage on the web, but when I call someone out, I will devote the post to building a factual argument as to why they are wrong. I never ask anyone to just take my word for it because I am some kind of expert. Authority comes from the presentation of data in a compelling argument. Mindless rants don’t make authors an authority, it makes them lunatics.

[Source: Irvine Housing Blog] IrvineHunter rips apart The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle’s arguments that the 30-year Fixed-Rate Mortgage is to blame for the housing crisis. That’s what I love about blogs. They refute the so-called ignorant pundits with cold hard facts.

Crisis of Credit

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.One of the best explanations of the current credit crisis. It shows how ordinary homeowners defaulting aren’t solely to blame and the problems are systemic tracing back to the lowering of the Fed rate and repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 that allowed creation of mortgage-backed securities. But I’m no economist and reasons are far more complex that I could even begin to explain here. The sociological impacts on the neighborhoods however are only beginning to show with abandoned homes that are only making the problem worse.