America Finanzas: Contributor Story List

Mark F. Lapham: Artículos Números 1 - 10

1 MARK-TO-MARKET ACCOUNTING - PLUS ONE
[Comentario]
Mark F. Lapham
2009-03-15

Mark-to-market accounting is absolutely essential to ensure transparence and accountability among our commercial financial institutions. Any attempt to “temporarily” suspend mark-to-market accounting should be viewed as the irresponsible initiation of a new cycle of re-de-regulation, subsidized speculation, Bernie Madoff II, ad nauseum. Mark-to-market accounting must apply 100% to every commercial, capitalist, investor-rewarding business.

What we have to recognize is that residential mortage lending is not a commercial, capitalist, investor-rewarding business. It is labor intensive, low margin, cyclical, low growth (unless it induces runaway real estate price inflation), and both demand and supply lack true mobility and price sensitivity.

2 FALSE DICHOTOMY!
[Comentario]
Mark F. Lapham
2009-02-03

False dichotomy very pithily summarizes the horrific and ludicrous division of our nation since the Vietnam War. The extremists of both major political parties have so fostered mutual fear as to make it impossible to address real issues like energy independence, economic survival in the post-industrial economy, or the thermo-nuclear threat to our planet’s survival. In company with moderate, sensible people on both sides of the aisle, President Obama is attempting to cut through this ghastly farrago, back to the real America. We wish him God’s blessing and the best of luck.

Nowhere has the false dichotomy been more prevalent, and its impact more vicious, than in finance and economics.

3 Open letter to: The Honorable BARACK OBAMA, Senator for Illinois
[Comentario]
Mark F. Lapham
2008-10-21

Sir:

Soon you will be elected President. You will immediately be confronted with the necessity to change policies and make basic decisions regarding our country’s future. Most urgently, you will be presented with a myriad of policies and schemes to combat what is referred to as the “financial crisis”. The advice you receive will no doubt be extremely professional and useful. There remains the unpleasant possibility that you may not receive counsel regarding a number of simple functional problems because your advisors are more experienced in strategy than in operational detail. Please consider a few important and easily addressed opportunities presented by this life-long Republican:

1) Using bankruptcy proceedings or legislative fiat or both, take full control of FNMA, Freddie Mac, and the FDIC. Ignore urgings for privatization and “independence from political influence.”
2) Instruct those entities to accept any and all mortgages with a 10% down payment. Further instruct those entities to develop special programs for veterans and certain disadvantaged groups to receive mortgages with a 5% down payment. Under no circumstances should these entities be permitted to accept mortgages with a 0% down payment.
3) As you have yourself suggested, declare a 90 day moratorium on foreclosures.
4) Assemble for complete analysis all government and-agency-owned mortgage-backed securities and all holdings in foreclosure. Unbundle these and subject them to complete analysis for:
a. interest rate, original and current
b. payment, original and current
c. Down payment plus paid-in-principal as a % of total debt
5) Offer all unbundled mortgages with 10% (exemptions down to 5%) principal a full-term payout mortgage at a fixed rate of 5%
6) Rebundle the refinanced mortgages and resell those bundles
7) Reapply Glass-Steagall principles to re-establish regulated savings banks as the principal source of mortgage financing, requiring that only such regulated institutions will have access to FNMA, etc.

The foregoing will relieve the strangled real estate industry and set us well on the road to recovery.

Please consider this seriously.

Mark F. Lapham
Companydoctor01431@yahoo.com

4 A REAL BAILOUT FOR REAL ESTATE MORTGAGE FINANCING
[Comentario]
Mark F. Lapham
2008-09-29

Mark F. Lapham
Chief Operating Officer, Latin Americas Financial, Inc.

On September 29, the US House of Representatives defeated a $700 billion bailout plan for holders of mortgage-backed securities.

The message is: after forty years of deregulating the financial markets, our constituents won’t stand the taxpayers’ bailing out the speculators who profited most from that doctrinaire de-regulation. Live by your profit motive, die by your profit motive.

When Congress reconvenes on Thursday October 2, many of its members may have been forcefully reminded that home ownership is the wellspring of middle class financial stability, and that generally available real estate mortgage lending is the absolutely vital mechanism without which home ownership is impossible. The pressure will then be maximized for Congress to sign a blank check to bail out investors in mortgage-backed securities. There exists another more constructive alternative which one hopes might be explored: MAKE THE UNDERLYING MORTGAGES VIABLE BY SUBSIDIZING THE VARIABLE RATE INCREASES ABOVE THE ORIGINAL RATES.

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Mark F. Lapham
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