February 3rd, 2010
Debtors with mortgage deficiencies are not in the clear as they think they are. Creditors are waiting for the opportune time to take the unknowing debtor to the cleaners and garnish everything they own and have worked hard for. If debtors don’t protect their assets and them self from the affects of mortgage deficiencies banks will sue and obtain a judgment for the deficiency. The court will allow the creditors to freeze the debtors bank accounts and garnish their wages for years to come. Read this heart wrenching story on the reality behind foreclosure: Mortgage lenders pursue homeowners even after foreclosure
Dont subject your self to the risks of creditor extortion join the Freedom From Creditor network today.
Posted in asset protection, bankruptcy, debt settlement | No Comments »
December 18th, 2009
One card that we recently found out about has a 79.9% interest rate. Now if that is not a legal loan shark what is? To read more about this credit card company scam check out this article. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34468260/ns/business-personal_finance/
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November 3rd, 2009
The Uniform Commercial Code is a set of uniform laws written by the American Law Institute and the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws governing commercial transactions. It took over ten years to originally draft the UCC, and a further fourteen years for the UCC to be implemented across the United States. The creation of the UCC began in 1940 in an effort to “attack major commercial problems with comprehensive legal solutions.” The Code became effective at midnight on June 30, 1966 , and applies to transactions entered into and events occurring after that date. The UCC helps to promote interstate commerce by making it simpler to pursue transactions in various jurisdictions. The Code covers the sales of goods, commercial paper, bank deposits and collections, letters of credit, bulk transfers, warehouse receipts, bills of lading, investment securities and secured transactions. The UCC has been adopted by all states except Louisiana.
The Uniform Commercial Code adopts a filing approach, under which an abbreviated notice or financing statement is filed with the appropriate filing officer evidencing that a debtor and secured party intend to engage in a secured transaction using specified collateral as security. In plain language, the Uniform Commercial Code allows a creditor to notify other creditors about a debtor’s assets used as collateral for a secured transaction by filing a public notice (financing statement) with a particular filing office. When a business applicant pledges collateral on a loan, UCC search results tell lenders whether others have filed a claim against the same collateral.
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October 27th, 2009
A judgment lien is a court ordered lien that is placed against the home or property when the homeowner simply fails to pay a debt. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when the homeowner has a judgment lien against his or her home and wants to sell it, the judgment lien has to be paid in full before the home or property can be sold. Judgment liens can be placed against the property for a variety of reasons such as unpaid credit card bills, utility bills, department store bills, landscaping or home improvement bills, and just about any bill that the homeowner has failed to pay in a reasonable amount of time. Any bill that can cause one to end up in court can result in a judgment lien.
A judgment lien is different than a trust, in that the judgment lien holder cannot foreclose on the home or the property as trust holder can. Judgment lien holders can demand payment, but ultimately they must wait for the homeowner to sell the property before they can expect to be paid the money that they are owed according to the judgment. Luckily for the judgment lien holder, the court will typically assign an interest rate to these liens so that the lien holder is compensated for their waiting as the interest will continue to accrue until the debt is paid in full.
Of course, judgment liens require court action. A creditor will take the homeowner to court where the judge will determine if the homeowner does in fact owe the creditor any money. If the court decides that the creditor is owed the money, and the homeowner will not or cannot make payment, the judge could order that a judgment lien be placed against the property. The judgment lien will then be entered into land records offices for the city or county (county recorder) so that the home cannot be sold without repayment of the debt. Once the lien is filed with the land records office, the judgment lien is said to be attached to the property, meaning that it cannot legally be sold without paying off that lien. If the judgment lien is not listed at the land records office, then it means that the debt or lien is not legally attached to the property and does not need to be paid off to sell the home.
A home or property can have numerous liens against it, which may present a problem when the home is to be sold. Fortunately, the law says that liens will be paid off in the order that they were attached to the property, meaning the first lien will be paid first, the second will be paid second, and so on. This is a law that was basically developed for when a home is foreclosed on. If a foreclosed home is auctioned it will first pay off the first lien, then the second, and the third until there is no money left to pay the debts that are still attached or associated with the home. Of course, all trusts against the house, such as mortgages and home equity loans, would be paid off before the judgment liens, so its not uncommon for these liens to simply go unpaid because there is no money remaining to pay these debts after the trusts are paid. If there is not enough money to pay for all of the judgment liens and trusts on the home or property, they are then wiped out and can no longer be collected on. Of course, the auction will usually attempt to pay for all of these debts, and they are paid for until there is no money. The reason for this is that the new owner will not be able to get any home equity loans or second mortgages with judgment liens already on the home. If there is money left over after everything is paid off, the remaining amount would go to the foreclosed homeowner as all debts are paid.
Judgment liens are not something that anyone wants put against their home, but they are common enough. There comes a time for many people when they simply cannot pay a bill, and a judgment lien is ordered. Making a continued effort to pay down the debt is a great idea so that you don’t acquire large interest fees in addition to the initial dollar amount of the lien. The homeowner does not have to wait until the home is sold to pay off the lien, instead they can be paid off as soon as possible. The judgment lien is simply put in place so that the home cannot be sold without the debt being paid.
Posted in Secured Debt, asset protection | 1 Comment »
October 16th, 2009
It’s’ no big surprise that banks are trying to collect from the hoards of debtors who have defaulted on loans recently. As you can see from this article , Bank of America has lost 36 Billion dollars. Don’t feel bad if your among these borrowers. The government is bailing the bank out. Also, as you can tell by the numbers, you’re not alone when it comes to debt problems. The banks have more problems than you do.
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October 13th, 2009
You may be uneasy about the morals of trying to get something for nothing – I certainly was until I had a close look at the industry. The banks, credit card companies and collection agents all play on your guilt and fear. It’s not OK to owe money you can’t pay back. It seems shameful to be in that position, but take heart and open your eyes to the real picture.
If you borrow money from a friend, naturally you want to pay it back, otherwise he will be worse off and you will have gained at his expense. This is not nice and you would feel justifiably shameful. On the other hand, if your friend had given you counterfeit money and you had given him something worth ten times the money you got from him, would you still want to give him his money back?
How Banks Work
That’s precisely what happens when you take out a bank loan or apply for a credit card. Because of fractional banking, banks are allowed to lend out ten times the amount they have on deposit. When you apply for that loan or credit card, you may think that the money comes from the bank’s own funds, but you’d be wrong. The money does not exist until your signature brings it into existence.
Signing the application form enables the bank to lend out ten times the amount it gets back from you in repayments, interest and charges. This is real money coming in, which increases its reserves and on which it can invent ten times the amount to lend to other borrowers.
Meanwhile, without your permission, it hypothecates your loan, using it as security to raise further money on the markets. The most valuable commodity in all of this is your signature, because without it none of this can happen.
The recent banking crisis illustrates this perfectly. Banks were lending to people they knew very well could not repay the loans, but those signatures enabled the whole carousel to keep going. What brought it all crashing down was not the fact that the loans were not being paid, but that those holding the paper found out about it and realized that their paper was worthless.
The Whole Picture
Here’s the whole picture. The bank that gave you the loan did not have the money in the first place, so they brought nothing to the table. You brought your signature, which makes any money they invent worth ten times the amount. You signed a contract with the bank, which gave you one tenth of the actual value, paid in invented money. They told you nothing about this. This contract is so full of holes they will never dare show it to you – also they cannot show the original contract without revealing that it has been hypothecated without your permission – which is illegal.
The loan cost them nothing, so they are not out of pocket and the likelihood is that you have paid back at least 10% in repayments and charges. That 10% would have the same value as the original amount since it was paid in real money that you had earned and enabled the bank to lend ten times its value to another borrower. The bank cannot possibly lose money on the deal. Even if you make no repayments, they have still hypothecated the loan and packaged it with a load of others for sale on the market and made money that way.
This is not immoral, it’s your duty.
So, did you get something for nothing? No, you gave your signature in exchange for the money they gave you. You may think that your signature has little value, but what the bank gave you in return did not even exist without it and was worth ten times the amount they gave you, paid in invented money. Your signature was the most valuable thing in the whole deal. Without it, the bank would not have been able to make anything, so to them the ‘loss’ of something they did not have in the first place was a small price to pay for the use of your signature.
The mobster bankers are playing for high stakes:
“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes its laws.” Rothschild.
“The bankers own the earth. If you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.” Sir Josiah Stamp, Governor of Bank of England, 1920s.
All of this shows you that your credit card debt elimination has a good deal more moral justification than the original bank contract that gave rise to the ‘debt’ in the first place. By eliminating your credit card debt, we each play a small part in bringing them to account – something that is essential if we are to get the world out of their clutches and ourselves out of debt slavery.
www.FreedomFromCreditors.com is not a financial advisor website and nothing in this material should be taken as financial advice. The information here is presented for your education and interest only.
Posted in Credit Crisis, debt settlement | No Comments »
October 12th, 2009
A collection agency must spend a lot of time and money to validate a debt. It’s labor intensive, difficult to automate, and simply unprofitable. Debt collectors make the most money through volume, by quickly liquidating accounts and scaring people into paying them immediately. It isn’t profitable to properly document the debt and review for accuracy.
When a collector receives a file, they receive a name, amount, social security number (sometimes), phone number, and address. That is it. To properly respond to a dispute requires them to circle back with original creditor, ask for proof, hope that the creditor has it, tabulate some numbers and send that to the consumer.
You may be surprised to find out that many creditors keep terrible records. Many debt collectors make something up so they can continue to collect or ignore your disputes and use the brute force method of continued calls, letters, and harassment until you give up. In most cases (not with our clients), people don’t know their rights, and collectors get away with violating the law.
The proper response to some sort of weak or non-existent validation attempt is a follow up letter stating that what they sent is an insufficient response, not validation, and that you still consider the matter to be disputed. Properly validating an account is often an arena for mistakes and is where collectors commonly violate the law so you can be sure that we will call them out on their violations as we build a case against them.
If you want to win the collection game you have to know the rules.
Posted in FDCPA or Fair Debt Collection Practice Act | No Comments »
October 9th, 2009
We hear people say “If I declare bankruptcy, I can begin my credit report all over with a clean slate.”
That statement is false.
Many bankruptcy attorneys do not adequately understand or explain the effects of bankruptcy to their clients. Stated simply, bankruptcy is to the credit rating what the nuclear bomb is to war. When you file for bankruptcy, every credit account that you decide to include in bankruptcy will become an “included in bankruptcy” account. Additionally, a bankruptcy filing and bankruptcy discharge listing will appear in the court records section of your credit report. Because so many negative items are attached to the bankruptcy, it becomes difficult to remove all traces of the bad credit. If at all possible, you should avoid bankruptcy.
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September 3rd, 2009
The downturn in the economy is taking a toll on more than American’s saving and retirement plans. Many of us-about 1 in 3 are in debt up to our eyeballs and are losing sleep, too.
The National Sleep Foundation’s “Sleep in America” poll, released this spring, found that more than 30 percent or Americans are experiencing sleep problems due to financial concerns. The number of people sleeping less than six hours a night has jumped from 13 percent in 2001 to 20 percent today, while for those who reported getting eight hours or more, the percentage has dropped from 38 to 28.
DEBT PROBLEMS TURN INTO SLEEP PROBLEMS THAT CAN AFFECT YOUR HEALTH
“For most people, less than six hours of sleep is not enough,” said Robert Farney, M.D., medical director of the Intermountain Sleep Disorder Center at LDS Hospital. “In fact, getting enough sleep is just as important as eating right and staying fit.”
Being well-rested improves your ability to learn, memorize and reason. Inadequate sleep affects decision-making skills. This is why drowsy driving is a major cause of traffic accidents.
A lack of sleep is also associated with dangerous health problems. Individuals deprived of their slumber are more likely to have strokes, chest pain, irregular heartbeats, heart attacks, and congestive heart failure. They’re also more stressed, which can contribute to elevated blood pressure, heart disease risk, and even obesity.
There are a host of factors that keep us from getting enough rest; don’t let debt and financial woes be one of them. Credit card debt can cause sleep loss and health failure if you don’t do something about it.
Speak with one of our consultants NOW at 1(800)-871-6817 and start getting the sleep you deserve.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
July 29th, 2009
Here are some clips from a well respected newsletter put out by the Dow Jones Market Watch about consumer spending, deleveraging and where we are headed in this economy:
“Consumer debt has risen to a record 128% of disposable income, twice the debt level they carried 25 years ago. Their wealth has been shredded, and wages are falling. Credit is hard to obtain, yes, but many consumers are actively trying to reduce their debts, not add to them.
Consumers are in no position to drive the economy forward and, until they are, businesses won’t expand. Already, industrial capacity utilization has fallen to a record-low rate, indicating that companies have plenty of idle capacity to deploy before they need to build more.
The American economy has become more and more dependent on consumer spending over the years. In the 1960s, consumer spending accounted for about 63% of GDP. In the 1990s, it rose to 67%. But now it’s at a record 72%, thanks to the massive debt load consumers are carrying.
To achieve sustainable growth, either the consumer must spend more, or the economy must restructure to become less reliant on the consumer.
Unfortunately, either option will take time. Researchers at the San Francisco Fed found that it could take until 2018 for consumers to deleverage enough to be satisfied. If consumers raise their savings rate from near zero during the bubble to 10% by 2018, it would cut three-quarters of a percentage point off the typical 3.5% growth in consumer spending, according to researchers Reuven Glick and Kevin Lansing.
No jobs, no wage growth. It might take years for the labor market to fully recover as well: Most members of the Federal Open Market Committee said they expected it “to take five or six years” to bring the unemployment rate down to its long-run potential of around 5%. Job losses have slowed, but they haven’t stopped. The unemployment rate is expected to peak near 11%, according to Roubini. With a current jobless rate of 9.5%, there are now nearly six unemployed people for every job opening. For the first time since the Depression, most of those who are unemployed have lost their jobs permanently.
With so much competition for jobs, wages are dropping. The total wage bill for private industry has fallen at a nearly 5% annual rate over the past six months, the largest decline in the 50 years those data have been kept.
The only thing adding to income growth right now is government transfers, either from automatic stabilizers such as unemployment insurance or from the tax cuts in the stimulus package. Income from private sources declined in all 50 states during the first quarter.
The stimulus has now ramped up. While more money will be coming from Washington each month, the level won’t increase. Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research figures we need $1 trillion in extra stimulus per year to drive the employment back to 5%, but we’re getting only about a third of that.”
By the sounds of it, now is the time to get rid of your credit card debts. This is and unprecedented time known as the great American debt explosion.
Posted in Credit Crisis | No Comments »
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