Probing the loan modification waters

Well Obama has “allowed” homeowners to modify their loans. “Allowed”, but banks have to cooperate. The administration has however forgotten about investors like me. Some say it can be done, while others disagree. When 40% of all properties in the US are owned by investors, if the administration is serious about getting out of this mortgage created financial black hole, then loan mods for investors like me need to be considered.

Anyways, I decided to check out a few firms to modify my loan. Round about December 2008, I saw an ad by a traffic light and called up. There was a woman at the other end. And she said, YES we can modify for anybody. She said all I had to do was to give her 3000 USD. I thought to myself “Wow! if that is all I have to go thru, then this could be it”. So in curiosity I asked her what rate she could bring it down to….and she said “Well there are no guarantees!” What???!!! 3000 USD and no guarantees??!!! Ok smelled fraud and hung up. Well this was an ad on the side of the road; So I said to myself…no more calling up numbers seen around traffic lights:)

But as the months passed I started hearing legitimate(well thru legitimate media) advertisements via the radio…from law offices promising loan mods. I called all that I heard…3 of them. They all took messages and then all called back. All wanted to see me in their offices to give me a quote(yep take a few hours from my busy life and go see them..) In the end(of the 3 I heard over the radio) I selected something called “CPLS or CPLSPA”. They had a downtown office and was in the same building where I used to work once upon a time.

So I go to this “CPLSPA”’s office downtown. Nice office. Then the receptionist asks me to fill a form and I found all kinds of personal info asked therein, which I refused to answer(ssn, license number, dob, employer name etc). Anyways the gal at the counter overlooked that and asked me to wait. After 15 mins I was ushered in to a conference room, where I met this guy(I think he is a lawyer). The guy took data from me about my loan etc…empathized with me and said “of course we can help”. I was thrilled! So in curiosity I asked him how much it would cost me…The lawyer man told me it would be 1200 USD upfront + 250/pm for 3 months. Wow! So this was better than the 3000 deal with those guys I had from the wayside! Within 2000 USD my worries would be over . So I queried.. would my loan rate be brought down to ~4.5 -6% fixed? The lawyer man said, “there are no guarantees!” Again!!! I heard the “guarantee” word again!

In short folks, this whole thing about a third party helping to modify your loan looks a bogus deal. Without guarantees(what the end rate will be or by how much percentage your current rate would be brought down to) I think nobody should go into business with any of these law firms. The lawyers are going to milk this wealth creating opportunity to the hilt. It is too early to tell how many people will fall for this C- – - P! But this is going on. The media never seems to see all this until these snowball into another mega controversy. The fourth estate sleeps like they slept during the mortgage boom and poncy schemes :^). The fourth estate is a reactionary organization.

I tried to hire a third party because I have no time to do this on my own. I am now determined to go at it alone! And you should too, if you really want to modify your loan(no guarantees here either, but at least there would be no loss of physical money!) Third parties(as it stands today) are too good to be true. So if it is too good to be true, follow mummy’s advice!

 

JPA with Eclipse, Dali, Maven M2 plugin

Using Eclipse’s Dali to make a jpa(pojo) module with Maven M2 Plugin

(First install M2 Plugin if you have not..I was using Eclipse Ganymede, so Dali was already in, but M2 was not)
1) Created a mvn submodule(to a parent) using maven(m2) plugin
2) Archetype selected was archetype with group-id=com.rfc.maven.archetypes and artifact-id=jpa-maven-archetype
3) Then right-clicked on the submodule project and selected JPA Tools–> convert to JPA Project…
4) In the JPA facet selected Generic, then my db and schema and used openjpa(installed it locally and browsed to it) as the implementation library. Made sure that persistence.xml did not include class names(gives you an error “This mapped class is not specified in persistence unit..” otherwise..No clue why..but thinking it is because there were two persitence.xml files; one from the archetype in src/main/resources/META-INF and the other when using the Dali tool with a persistence.xml under “JPA Content”)
5) After converting to JPA project, right click on submodule project and select JPA Tools—>Generate Entities. This takes me to a screen that would allow me to select all my normalized perfectly designed db tables (synchronizing with persistence.xml was not checked). Once I said ok on that screen, code for entities were generated with no errors..Voila!

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Update on Feb 14th 2009: You could skip step 2 and use the Quickstart archetype instead of the jpa archetype and then do the rest of the steps too. Step 2 is a waste if you are using eclipse to convert a project to a JPA project.

 

Ali Velshi’s bull-crap “Gimme back…”

Ok folks..we all know the stock-market is a failed idea of capitalism. Otherwise why would we be bailing out mega corporations today?? The US and world economies are in death-throes because of it. So what do people with money do? Try every trick to stimulate a dead-idea via authentic-looking-old-ideas-in-new-bottle-spewing-programs like Ali Velshi’s latest “Gimme back my money” program. A great attempt at rekindling a dead-idea ..the stock-market

Stock-market is a place where we mix fortunes and in the end some in the know win, while others who have zero financial knowledge lose. The whole world’s fortune hangs on this one big pot of money called the stock-market. Such a human financial system is bound to give us more disasters – each time heftier than the previous.

People have to start to think for themselves. We are all urged share a portion of our paychecks in 401Ks so that people who know how all this works can play roulette with that money and make a killing ..while we wait patiently to enjoy until we are 65 . We thereby give up our liquidity and in a dire financial crunch if we were to ask for what we put in, we would be slapped with a penalty — What da @#$@ …it is MY money to start with and if I want to take it back for something I want to do immediately I get penalized?? That is in effect the stock market..So what may be an avenue for me to get out of that financial crunch?? You guessed right…use my credit card and get in more debt thanks to the killing interest rates charged by the ruthless credit card companies… I am more liquid if I have my own cash saved in the bank!

My point is this..we should all save what we throw away in 401Ks, in a bank..Yes, we would have to pay taxes, but it is better than spending sleepless nights thinking about how our money is faring under the greedy eyes of foxes! If a 25 year old person were to save 500 USD per month till 65 years he/she would save at a minimum 180,000. Well that is a given! Stock markets don’t guarantee a penny back…This risk-reward thing is pure bs. If that is not a bs, why are old people working till they fall dead in supermarkets? One could boost that further by investing for a few months in CDs. In a two family scenario, the family could save ~400,000 or more. The stock-market still can’t guarantee a penny back(but can guarantee you a life filled with tension which could give you a heart-attack )

In the future(at least within the next 10 years), there WILL be universal health. So a couple could live off 500,000 USD. I bet in the middle-class not a lot of people have at least that much in their stock-market when they retire, today. For the kid’s education…well 529 plans and pre-paid college plans guarantee you the money. So invest in those. (In the future students would opt more for online college education and hence there won’t be all this garbage fees to be paid for mortar-brick establishments)

It is time to bring back fixed pensions for retirees. This fast-cash methodology called the Las Vegas..er sorry the stock-market, is a disaster.

And programs like Ali Velshi’s which promote the stock-market and its virtues should be shelved! That is old-school if anyone considers what it has done to people’s lives(not rich people’s …but the middle-class’s)

 

Is Barak the real socialist or is it Bush?

Well in the last weeks of October 2008, when none of the other mud slung at Barak stuck, the republicans turned to calling Barak a socialist. Well, what IS really wrong in spreading the wealth around, anyways?? If everybody is a “have”(as opposed to a “have-not”) the world would be a happier place. What is wealth good for, if it does not do humanity any good?

Anyway, the argument from the republican side is baseless. Let us face it…socialism saved capitalism when the houses voted for the bailout And under Bush we have the first state-owned insurance company And the state owns or is going to own most of the houses:) And the state is going to own stocks in companies(oo-la private enterprise owned by the public like in China

So who is the real socialist? Or who made this country socialistic by falling asleep at the wheel??

 

Barak is NOT the first black prez…he is the first real American prez

Barak’s mother was a white lady, father a black man. So how can he be the first black prez?

He is black and white in equal measure. What would the black community feel if the whites said he was white? In equal measure they would be right!

The media is killing the moment with racial tones. Barak is a well-spoken and perhaps a very able administrator and I am thinking the media should concentrate on all things other than race. I don’t want to see divisive folks like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton given anymore limelight. We all have to move beyond seeing color and start looking at the abilities of a person. Divisive talk will not help in this regard.

But I suspect, the media will keep bringing these racial stats and racial dialogs and destroy Barak and his presidency. The news media in the US is capable of making and breaking people really fast.

I hope not. This day should be deemed as “out with the old ways” and “in with the new”. I voted for Barak because Palin was a bad choice for America. Mccain’s judging skills cost him my vote. Also I cannot trust the world with somebody who does not know how to use a computer or a cell phone:) (and somebody who does not know that Africa is continent:)

I hope Barak does all that he promised…provide low cost health care, bring jobs back(stop freaking outsourcing!), pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan(albeit victoriously) but still maintaining our leadership in the world(very precarious with Bush and Cheney screwing it all up for us..a very difficult but needed job), spread a bit of wealth(lower disparities of incomes between CEOs and workers…Why the heck should a CEO earn 500 times more than me???), lower the price of gas, promote alternate sources of energy(no unnecessary drilling to fatten CEOs), provide private-school kind of education to public school kids(we have the $$$ to do it, why not??)..

Those are a few of the changes I would like to see in the next four years.

On the first day of office, I would love to see a few of the old executive orders of Bush thrown in the garbage – notably, the executive order to allow offshore drilling that Bush and Cheney crafted for their cronies. Also sign-in stem-cell research – other countries are way ahead and we are afraid of the Christian right??

I hope that Barak is not a dud. I hope he restores my faith in democracy! I hope he is able to restore the govt of the people, for the people and by the people that Bush and Cheney have so effectively destroyed! No more of this “managed democracy” where people are afraid to exercise their basic rights(getting to be like living in say China, Russia, Cuba , Singapore etc)

 

How to convert flv to mp3 using a youtube url

download youtube-dl script (a python script)
download ffmpeg
run “python youtube-dl <url>” and get flv file to disk

(<url> is the youtube url)
then use ffmpeg to convert flv to mp3
ffmpeg -i <yourName>.flv -f mp3 -vn -acodec copy <someMp3>.mp3

 

Where is “Nowhere”?

Thanks to the media, I now know it is in Alaska (as in the bridge to Nowhere:)

 

News: “Palin has energized the base”

News: “Palin has energized the base”

Hope it is not McCain’s (eW! what a thought!)

Well democrats have no such problem. Look at Clinton for example…his base is always “energized”

Palin looks like a lady out of a xxx bondage movie ..or is it my old school ma’am I feared?

Her coming out of Alaska is like a moose exploring the city ..DANGEROUS to people around

 

What is the other term for a cruise with your gal?

Going on a cruise with your gal is what is really “Offshore drilling!” 

Well, first they hike the price of gas not based on demand or supply, but merely thru speculation. And blitz us with propaganda about foreign oil et al. And told us the conclusion is nothing other than offshore drilling. Forget drilling for oil…use electric vehicles, period. Not hybrid, but pure electric.

Somebody please tell me why hybrids cost this much? When I was a kid I used a pedal bike and at night the bike’s light came on thanks to the dynamo technology, which dates back to the 1880s. So why does this hybrid technology, which is the same as the dynamo technology, cost more??

Go green by using golf-cart technology. Is that difficult?? If so why??

 

Is citibank trying tricks to get more money??

Ok like everybody else, I have credit card balances.

I did a 0% transfer in Nov 2007 to Citibank credit card which expires in May 2008

I have a payment going out of my bank automatically, 6 days prior to due date(to make it doubly sure that I dont screw up my 0%:)

So things were going smooth since Nov 2007.

Today(that is the 4th of March 2008) I get a panic call at the office from my wife saying that Citibank has sent me a letter stating they dunno which acct to apply the money that was sent in to them!!!..and with a picture of my check attached. So I rush home. The letter stated that I should fax in my acct number etc. I got suspicious and thought it could be a mail “phishing” deal. Therefore I called the cust service and checked out my balance and recent payments to the debt. The voice at the other end said I was past due…WOW!

So I got into my online bank acct to see if somebody had cashed the check. On the back of the check it stated “UNABLE TO READ ACCT#”. I look at the check at bank site …I can read it all. So was the case with the pic of the check citibank sent in….What the F@#^ was going on…I thought…

I call them up…sure enough they jacked up my rate from 0 to a mega19.24% since they claimed they didnt receive the payment in time!!! So I tell the guy to get his manager…and she, the manager heard my story…Long story short she said she would set everything ok..Let’s see if they do that…Not counting on it..They all lie!

My thinking is that citibank as a whole is trying to pull a fast one on you the consumer. Once they jack up those rates at a credit card company it would be impossible for a non-entity human being like me to change it back to 0% unless God intervenes with a miracle. So in my case I think they deliberately tried to jack-up my rates stating some odd reason, even though I was paying the debt regularly on time. This is NOT a mistake Citibank made..That is sure!!..I think they are deliberately trying to harm people.

But I shall wait and see and blog what they do now…Will they bring down the jacked-up rate (caused by no fault of mine) or will they murder the common man?? Will see.

If anybody has had such things happen to them please blog in. I am bitter and angry that credit card companies go to unscrupulous lengths to harm honest people like me. In the past I can think of a similar incident when I had 0%…they changed the due date backwards and me didnt notice in time to change my bank-auto-pay-setup and long-story-short, my rate went sky-high and was unable to convince them that they pulled a fast one on me…it continued to stay at that humungous rate for a long time!!! They stole that money

Credit card companies are run by bastards, for sure! Never ethical!