“Anguish of self-employed as 'liar-loans' face ban (Guardian Unlimited)” plus 3 more

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• Anguish of self-employed as 'liar-loans' face ban (Guardian Unlimited)
• Rates on 30-year loans inch up to 5 percent (The World)
• SBA Tops $20 Million in Disaster Loans Approved for Georgia Residents; Urges Return of Completed Applications (Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance)
• Capitalism's Paradoxes, Writ Personal On Film (NPR)

Anguish of self-employed as 'liar-loans' face ban (Guardian Unlimited) Posted: 26 Oct 2009 01:18 PM PDT Buy Location: Minimum price: £20,000£30,000£40,000£50,000£60,000£70,000£80,000£90,000£100,000£110,000£120,000£130,000£140,000£150,000£160,000£170,000£180,000£190,000£200,000£225,000£250,000£275,000£300,000£325,000£350,000£375,000£400,000£425,000£450,000£475,000£500,000£600,000£700,000£800,000£900,000£1,000,000£1,100,000£1,200,000£1,300,000£1,400,000£1,500,000£1,600,000£1,700,000£1,800,000£1,900,000£2,000,000£2,100,000£2,200,000£2,300,000£2,400,000£2,500,000£2,600,000£2,700,000£2,800,000£3,000,000 Maximum price: £20,000£30,000£40,000£50,000£60,000£70,000£80,000£90,000£100,000£110,000£120,000£130,000£140,000£150,000£160,000£170,000£180,000£190,000£200,000£225,000£250,000£275,000£300,000£325,000£350,000£375,000£400,000£425,000£450,000£475,000£500,000£600,000£700,000£800,000£900,000£1,000,000£1,100,000£1,200,000£1,300,000£1,400,000£1,500,000£1,600,000£1,700,000£1,800,000£1,900,000£2,000,000£2,100,000£2,200,000£2,300,000£2,400,000£2,500,000£2,600,000£2,700,000£2,800,000£3,000,000+ Min bedrooms: No preference1+2+3+4+5+ This content has passed through fivefilters.org. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Rates on 30-year loans inch up to 5 percent (The World) Posted: 26 Oct 2009 07:33 AM PDT Comments The comments below are from users of theworldlink.com and do not necessarily represent the views of The World or Lee Enterprises. Participation Guidelines Note: There is a maximum of 200 words per comment. If you wish to post more, please visit our forum. This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

SBA Tops $20 Million in Disaster Loans Approved for Georgia Residents; Urges Return of Completed Applications (Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance) Posted: 26 Oct 2009 11:43 AM PDT ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced today that it has approved over $20 million in federal low-interest disaster loans to Georgia homeowners, renters and businesses who sustained damages from the severe storms and flooding that occurred from September 18 through October 8, 2009 in Georgia. "Currently, 584 SBA disaster loans for homes and businesses have been approved in the amount of $21,984,400 for affected victims," said Frank Skaggs, Director of SBA's Field Operations Center East. "We are pleased to be able to approve these loans so the residents and businesses of Georgia can start to rebuild and resume their normal lives." "Assisting individuals and business owners to recover from a disaster is our primary mission," Skaggs added. "We are encouraging anyone affected by this disaster to visit one of the Centers located throughout the disaster area to obtain individual assistance with completing their loan applications from our representatives. I ask anyone who has not completed their disaster loan application to do so and return the application as soon as possible." Homeowners, renters, businesses and non-profit organizations of all sizes in the following counties in Georgia are eligible to apply for both SBA's Physical and Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDLs): Bartow, Carroll, Catoosa, Chattooga, Cherokee, Cobb, Coweta, DeKalb, Douglas, Fulton, Gwinnett, Heard, Newton, Paulding, Rockdale, Stephens and Walker. SBA also offers EIDLs to help meet working capital needs of small businesses, and most private non-profit organizations of all sizes. Small businesses and most private non-profit organizations in the following counties are eligible to apply only for Economic Injury Disaster Loans: Banks, Barrow, Butts, Clayton, Dade, Dawson, Fayette, Floyd, Forsyth, Franklin, Gordon, Habersham, Hall, Haralson, Henry, Jackson, Jasper, Meriwether, Morgan, Pickens, Polk, Spalding, Troup, Walton and Whitfield in Georgia; Cherokee, Cleburne, DeKalb and Randolph in Alabama; Oconee in South Carolina; and Hamilton County in Tennessee. EIDL assistance is available regardless of whether the business suffered any property damage. If a borrower does not know how much of their loss will be covered by insurance or other sources, the SBA will consider making a loan for the total loss up to its loan limits, provided the borrower agrees to use insurance proceeds to reduce or repay their SBA loan. Disaster loans up to $200,000 are available to homeowners to repair or replace their damaged or destroyed primary residence. Homeowners and renters are eligible up to $40,000 to repair or replace damaged or destroyed personal property. Businesses and non-profit organizations of any size may borrow up to $2 million to repair or replace damaged or destroyed real estate, machinery and equipment, inventory, and other business assets. SBA can also lend additional funds to homeowners and businesses to help with the cost of making improvements that prevent or minimize the same type of disaster damage in the future. Interest rates are as low as 2.750 percent for homeowners and renters and 4 percent for businesses with terms up to 30 years. The SBA sets loan amounts and terms based on each applicant's financial condition. Anyone unable to visit one of the Centers may obtain information and loan applications by calling the SBA's Customer Service Center at 1-800-659-2955 (or 1-800-877-8339 for the hearing impaired) Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. EDT, or send an email to disastercustomerservice@sba.gov. Business loan applications may be downloaded from www.sba.gov/services/disasterassistance. Applications may be returned to any of the Centers or mailed to: U.S. Small Business Administration, Processing and Disbursement Center, 14925 Kingsport Road, Fort Worth, Texas, 76155. Georgia disaster victims may visit SBA's secure Web site at https://disasterloan.sba.gov/ela/ to apply for disaster loans. The filing deadline to return applications for physical property damage is November 23, 2009. The deadline to return economic injury applications is June 24, 2010. For more information about the SBA's Disaster Loan Programs, visit our Web site at www.sba.gov/services/disasterassistance. Release Number: 10-054, GA 11886/11887 This content has passed through fivefilters.org. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Capitalism's Paradoxes, Writ Personal On Film (NPR) Posted: 26 Oct 2009 10:24 AM PDT Enlarge HBO Films/Blowback Productions Schmatta features firsthand accounts from the workers, labor organizers, manufacturers and designers who built their careers in New York City's Fashion District. Joe Raico, a fabric cutter from Queens, spent 40 years working in the garment industry. HBO Films/Blowback Productions Schmatta features firsthand accounts from the workers, labor organizers, manufacturers and designers who built their careers in New York City's Fashion District. Joe Raico, a fabric cutter from Queens, spent 40 years working in the garment industry. In good times, most of us don't give much thought to capitalism — we simply live within it. All that changes when things go bad, which is why we're now seeing a flood of movies about the economy. The most publicized is Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, but frankly, it serves up the kind of scattershot tirade I used to hear in my college dorm. If you actually want to learn something, two other new documentaries do far more to explain how grand economic forces shape our daily lives. Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags is an engrossing, elegiac history of the New York garment industry, largely seen through the eyes of those who've worked there. Starting with the early sweatshops, filmmaker Marc Levin shows how the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 — in which 146 female workers died after being locked in their burning workplace — helped jump-start the entire American labor movement, leading to widespread prosperity. By the '50s, garment workers were buying houses in the suburbs and sending their kids to college. Four decades ago, 95 percent of our clothes were made in America. Today, it's 5 percent. What happened? The short answer is the globalized marketplace. Companies began finding it more profitable to outsource their manufacturing to places like China or Bangladesh, where non-unionized workers make one-twentieth the wage of their American counterparts. Meanwhile, back in the Garment District, the unions declined and American workers lost their jobs, even as the companies that once employed them prospered and fashion designers became celebrities selling an image of luxury. That image, and those luxuries, won't be bought by the people you meet in Schmatta, nearly all of whom love the garment industry but can no longer find work there. Nor will you see them being worn by the ordinary homeowners you meet in American Casino, Leslie and Andrew Cockburn's film about the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Following E.M. Forster's old command — "Only connect" — this smart, touching documentary traces the connections between Wall Street's high-flying practices and the countless citizens on Main Street who now face bankruptcy and eviction. Enlarge Argot Pictures American Casino explores the communities hit hard by the sub-prime mortgage crisis, including this block of foreclosed row houses in Baltimore. Argot Pictures American Casino explores the communities hit hard by the sub-prime mortgage crisis, including this block of foreclosed row houses in Baltimore. American Casino links the crisis to three things. The ideological belief in unregulated capitalism embraced by the likes of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan; a political class, both Republican and Democratic, that lifted longstanding restraints on financial institutions; and brokers who used their new freedom to pioneer risky financial strategies, from the feverish promotion of sub-prime loans to mathematical models that supposedly made it safe to create a market in those dodgy loans. The result was a deeply corrupt system in which everyone from local mortgage officers to Wall Street banks made big profits on dangerous transactions, then passed on the risk like a hot potato. As one in-house memo at Standard and Poor's put it: "Let's hope we're all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falls." Of course the house of cards did fall, and as the film shows, we now have empty McMansions whose untended swimming pools breed West Nile mosquitoes. American Casino introduces us to several people who are losing their homes — a group that's disproportionately African-American. Far from being schemers, they're likable, heartbreaking figures who teach school and work for churches. And using interviews with former financial insiders, the Cockburns reveal how the whole sub-prime loan business wasn't just predatory — systematically targeting the poor and preying on ignorance — but often criminal. Near the end of Schmatta, history comes full circle when, a century after the Triangle Shirt Waist fire, female garment workers again burn to death — this time in Bangladesh. Looking at their bodies, we're reminded of the great paradox also revealed in American Casino: Capitalism is the greatest engine for creating growth and wealth the world has ever known — even Karl Marx was impressed — but if you don't control it, capitalism can be as destructive as it is creative. It creates good jobs for American garment workers, then takes them away, invents seemingly magical ways of letting people buy homes, then throws them out. Nothing is immune from its genius for creative destruction, although one thing does seem to remain constant. The system is far kinder to bankers and CEOs than to those who cut fabric or teach in our schools. John Powers is a film critic for Vogue , for whose Web site he writes the column Absolute Powers. This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

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