Greater Depression? Shocking Images Show Horror Of America’s New ‘Breadlines’

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“It could never happen again…”

A quick Google search shows the horrific scenes from the 1930s as Americans lined up by the thousands for food as The Great Depression struck fast, hard, and deep…

And here is today’s shocking ‘breadlines’ – This video shows hundreds of cars waiting to receive food from the Greater Community Food Bank in Duquesne, near Pittsburgh…

The last two food bank giveaways drew massive crowds and caused major delays on Route 837. When they had one at Kennywood last week, it drew over 800 cars and backed up for miles.

How did America go from “greatest economy ever” to “Greater Depression” so fast?

And don’t forget, we just had the biggest spike in joblessness… ever…

Source: ZeroHedge

Retailers Prepare For Civil Unrest; Boarded-Up Stores Seen From SoHo To Beverly Hills

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High-end stores across the country have been boarding up their stores in anticipation of civil unrest due to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

In Beverly Hills, the Pottery Barn and West Elm stores near Rodeo Drive were spotted with boards across the windows according to TMZ.

Meanwhile, stores in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Paris, Vancouver and elsewhere were similarly boarded up.

Thanks China.

Source: ZeroHedge

Did President Trump Just Nationalize The Federal Reserve Bank?

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WAR WITH THE INTERNATIONAL BANKING CARTEL? OR NESARA?

Tucked in the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill passed by Congress is a curious provision that essentially outlines how the Treasury and the Federal Reserve will merge into one organization. Is this President Trump’s way of taking back America’s monetary sovereignty, or is it a smokescreen that expands the Fed’s power?

Source: by Greg Reese | InfoWars

“They Will Try To Stop It And They Will Fail”

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(USA.watchdog) Bo Polny: “In the last interview, I gave you a time point, and I am going to give it to you again. This time point is incredible, and it is a Biblical calculation.

I am waiting to see what happens at this time point because it is supposed to be a truly epic time point, and that time point is April 21, 2020.

It’s a time point where the world changes, one system comes to an end or something really obvious happens. So, coming into the month of May, we have this new time point or this new era.”

Polny says all his work is based on Biblical cycles. He goes through the last 7,000 years with a powerful PowerPoint presentation that culminates with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and predicts a time window for his return in the not-so-distant future. Polny also says his charts say the bottom is going to be ugly for the so-called long term investors. Polny says, “What it points to is a market drop that keeps falling. The potential target is 5,000 to 5,050 range for the DOW, and the time point for this comes at the end of the year 2022.”

Polny also says the U.S. dollar has topped and is going lower. Bo says, “I looked at a chart recently, and the dollar has a double top. It has not made new highs in a long time. It has just been sitting there. A lot of times with market events, you see the dollar move down with the stock market. (The dollar was down big time on Friday 3/27/2020. It lost more the 1% on a day the DOW lost more than 900 points.) So, that is unusual. The dollar moved with the stock market, and gold did not go anywhere. Gold was steady.”

Bo says, “The people in control of this system will try to stop the fall, and they will fail. For that reason, point E (15,000 on the DOW) is coming. . . . They will try to stop it, and they will fail. Look what’s happening. What we have seen in March was a crash. . . . We have not seen is a plunge. The plunge comes in April.”

There is lots more in this hour long interview, including a free 30 page PowerPoint presentation on the 7,000 year cycle that started in the days of Adam and Eve. Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with analyst Bo Polny of Gold 2020Forecast.com.

PowerPoint associated with the video presentation:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ylA48rUgsObrFrI_IhiWFh3pIDTF8Ilm/view

Ginnie Mae Weighs Bailout For Servicers After Major Mortgage-Lender Slashes 70% Of Workforce

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Update (1500ET): A top U.S. regulator is exploring whether to throw a lifeline to mortgage servicers stressed by the coronavirus pandemic by tapping a program meant to address natural disasters.

Bloomberg reports that, in order to prepare for an expected wave of missed payments as borrowers deal with the economic fallout from the virus, officials at Ginnie Mae are considering using relief programs most often activated in the wake of hurricanes, floods and other calamities, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mortgage-industry lobbyists unsuccessfully tried to get Congress to include some sort of liquidity facility for servicers in the stimulus bill. Still, many servicers expect the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to create a lifeline for servicers out of other money in the $2 trillion package.

Earlier this week, ZeroHedge highlighted the fact that numerous mortgage-related companies were facing considerable – and in some cases existential – crises in their day-to-day operations amid margin calls, illiquidity, and a drying up of demand for non-agency products thanks to The Fed’s intervention.

First, its was AG Mortgage Investment Trust which last Friday said it failed to meet some margin calls and doesn’t expect to be able to meet future margin calls with its current financing. Then it was TPG RE Finance Trust which also hit a liquidity wall and could not repay its lenders. Then, on Monday it was first Invesco, then ED&F Man Capital, and then the mortgage mayhem took down MFA Financial, which stated “due to the turmoil in the financial markets resulting from the global pandemic of the COVID-19 virus, the Company and its subsidiaries have received an unusually high number of margin calls from financing counterparties, and have also experienced higher funding costs in respect of its repurchase agreements.”

And now that mortgage-mayhem has impacted one of the largest U.S. mortgage firms catering to riskier borrowers.

Earlier in the week, we mentioned Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions – which specializes in so-called non-qualified mortgages that can’t be sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac – pointing out that the company would pause all originations of loans for two weeks “due to the constant shifts and the inability to appropriately evaluate credit risk.”

And now Sreeni Prabhu, co-chief executive officer of the firm’s parent, Angel Oak Cos., is slashing 70% of the comany’s workforce (almost 200 of its 275 employees).

“The world has dramatically changed,” Prabhu said.

“We have to slow down and re-underwrite in the new world that we’re in. That’s going to take some time.”

Bloomberg reports that Angel Oak is primarily known for its riskier lending arm, which is one of the leaders in funding non-qualified mortgages. Such loans include those made to borrowers who verify their incomes with bank statements instead of tax returns and others who may have recently filed for bankruptcy or had a previous foreclosure that hurt their credit scores.

Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions funded some $3.3 billion of non-QM loans in 2019, making it one of the biggest lenders in the space. In January, Angel Oak’s mortgage units said they planned to fund more than $8 billion of home loans in 2020, but the total is now likely to be perhaps a quarter of that, Prabhu said.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought non-QM lending to a virtual standstill industrywide. Many non-QM borrowers are self-employed, making them among the hardest hit by a broad slowdown in business activity.

Citadel Servicing Corp., another top non-QM lender, said it was halting originations for 30 days, and Mega Capital Funding Inc. told brokers last week that it was suspending its programs for those mortgages “for the foreseeable future,” according to a notice seen by Bloomberg.

Add this halting of originations to the margin calls of the fund side, and it all sounds ominously similar to July 2007, when two Bear Stearns hedge funds (Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Fund and the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund) – exposed to mortgage-backed securities and various other leveraged derivatives on same – crashed and burned and started the dominoes falling…

Source: ZeroHedge

Quicken Loans May Need Emergency Funding Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

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Detroit-based mortgage giant Quicken Loans could be facing a cash crunch in coming weeks and possibly need temporary emergency federal assistance if lots of borrowers stop making payments on their home mortgages during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a news report.

The Wall Street Journal identified Quicken Loans as one of the major firms that are bracing for a wave of missed mortgage payments that would require them to quickly come up with billions of dollars that they hadn’t planned on.

This liability would pertain to mortgages that Quicken Loans services. Those are mortgages for which Quicken collects the borrower payments, then passes the payments on to investors who own the mortgages.

Quicken Loans, which survived the Great Recession and real estate market collapse, greatly expanded its mortgage servicing portfolio in the 2010s yet is still better known for originating mortgages.

The company is one of Detroit’s largest employers and the biggest revenue-generator in the business empire of its founder Dan Gilbert.

Mortgage servicers typically must advance the planned mortgage payments to the investors — regardless of whether borrowers make the actual payments that are due. The servicers are also responsible for payments when borrowers are granted a forbearance, or temporary suspension of their mortgage payments.

Even though mortgage servicers are eventually reimbursed for those advanced payments by entities such as Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac that guarantee mortgages, there is a timing mismatch, which can result in a cash crunch.

The Mortgage Bankers Association, an industry group, this week warned the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve that, under one theoretical scenario, should one-quarter of mortgage borrowers stop making payments or enter forbearance for six months or more, mortgage servicing firms could be on the hook for $75 billion to $100 billion or more.

“In normal and even stressed environments, such as a localized natural disaster, servicers can withstand this liquidity pressure,” Robert Broeksmit, the association’s chief executive, wrote in a letter this week to Treasure Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

“Widespread, national borrower forbearance at the levels being proposed in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, however, extends well beyond any servicer advance obligations previously envisioned, and is beyond the capacity of the private sector alone to support.”

A Quicken Loans spokesman on Tuesday would not comment on whether the company is facing any potential cash crunch because of mortgage servicing. Quicken was among the first large companies in Detroit to have employees work from home in hopes of slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

“What I can tell you is that Quicken Loans continues to have record-breaking mortgage origination days and weeks,” Aaron Emerson, senior vice president of communications, said in an email. “This is occurring while more than 98% of our team members work from home.”

Liquidity facility

The mortgage bankers association is recommending that the Federal Reserve set up a temporary lending program for mortgage services to keep them solvent during the coronavirus crisis. The program — known as a “liquidity facility” — should be set up before mortgage servicing companies are in a state of emergency, the association says.

The association’s letter described general conditions for mortgage servicers and didn’t name specific firms.

“Virtually no servicer, regardless of its business model or size, will be able to make sustained advances during a large-scale pandemic when a significant portion of borrowers could cease making their payments for an extended period of time,” Broeksmit wrote.

Last week, government-backed mortgage enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced they would suspend foreclosures and evictions for 60 days for borrowers impacted by the coronavirus crisis. Many of Quicken Loans’ mortgages are guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie and other government-backed enterprises.

Quicken pools the mortgages that it originates and bundles them into securities, which it then sells into the secondary market.

A representative for Pontiac-based United Shore, another major mortgage firm in metro Detroit that also services mortgages, could not be reached for comment.

By JC Reindl | Detroit Free Press

Real Money Becoming Unaffordium & Unobtainium

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Informative And Educational:

Are gold and silver becoming what Mike Maloney has always suggested, Unaffordium and Unobtainium? The last few weeks have given us a preview of how stretched the physical gold and silver markets can become when the markets move. Join Mike as he welcomes GoldSilver.com President Alex Daley for a special Retail Bullion Update.