VA Increases Travel Reimbursement for Eligible Veterans

Enhanced VA Mortgage Options Now Available for VeteransOptions Now Available for Veterans

SPECIAL VA HEALTH CARE ELIGIBILITY FOR VETERANS WHO SERVED IN COMBAT THEATERS1. SPECIAL VA HEALTH CARE ELIGIBILITY FOR VETERANS WHO SERVED IN COMBAT
THEATERS

This info has been slow to get out! Please share at any and all
opportunities. Particularly those of you actively engaged in support of
the active military, Guard and Reserves.

It also has implications for Combat Veterans who applied for enrollment
after 16 January 2003 and for new enrollees discharged from active duty
on or after 28 January 2004.

Feed to Amvets Post 333 CH 17 TV programs

http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php/Solon   Amvets visit to Eagle Nursing Home 12/15

Amvets Veterans Day Cerremonies at Merrill Park 11/11

Welcome Home From Iraq Cookout for 126th Aviation Given by Amvets Post 333

Cape Cod Times  article on State support for Veterans seeking lawyers at no cost

Cape veterans will have a new VA outreach soon. Thanks to all veterans and elected officials who made it happen.

Amvets Post 333 requesting a  Veterans Seminar Nite with Congressman Delahunt to discuss veterans legislation needs, and  answer questions of veterans interest. This seminar will be open to all vets and fanily members. Site, date, time TBD

There are almost 300 bills effecting veterans working their way through the legislation process for 2007, many of these bill may bring changes to your coverage. Visit the US House or Senate for info.

Amvets Post 333 has requested in an open letter 4/1/07 to the Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans affairs to propose legislation to eliminate the co-pay for VA perscriptions, increase the table for DIC and Compensation.

FLASH- Veterans' Disability Commission adopts recommendations by Amvets Post 333 Dec. 2007- This is the most important news for Vets in decades. On April 11, 2007 Commander Sayers directed the Adjutant to draft a letter requesting the Congress raise VA disability Rates and other changes

The "Register" has a great article 11/ 8 on the new Vets Center on West Main St. in Hyannis by Nicloe Muller. Please read or google the story, its to help our Vets.

1/11/08-US TRIPLE A CREDIT RATING AT RISK FROM WELFARE COSTS

VA to hire Iraq, Afgan Vets -For more info Visit

http://www.veteranshour.com/

Origin of Subprime Mess Source of Passionate Debate-Dunstan Prial

One of the more passionate debates attached to the flameout of subprime mortgages in the U.S. has grown out of efforts to pinpoint its origins.
A particularly contentious argument holds that community activists and others who pushed for an end to discriminatory practices by lenders in minority and low-income communities in the 1970s and 1980s inadvertently contributed to the mess by pressuring banks to loan money to people who could never repay it.
Here’s the crux of the argument: starting with the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977, lenders, under pressure from fair housing activists and sympathetic politicians, began looking for ways to increase their presence in minority and low income communities. That was the first step in a long march toward a relaxation of lending standards. Borrowers in recent years could even get mortgages without having to verify income or put any money down.
A significant turning point occurred in 1992, when the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston issued a report that claimed discriminatory lending practices – called “redlining” because bankers allegedly drew red lines around neighborhoods to be avoided – were widespread and deep-rooted.  It was a short leap from the release of this report to a dramatic uptick in the number of high interest loans – subprime loans -- made to people who never would have been approved a few years earlier.
Stan Liebowitz, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, has for years been a vocal critic of the Boston Fed report, and now argues that it was a primary catalyst for the current mess.
“Maybe they believed there was discrimination, but they came up with the completely wrong prescription,” Liebowitz said in an interview. “And even if there was discrimination going on, it makes no sense to give people loans that they don’t qualify for and that they will wind up defaulting on.”
Liebowitz published a paper of his own in 1998 refuting the findings of the Boston Fed report and arguing against any slackening of standards. He said his argument was fairly simple: “If you weaken the lending standards you’re gonna wind up with a lot of defaults because that’s what the lending standards were there for in the first place.”
He said he’s hardly surprised that that’s exactly what has happened.
Moreover, Liebowitz argues that weakened lending standards opened the door to predatory lenders, creating an environment conducive for them to ply their risky loans in minority and low-income communities.
But some experts argue much to the contrary.
“The notion that the community reinvestment movement is somehow responsible for the rise in predatory lending is simply flat out wrong,” said Gregory D. Squires, a sociology professor at George Washington University, who has written extensively on fair housing issues.
Squires and likeminded others say the problem got out of hand not when subprime loans began proliferating in low-income and minority neighborhoods, but rather when those loans started being packaged into mortgage-backed securities that would prove extremely profitable (for a while) to investors.
“Because those loans could be sold readily (to investors), the problem wasn’t so much lax underwriting standards as intentional disregard for common sense underwriting,” Squires said.
Indeed, that demand among investors served as a powerful incentive for loan originators to continue approving risky loans because they knew there would be a market for them.
Kathleen Day, with the non-profit Center for Responsible Lending, said the federal government “has always tried to encourage banks to expand the markets they were serving, especially for those who were locked out.” But the government never encouraged banks “to cut corners in those underserved communities,” she said. “The lending industry, which includes the secondary mortgages markets, took it to the next step.”
Day said that as the U.S. housing market boomed earlier this decade demand on Wall Street exploded for subprime-backed securities. That demand, she said, was based on the assumption that housing prices would go up forever.
“They had such an appetite for this stuff – securities with a higher market return, underpinned by real estate,” she said.
At least one activist -- Cathy Mickens, executive director of the Neighborhood Housing Services of Jamaica --  said she hopes the mistakes of the past are used to fix the broken mortgage system. That would entail the government and the lenders working together to reach the million of Americans facing foreclosure.
Subprime loans, she said “helped a lot of people in our communities get homes. But then it just became a weapon and used to victimize a lot of people. It’s not the product itself that should be blamed; it’s the people who misuse the product.”