Democratic Underground - Meanspin is a partisan hack

that is determined to destroy the average citizen

Here's that speech on ARMs
Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan
Understanding household debt obligations
At the Credit Union National Association 2004 Governmental Affairs Conference, Washington, D.C.
February 23, 2004

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2004/20040223/default.htm

excerpt:

One way homeowners attempt to manage their payment risk is to use fixed-rate mortgages, which typically allow homeowners to prepay their debt when interest rates fall but do not involve an increase in payments when interest rates rise. Homeowners pay a lot of money for the right to refinance and for the insurance against increasing mortgage payments. Calculations by market analysts of the "option adjusted spread" on mortgages suggest that the cost of these benefits conferred by fixed-rate mortgages can range from 0.5 percent to 1.2 percent, raising homeowners' annual after-tax mortgage payments by several thousand dollars. Indeed, recent research within the Federal Reserve suggests that many homeowners might have saved tens of thousands of dollars had they held adjustable-rate mortgages rather than fixed-rate mortgages during the past decade, though this would not have been the case, of course, had interest rates trended sharply upward.

Reply #37: Meanspin is a partisan hack [View All]