According to a report from April (which came up on the first page of a Google search for “average cable rates 2009″ and was about as far as I wanted to go with search time), the average bill was just over $70 by the end of 2008.

That represented about an 8% increase overall for just that six month period, well above the rate of inflation. Interestingly, it didn’t go up really at all for the year and a half before that. There are other intriguing bits in the report, including the prediction from the research firm Centris that “the number of people canceling cable outright will remain small,” and the presumption that “more consumers are taking higher-end options, like DVRs and HD service.”

As economic times got tougher, I can see how people would do the math and figure that instead of seeing first run movies at the theater, they’d maybe add on to their cable package or get the recording service so they could catch more entertainment at home. Given that, some confidence that people would stick with their cable even in the face of a relatively steep increase in costs makes sense.

That’s not the case, though – movie ticket sales are actually up this year over 2008, and while Blockbuster is struggling (boohoo), Netflix is flying high.

So if people are still willing to go spend money on first run movies and rentals, why are they also willing to pay more for cable?

Because we’re SUCKERS, that’s why.

I’m not saying that I don’t miss cable. Ultimately, I’m a sucker too. I miss Burn Notice terribly, and during my unfortunate time as an unemployed American, there have been numerous times when I’ve craved daytime TV that wasn’t filled with show after show of tough talking judges, soap operas, and DNA testing. With dozens and perhaps hundreds of channels, cable provides at least the hope of being able to find something to watch at any time of day when you just don’t feel like cleaning the kitchen, decluttering a closet, or doing anything else that might be remotely productive.

But that’s it, of course. We’ve become a society that would rather watch a cooking show than cook, for heaven’s sake. That’s the only explanation for an entire channel of food and cooking shows, and a very successful one at that, and countless cooking shows on non-food networks. We ought to be the best cooks on the planet, but interspersed into those shows and all of the other shows we watch are commercials telling us about great deals at restaurants or meals that can be tossed into the microwave in a bag and be toppled into a bowl, ready to serve. And why do we go to the restaurants and buy the complete meal bags? Because we pay for the privilege of getting to see commercials convince us that we deserve to go spend even more money on a night out or a quick and easy meal!

Keep in mind that hour long shows average about 44 minutes of actual programming, with the extra 16 minutes being consumed by news spots, PSAs, and commercials. As it has always been, the shows are really just a way to get you to watch the advertisements. Sure, with a DVR you can record a show and skip the commercials, but that costs more money too.  You are subsidizing the system by skipping the commercials, really, paying more so that those poor souls who are forced to watch commercials in real time are not faced with even higher cable rates.

Sorry, but it’s all kind of silly. While we are bombarded with news about how health care reform will bankrupt America, or how a sin tax on soda is just plain un-American, people are being sticky with their cable subscriptions so they can mostly sit on their butts for FIVE HOURS A DAY of TV? Cable should be the FIRST thing people drop when they look to cutting expenses. Or waistlines, blood pressure, or brain drain, for that matter.

That’s all I have to say about that.

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Take, for example, “swine flu anxiety.” Vaccine shortages, taking too many sick days when unemployment is breaking 10%, schools shutting down because there just aren’t enough kids who can come in, concerns about the economic impact of so many sick days, questions about whether or not people are actually suffering from the swine flu in the first place … all of this is coming together and creating anxiety that isn’t exactly good for your health either.

There’s a simple way to relieve swine flu anxiety, of course – stop watching the news. That won’t get rid of all of it, of course, but cutting out your media intake of swine flu updates is, is my non-medical-background opinion, probably good for your health.

All of that “don’t pay attention to the media” aside, here’s a swine flu story from Business Week that has created a bit of controversy:

To the list of hundreds of schools, hospitals, and community health centers that have received limited allocations of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, you can now add some of New York’s largest employers. In the past week or so 13 companies, including Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, have begun receiving small quantities of the vaccine, according to city health authorities.

Not really that big of a deal, in itself. Corporations have an interest in keeping their employees healthy, and any doses received are supposed to go only to high risk individuals such as pregnant women or those with chronic conditions that may impair their immune system.

What’s interesting to me is that people are mad because it’s Wall Street firms in particular who are receiving these allocations. From an update in Business Week a few days later:

Following a Nov. 2 story on BusinessWeek.com, and its subsequent pickup on NBC’s Today Show and other media outlets, politicians, lobbyists, and bloggers launched blistering attacks against New York City health officials, the White House, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), and, of course, the “fat cat bankers” themselves.

“It’s obscene that Wall Street bankers think they are entitled to private shipments of H1N1 vaccinations while health-care workers, pregnant women, and other at-risk Americans are either waiting in line for hours or getting turned away because of shortages,” said Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger of the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, in a press release. The SEIU—the largest union of health-care workers in the country, with more than 2 million members—is calling for banks and corporations to donate their vaccine doses to local hospitals.

“Obscene.” Yikes.

As much as I dislike some of the things these companies have done, I don’t like the spin. There is an implication that somehow these Wall Street firms are using their clout to get vaccines for their gazillionaire executives, to the detriment of poor, uninsured Americans. That doesn’t appear to be the case. If they’re truly giving the vaccines to pregnant and ill employees, it is small and mean to accuse them of doing anything out of line.

Besides, the fat cat executives already got vaccinated at the secret New World Order Illuminati Bilderberger Freemason clinic.

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I don’t know that I believe online petitions do all that much good, but I thought the text of this one was particularly compelling and I liked the option to have a printed letter delivered as well. If you are so inclined, you could also print out a copy and send a paper copy by mail. You could include a timeline of your experience.

You can find address for Senators here, and for Representatives here. And hell, if you’re trying to get a modification, you’re used to sending lots of stuff through the mail anyway and may as well send a copy to your state legislators as well – find them here.

The Congressional Oversight Panel’s contact form can be found here, and they invite personal experiences – tell them. I found an e-mail address for Elizabeth Warren, the chair, but am not going to publish it. If you want to try to hunt it down on your own, knock yourself out.

Good luck to everyone, and thank you for stopping by. I hope you’ll continue to visit.

Note: I’ve highlighted my favorite parts.

LoanSafe Petition

We the undersigned strongly advocate that the Federal Government create immediate, transparent and more equitable regulations for the banking industry regarding loan modifications and pending foreclosures, particularly in regards to HAMP and 2MP. Tens of thousands of homeowners across this nation have spent hundreds of hours dealing with mortgage servicers who have little incentive to actually help them/us achieve permanent loan modifications; while in the process of obtaining a modification, many homeowners have been lied to, misled, foreclosed upon or threatened with foreclosure.

We propose an immediate halt to all foreclosures until new, mandatory guidelines are established and that these guidelines be overseen by a new Consumer Protection Agency, which was recently recommended by President Obama and endorsed by Sheila Bair, chair of the FDIC. We also demand that these guidelines include not only a simple 31% of the borrower’s gross monthly income, but that the Net Present Value (NPV) test: (a) be created and administered by the government, not the banks, (b) have its data, assumptions and formula published so that they may be verified by the public, and (c) be made available at www.makinghomeaffordable.gov in a calculator form so that people can learn immediately, with the other eligibility questions available there now, whether they’re eligible for HAMP. We are also strongly advocating that additional guidelines be formulated that would open the door for modifications at an even a lower rate in significant hardship conditions and for write-downs of principal when homes are severely underwater .

We propose there be clear and enforceable guidelines regarding the time between the initial request for a modification and the achievement of a permanent modification, and that there be no reward to the bank for a trial modification. The rewards, if any, should be only for successful permanent modifications.

There is documented evidence that the current system is not working, as reflected in the rising foreclosure rates across the nation and the thousands of people who attend NACA “Save the Dream” events in an attempt to get their loans modified. There is ample evidence that the current HAMP and other modification guidelines are being interpreted differently by each bank, reflected in many places including the scenarios described by the 20,000+ members of the loansafe.org community. Additional evidence can be found in hundreds if not thousands of complaints and requests for assistance sent by struggling homeowners to their Senators and Congressmen across the country, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and other agencies that have been instituted to regulate these banks.

Mr. Bryan Bolton, SVP of CitiMortgage, has stated that “modifying within HAMP guidelines is in the best interests of our borrowers, our country and our company. With or without fees, it’s almost always in the best interests of the servicers to modify.” Unfortunately, these are empty words. Mr. Bolton, like so many other CEO’s, tells Congress one thing, while he and they continue to do quite the opposite.

Tougher mandates need to be placed on these banks that are simply not modifying loans at the rate they could or have been perpetuating to Congress and the media.

Homeowners are not the ones not complying with the rules. The banks are creating their own set of rules and regulations and are consistently “losing” paperwork during the application process, denying modifications for unjustifiable reasons after the trial payments have been successfully completed, and proceeding with the foreclosure process. This is often happening unbeknownst to the homeowners who are still faxing, mailing and e-mailing reams of duplicated documentation as requested by their lenders.

The American Dream has now become the American Nightmare courtesy of the banking industry, which is taking a cavalier approach to the stress, heartache and despair caused by the current lack of oversight, transparency and enforcement of loan modifications. It is of the utmost importance that action be taken to correct this travesty in order to preserve home ownership for the thousands of Americans that are and will continue to be struggling in this economic time.

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I can save $600 a year if I spend $2 per person instead of $5 per person, once a week. Can’t argue with that math, can you?

Of course, if you’re in the habit of going to drive-throughs for breakfast on a regular basis for you and your children, this simple change isn’t just about money, it’s about a baby step toward changing your time management habits – and hopefully ultimately towards more healthful choices as well. Let’s face it, Jimmy Dean breakfast croissants, Yoplait yogurt, and Sunny D (which, seriously, is BARELY juice) is not going to win you any parenting awards for nutrition, but even at 750 calories or so, it comes in at pretty much the same calorie punch as a sausage and egg biscuit, hash brown and small orange juice at Mickey D’s. You’re probably breaking about even when it comes to fattening up the kiddos on chemical soup and fatty food. Yay!

I’m conflicted about these commercials. I really am.  It’s hard to not support a company offering concrete examples of how small steps can have a large cumulative impact, and I guess in this commercial they were actually making kind of  garbage to garbage comparison to keep the playing field level, but …

Come on! 18 eggs at our local Safeway go for about $1.50. Decent bread is about $2.50 a loaf. Oranges – actual oranges with fiber in them – are maybe $1.50 a pound.  It simply doesn’t take that long to make toast, scrambled eggs and cut up a couple of oranges for the kids, and it would be almost impossible for that breakfast to cost $2 per person, unless we went with free range eggs, organic sprouted bread (which I’m not sure I could get the boys to eat), and organic oranges – and even then it wouldn’t be much over $2.

Unfortunately, the organic egg and orange industry doesn’t have as much money to throw towards covering WalMart’s advertising production costs, which is the real reason Jimmy Dean, Sunny D and Yoplait are in those advertisements.  And that’s probably what ultimately bugs me about these commercials. Thanks for offering me a way to get fatter and sicker for less money, you know?

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A fun article that has not a lick of anything that will do consumers any good but is all about the banks, from Bloomberg on October 13:

Banks will push the Obama administration to expand its mortgage-modification program to allow interest-only periods on reworked loans, seeking to bring more homeowners into the initiative while recognizing concern that it may only postpone defaults, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Bull. There is no concern that it will postpone defaults. Keep reading.

“We’re working with our peers to develop a proposal to present,” Douglas Potolsky, a senior vice president at JPMorgan’s Chase home-loan unit, said yesterday at a Mortgage Bankers Association conference in San Diego.

Their peers being the other banks …

The suggestion reflects a new round of ideas and plans to refine the $75 billion “Home Affordable” program, announced in February as a bid to rework as many as 4 million loans to ease a housing slump now showing signs of ebbing. The program’s latest phase also is marked by a need to permanently convert more than 500,000 trial modifications by collecting paperwork so consumers’ mortgage payments don’t revert within months.

They’re not worried about postponing defaults, they’re hoping that the property values will turn around enough to sell homes at a higher price. Also note that in order to convert those half a million trial modifications, they have to collect more paperwork – something they’ve shown they’re very good at losing repeatedly, drawing out processes for months.

“Our primary goal for the next few weeks is to make sure we convert all of those borrowers, or as many as possible,” Laurie Anne Maggiano, director of the Treasury’s policy office for homeownership preservation, said at the conference. “It’s a huge push for the Treasury and all of its partners.”

Only “a couple thousand” conversions have been completed, Maggiano said. To aid the process, the government last week streamlined documentation requirements, and granted borrowers and loan servicers on initial trials an extra two months to complete the work, which typically must be finished after three months of timely payments, she said.

The Treasury and its “partners” have agreed to force homeowners to stretch out their stress an extra two months after their trial period has expired, forcing them to be at the mercy of banks whose fax machines are constantly on the fritz, can’t maintain proper files even when they do receive them, and then are so far behind on actually processing anything that they can claim that their proof of income figures are out of date and need to be resubmitted, thus starting the process over.

By next week, the Treasury will announce details of a program to encourage so-called short sales of properties — for less than mortgage amounts — by homeowners who don’t qualify for modifications, Maggiano said. It will include “capped” payments to retire second mortgages that may form an “industry standard” and help curb the “back and forth” with owners of that debt which creates one of the biggest hurdles, she said.

Translation: The Treasury will announce details of a program to allow the cash rich to snap up homes at below market/loan value so that they can turn around and rent them to the same people who held mortgages, at lower monthly payments (since they got a great deal!), but without granting middle class Americans a modification that would have lowered their payment in the first place. I’m not an accountant, but I’ll bet that a loss from a short sale can be written off, which makes it a better deal for earnings than modifying a loan.

Under the federal program, taxpayer subsidies to lenders, servicers and homeowners are used to encourage the reworking of borrowers’ mortgages to cut their monthly payments to 31 percent of their incomes. Servicers are first directed to lower interest rates to as low 2 percent, then extend terms to as long as 40 years and then suspend payments on a portion of the debt until maturity.

The benefit of allowing interest-only periods as well would be “a significant pickup in terms of mods being done,” because the current methods often fail to allow loans to pass required tests on whether modifications serve lenders better than foreclosures, said JPMorgan’s Potolsky. The New York-based bank uses interest-only periods in many of the modifications it’s doing outside of the U.S. program, he said.

And oddly, an interest only loan allows investors to still get their money back while giving no real benefit to the homeowner in terms of equity. It is also not a permanent solution, and weren’t interest only loans part of the problem in the first place?

JPMorgan may have been unable to complete a “material” number of the modifications the bank started without certain of the changes, Potolsky said.

If the trial modification was approved and the homeowner made the payments, what changes honestly need to be verified? It seems to me that the only thing that needs to be verified is if the borrowers income has remained the same. If they got a job in that three month period, then I can see not converting the loan to a permanent modification. If they haven’t, then convert it and be done, collect your government subsidy, and move on.

This mess has gone on long enough. It’s time for the government to tell the banks that they aren’t interested in their suggestions on how to improve the process. Either go forward in good faith and make the modifications efficiently and rapidly, or be taken out of the program entirely. No short sale incentives, no interest only incentives. If that means that JP Morgan Chase and other huge banks are all of a sudden faced with hundreds of thousands of foreclosures, so be it. That was the whole point of putting together the subsidy program in the first place, to help homeowners and banks at the same time, but the banks are playing dirty, homeowners aren’t being helped, and our government officials are embarrassing themselves with all of this bootlicking.

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