Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Hunger Artistry

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Email received:

With Miami still one of the poorest cities in the nation, the University of Miami is set to host a free one-day conference on its Coral Gables campus that will inform students from UM and other colleges and universities in South Florida about the economic despair in their own backyard. The Miami Poverty Conference, a student-led initiative that will be held Saturday, February 21 from 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Whitten University Center, will create awareness about poverty-related issues in Miami through interactive workshops that address poverty's relationship to immigration, race, health, politics, and other areas. Several UM faculty members will lead the workshops and breakout sessions, and local community agencies will take part in discussions on how to create plans of action to better the community.

Registered attendees will not only receive breakfast, lunch, and dinner during the daylong event but will also take part in a “hunger banquet,” a symbolic activity aimed at demonstrating the realities of food distribution throughout the world's regions and economic groups. Live band performances and a spoken-word presentation will close out the event with a benefit concert at The Rock from 8 to 10 p.m. Conference check-in starts at 8 a.m. at the UC lower lounge area. To preregister online, visit www.miami.edu/leadandserve.

“Hunger banquet”?

Update: My colleague Marnie Mahoney was kind enough to point me to Oxfam America's web site where they explain the 'Hunger Banquet' concept:

An Oxfam America Hunger Banquet event provides opportunities to educate your school, group, or the public on hunger issues; raise funds to support Oxfam's poverty-fighting work; and recruit new volunteers for your Oxfam group.

How it works

Guests draw tickets at random that assign them each to either a high-, middle-, or low-income tier and receive a corresponding meal. The 15 percent in the high-income tier are served a sumptuous meal. The 35 percent in the middle-income section eat a simple meal of rice and beans. The 50 percent in the low-income tier help themselves to small portions of rice and water. (High-, middle-, and low-income statistics used in the Oxfam America Hunger Banquet event are based on the World Bank Development Indicators 2007.) Guests can also assume characterizations that describe the situation of a specific person at the income level to which they've been assigned. Finally, all guests are invited to share their thoughts after the meal.

So now we know.

Posted in U.Miami | 2 Comments

I Suspect There’s A Poignant Story Here

Posted on February 19, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

On my way to class this morning, I saw this sitting there, with no one around:

trash-roses.jpg

When I came out of class an hour and a half later, it was gone.

Posted in Law School | 2 Comments

Five Seconds on Morning Drive Time

Posted on February 19, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

I'm on local radio this morning — about five seconds on WIOD 610 AM — talking about Facebook. It ran at 7:35 this morning and last night they said it would probably run several times during the morning cycle.

Posted in The Media | 3 Comments

Taking the Back of the Envelope to the Homeowner Bailout

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

The New York Times tells me that President Obama is proposing fifty billion to bailhelp out three million families who can't make their mortgage payments. That works out to an average of $16,666.66 each. Let's say we're going to help cover two year's payments – that's $694.77 /month. Which sounds like a lot.

But if you borrowed, say, $250,000 at 10% for 30 years, your monthly payment is $2193.90.

Let's imagine there's an insurance piece here (and, to make it really easy, that it's free and credible). Then our hypothetical borrower can refinance at the market rate of 5.27% (very optimistic, I know, given the likely credit history), lowering the monthly payment to $1383.61 Our hypothetical unemployed hard-luck case will still have to come up with $688.84 for the next two years, before the federal money runs out. Is that realistic?

I imagine one thing is that there's going to be more focus on insurance to allow refinance and/or encourage banks to swallow a cramdown and less on monthlies?

Oh heck. Should have started by reading Calculated Risk. According to Obama Housing Plan, it's $75 billion, and the NYT summary left out all the good details:

The plan contains two separate programs. One program is aimed at 4 to 5 million struggling homeowners with loans owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac to help them refinance their mortgages through the two institutions.

A separate program would potentially help 3 to 4 million homeowners by allowing them to modify their mortgages to lower monthly interest rates through any participarting lender. Under this plan, the lender would voluntarily lower the interest rate and the government would provide subsidies to the lender.
…
Under the modification program which would involve government subsidies to lenders, lenders will be responsible for bringing down interest rates so that a borrower's monthly mortgage payment is no more than 38% of their pre-tax income. After that the government program would match the amount reduced by the lender to bring a homeowner's payments down to 31% of their pre-tax income.

And the money will come from stage two of the TARP Funds.

OK, that makes a little more sense. It will help people in the zone to be helped, but not the destitute. And there's lots of vigorish for the banks/servicing companies to create an incentive to do workouts (right now the servicing companies to whom all this is outsourced make much more money on the foreclosure, which is part of the reason they don't try real hard to do workouts).

[Update: I feel a little better noting that from the timestamps the Calculated Risk post wasn't up when I took out the envelope…]

Posted in Econ & Money: Mortgage Mess | 1 Comment

Bailouts

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

If I were Ford, which has been run soundly enough not to need bailouts, I'd be fairly unhappy about the prospect of $39 billion going to subsidize my improvident and incompetent competitors.

I'm not Ford, and I'm still unhappy about it.

On the other hand, I'm a homeowner but I don't object to $50 billion going to prop up people who cannot afford their mortgages and have fallen behind on their monthly payments. That's so even though only some are 'deserving': “Many took out loans they were never going to be able to afford, while others have since lost their jobs.”

If there's going to be a windfall, I'd just as soon it went to people who let the American Dream beguile them into buying modest homes they couldn't actually afford, whether or not the ultimate blame belongs to them or a fast-talking mortgage broker. Now, if we're subsidizing folks who traded up to McMansions, on the other hand….

Posted in Econ & Money: Mortgage Mess | 4 Comments

Secret Taping in Florida 10th Judicial Circuit Courts

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

This very confusing article entitled More questions about court recordings indeed raises more questions than it answers. Piecing together the story between the official obfuscation and the uneven writing, what seems to have been going on is…

  • Someone — we don't know who — in the state court system in the 10th Judicial Circuit installed an official backup taping system in the Florida state courts. At present no one is willing to take the credit for this innovation.
  • Signs were posted warning the public that taping was going on, but it is unclear if the signs referred to the primary system — which has “a blue indicator light [that] is apparent at the front of each courtroom” when it is on. More to the point, that appears to be what the public thought it meant.
  • The court staff indicates judges were aware of the system and could ask for it to be turned off; they also are now suggesting that it was used more in criminal than civil cases. But if there were court orders regarding when taping should be on or off, they have yet to be produced; it's likely that litigants were not informed one way or the other.
  • The tapes are public records covered by Florida's aggressive Sunshine Law — but the court staff are not responding very enthusiastically to record requests. They say they have to redact them first (I'm unclear as to how much redaction they are entitled to do).
  • Although this is particularly unclear from the article , there is some implication that the tapes might have able to capture sounds over the whole courtroom, not just the front.
  • Parties are concerned that private conversations with their lawyers may have been recorded.

Lots here that remains very murky. Florida is a two-party consent state for sound recording. Does putting up a sign in a court room suffice to get consent?

Posted in Florida, Law: Criminal Law, Law: Practice | 1 Comment