How Strategic Default Could Save Our Economy

More Debt Is Not The Answer

“I was on my way to recovery, then you enabled me.” – Drug Addict

Bailing out banks is like a mother giving her 28 year old son that is living at home, money for heroin, driving him downtown to buy the drugs and then back home so he can use ’safely’.

What does recovery mean to us?  We’ve heard it over and over.  America is addicted to debt.  Experts even say, for our economy to grow, we need more debt.  Of course, that is how money works in the first place.  There is not a dollar that is created without debt attached to it.

So what’s the answer?  Less debt. Also known as de-leveraging.  Not more stimulus and bailout paid for by taxpayers… which partly ends up in the bankers bonus check.  The answer is also in getting back to freedom.  Our country was founded on freedom and we have betrayed ourselves by thinking it’s ok to owe thousands of dollars to other people.  This has robbed our freedom and caused us to be so dependent upon working long hours and doing everything to just “get by”.  I am sick of just “Getting by”.

Since the government can theoretically spend only what it takes from the people (taxpayers), its increased spending will drive the people to poverty.  We are allowing this to happen to our country.

After 2 and a half years of listening to YouWalkAway.com customers and seeing time after time that by defaulting, they feel freedom again, they can afford a normal life again, I am convinced that a strategic default could possibly save our economy…and much quicker than any other solution that I’ve seen thus far.  Let’s look at a real life example.

In the WSJ, there is an article titled: American Dream 2: Default, Then Rent

“It’s just a better life. It really is,” says Ms. Richey. Before defaulting on her mortgage, she owed about $230,000 more than the home was worth. People’s increasing willingness to abandon their own piece of America illustrates a paradoxical change wrought by the housing bust: Even as it tarnishes the near-sacred image of home ownership, it might be clearing the way for an economic recovery.

In the WSJ, there is an article titled: Americans Pare Down Debt

“The speed of the adjustment is lightning fast because it’s happening through debt destruction,” said Joseph Carson, director of global economic research at AllianceBernstein in New York. “It puts us closer to the point where the consumer can start making a stronger contribution to recovery.”

I guess I’m not alone in my thinking.  In essence, you are taking back the power from the bank by saying I don’t care about my credit score right now, I care about my economic future.  You are creating your own stimulus package by following the law and staying in the home until the bank takes it back.  There is a breakdown of how it works here.

“A rapid and cost-efficient mark to market”. consider: Snow Job: Strategic Defaults in an Era of Negative Equity

Strategic walkaways employ laws established to protect them from predatory or avaricious lending practices. They create an efficient, rapid, cost-efficient mark to market, stripping away inaccurate and illusory pricing practices that lenders cling to. Solving the mortgage crisis is going to take more than nibbling away at the edges of valuation, tweaking monthly loan payments through interest rate adjustments and loan extensions.

Being protected from crisis may simply be doing nothing more than preventing and delaying a true healthy economic recovery.  Strategic defaults are paving the way for true home values, responsible lending practices and allowing for homeowners that once felt trapped…to be free again.

About Jon Maddux

About Jon Maddux

Jon D. Maddux has been Acting CEO of You Walk Away, LLC since December 2007.  Although there has been a bit of controversy with the company name, the entrepreneur passionately believed that homeowners across America would desperately need foreclosure advice and so he came up with the Walk Away foreclosure help website.  Having over 11 years of real estate and finance experience, Maddux realized with the burgeoning credit crisis, many homeowners in adjustable rate mortgages and high LTV loans were unaware of what they were about to face. With that understanding, Maddux developed an affordable business model that allowed homeowners to know their rights and use the law to their advantage.  Beyond the monthly foreclosure monitoring service and cease and desist letters, You Walk Away provides attorney consultation in each state and CPA consultations.  Homeowners are armed with the knowledge and peace of mind they need to go through possibly the toughest experience of their lives.

Since January 2008, You Walk Away, LLC has helped over 4000 customers navigate through the hardship of foreclosure and / or a short sale.  You Walk Away has been featured in news publications and TV programs such as: ABC Nightline, CNN, Yahoo Finance, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, front page of The New York Times, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Money Magazine, NPR, AP, NBC, CBS and Fox News among many others.  Many of these publications have used quotes from Maddux about foreclosure.

 

At www.youwalkaway.com and now on HousingStorm.com , Maddux writes about the foreclosure crisis from the front lines.   As you can imagine, with helping thousands of customers go through this process, there is special insight and first hand knowledge that he gets and is able to share with his readers.

This entry was posted in Home Economics and tagged Credit Card Debt, National Debt, Strategic Defaults. Bookmark the permalink.

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