You’ve heard about predatory lending. Sub-prime loans were often originated by brokers and other originators whose responsibility ended when the loan was booked and sold. It was somebody else’s problem when the borrower couldn’t make the payments. These loans involved high fees and high interest rates, some of which were disguised. Much of this chicanery occurred during refinance, home equity or home improvement transactions. Sometimes the properties were appraised at values far in excess of any reasonable sales price. Sometimes the borrower’s income was fraudulently inflated without the borrower’s knowledge. Many of the worst cases combined inflated fees, inflated rates and inflated income statements. Loans underwritten in this fashion have created high delinquency and default rates, and in turn, a foreclosure crisis.

But that’s not the whole story. A bad situation has been made much worse by [Read more →]

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A recent networking event I attended,DevHouse Pittsburgh , proved to be more than just food and drink. The group was comprised of tech gurus of all specialties. The keynote speakers layed out parameters for taking ideas as well as concepts to market.

While the topics during the Lightning Round proved to be more advanced than my personal repertoire, they were well presented and very keen. Information and opportunity seemed to be the guest of honor. There was a 100k indecent proposal, to conjure some advanced Iphone applications during a DevHouse event.

Thanks to Karl and Olga for being such gracious Hosts’ . Thanks to Jeff for making his flight in San Francisco. “No Fate But What we Make”, and the entire DevHouse Posse.

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The focus of my articles has mainly been internet marketing and search engine optimization. However, I stray every now and then. This is one of those times.

I planned an exciting trip for the memorial day holiday> It was my sole purpose to drive as far out of cell phone range, and out of the confines of a wiFi connection. I scoured the net looking for places to go. I remembered a little place that I saw during a past visit to Cooks Forest, It was Black Bear Cabins. I searched the web for awhile looking for “cabins in cooks forest”, “lodging cooks forest”, the most consistent result was a directory of businesses in the Cooks Forest are. I stumbled upon (not the social bookmark) a listing of camp grounds and Black Bear Cabins was amongst the list. By this time, it was late march and as usual I was planning last minute. I must have called 6-7 campgrounds, all were booked solid. There was a couple that I left messages with and Black Bear Cabins was one of them. It must have been a week or so and things were beginning to look grim, no call backs and no options. I was sitting reading one night after dinner when the phone rang, “do you still need a cabin”, the voice questioned. [Read more →]

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