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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tradelite who wrote (17323)	2/14/2004 8:42:32 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

You could comb through the public records to find out if a home is encumbered with debt. If you wanted to know this information this is what you'd need to do, or buy it from someone who has already done this. However, the Fed has a much easier way to do this. All banking institutions report their loans to the Fed in quite exhaustive detail by computer. For statistical purposes the Fed knows quite a bit about the size of your bank accounts and whether you or your neighbors have a home loan. This is how the Fed can easily issue their quarterly reports on the "Percentage of Homeowners Equity" and what percentage of homeowners do not have a mortgage. The Fed does not have information on private mortgages such as loans carried by the Seller. However, they periodically estimate the number and size of private mortgages by studying a sample of public records. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * On a separate note, if a law enforcement agency were to obtain a warrant we would probably know more about your recent life than you can recall yourself. This highlights the reason your government dislikes cash so very much. This is also why new currency has a "Security Thread". moneyfactory.com Security thread: also visible from both sides when held up to the light, this vertical strip of plastic is embedded in the paper and spells out the denomination in tiny print. This plastic "security thread" is also an RFID Tag. This story is about the European Union following our lead. eetimes.com Each new currency note has a unique serial number identifying it and of course it's denomination. Walk past a scanner and Customs knows in an instant exactly how much currency you are bringing into the country (in fact they know precisely which bills and where they entered the banking system from the Federal Reserve). On your entry form you claim you're carrying $2,000 but the scanner shows $42,563 and they'll ask you into a nice little room for questioning and a thorough search. The information from the scanner is probable cause. Many older bills are still in circulation, without RFID tags, so the system is not yet fully reliable. All of the best money smugglers recommend cooking your money to be transported in a microwave for one minute. No one has yet proven this method effective though.