HOME MORTGAGE USURY

Will You Survive The Coming Financial Crash 19
© 2005 Kent Daniel Bentkowski
The Simple Loan Payment Calculator has but three data fields; principal, interest rate, and
number of years. Using my own situation as an example, the following would have been
my responsibility to pay each month for the next thirty years:
April 1998 Home Mortgage Worksheet
Mortgage Principal Borrowed
$100,000.00
Interest Rate April 17, 1998
7.21%
Monthly Payment
$679.47
Total of 360 Payments
$244,609.20
Total Profit
$144,609.20
True Total Interest-Rate
144%
Table 1 - The Home Mortgage I Avoided
When the banks are paying their customers interest, it is simple interest. In the case of
my one-hundred thousand dollars above, the total interest would have been a simple
$7,210.00. However, the interest was $144,609.20 --- a sure sign of compounded
interest. This is what we pay to the banks, and already the individual buying the home is
at an extreme disadvantage. The cards are stacked against the middle class in a situation
like this, and if I attempted to do something like this, I would be hauled in for loan-
sharking or racketeering, or both.
The housing market is important for a number of reasons, the first being that for the vast
majority of Americans, their home is their primary, if not only, investment. But more
importantly, the home mortgage is the most profitable investment vehicle for all banks, as
by the time all the interest-compounding is done, that 7% mortgage suddenly turns into
144% interest!
Because the consumption rate in the USA is currently built upon easy credit and debt, and
not wages and savings, housing prices need to be perpetually increasing. This in turn
keeps the cash flowing to the banks, in the form of home-equity loans, second-
mortgages, and lines of credit built upon the homestead asset. Because there is a
desperate need to keep the economy flowing, these equity withdrawals in most peoples'
only true asset, is following the established pattern of being set at increasingly higher
interest rates. This is what we have begun seeing as soon as the housing market fell
stagnant two years ago. This is a sure sign of falling consumer confidence, one of the sure
signs of a continuing bear market.
OIL AND ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY :
In 1999, crude oil was $9.00 a barrel.
By April 2005, crude oil had reached $58.00 a barrel.
Why was this? What was behind this?