Word: va
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...duffel bags handed up by a friend. In them were some of his most prized possessions: dozens of tape recordings of South Pacific music, Beethoven sonatas, harp solos. The big man waved goodbye. "See you in 1958," said Paul Siple, 47, a geographer and polar explorer from Arlington, Va. Then he flew off from the U.S. Navy base at McMurdo Sound in the antarctic for a 14-month stay at the most isolated community on earth...
...homebuilding industry. Construction of new houses dropped from a near-record 1,300,000 new homes in 1955 to an estimated 1,100,000 this year. The chief reason is that the lending market for low-interest Veterans Administration and FHA-insured mortgages has dried up. Housing starts with VA and FHA mortgages have plummeted 30% to 467,400 units v. only a 1% drop for homes without Government-guaranteed mortgages. Last week the big argument was over the U.S. Government's newest move to help builders by hiking the interest rate on FHA-insured mortgages...
...builders-and fewer economists -look for much improvement from the new FHA rates. "The FHA move is a drop in the bucket," wired Levittown Builder William Levitt to President Eisenhower, adding politely, "but when your bucket is dry, even a drop tastes good." Low-interest VA and FHA mortgages simply cannot compete in the tight-money market where businessmen are paying interest rates of 5½% to 6% without a murmur. Even in the mortgage market itself, conventional, non-Government insured loans currently bring as much as 6% in many areas, are far more attractive to banks, life insurance companies...
...Angeles, for example, only the Bank of America still handles FHA loan packages in any quantity. Chicago's Merchants National Bank, which once had as much as 75% of its mortgage portfolio in VA and FHA homes, has cut them out entirely. As for life insurance firms, says President Maynard Harris of Boston's Franklin Savings Bank, "they are not going to invest in FHA when they can buy bonds yielding as much and buy conventional mortgages yielding more." Neither will savings and loan associations, which currently guarantee a 4% interest payment to depositors in some areas, thus...
...Federal Reserve does for commercial banking by making rediscount loans to regulate the fluctuating supply of credit; 2) a boost in the buying power of Fannie Mae, the Government's secondary mortgage-buying agency, from the current $1.1 billion to $4.5 billion; 3) more direct loans from VA to home buyers...