Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 December 8

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December 8

SCOTUS rulings on school desegregation, 1956

While looking through church meeting minutes, I discovered that the meeting supported "the action of the Supreme Court of the United States on desegregation". The date is 9 June 1956, the same day as President Eisenhower's surgery after he almost died of intestinal inflammation. Were there any SCOTUS rulings on the subject in 1956, or should I take this as a reference to Brown v. Board and associated rulings? Category:United States school desegregation case law doesn't appear to have any articles about post-Brown and pre-June 1956 rulings. My Google searches are being heavily skewed by results for Browder v. Gayle, related to desegregation on school buses, which the district court decided four days earlier, and which didn't have SCOTUS involvement except for denying cert six months later. Nyttend backup (talk) 00:19, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

It's got to be the Brown v. Board of Education and related cases. The article itself notes continuing cases into 1955, including the so-called "Brown II" ruling that included the deliberate speed doctrine. --Jayron32 01:24, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

What's the largest company in Transdnistria?

The article on Sheriff (company) states in the first paragraph that it is the second largest company in the (unrecognised) country of Transdnistria. So who is number one? It's quite a small place, and I had assumed Sheriff was the biggest private firm by a large margin. 82.55.122.128 (talk) 20:31, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Your searches may be skewed by your spelling; it's Transnistria. Nyttend backup (talk) 20:48, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

A quick Google search found this book, which basically reprints Wikipedia articles, so with it I found the answer in the Transnistria article. In short, Moldova Steel Works paid more taxes than literally the rest of Transnistria put together (it was responsible for 60% of state revenues, versus 40% from all other sources), so I'm sure that it's the largest company in Transnistria. Nyttend backup (talk) 20:53, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Why don't mortgage payments usually increase with inflation?

At least I don't think they do. If the bank doesn't trust the government of 2037 to report accurately or its better for the accounting if future values are known then couldn't it make the payments 601/600ths of the previous month or so? I'm not complaining, I just wonder why it's done one way and not the other. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:55, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

They do if you have a Adjustable-rate mortgage, but only indirectly: lenders charge higher interest when there's greater inflation. Of course, it's illegal for lenders to raise interest rates or to adjust the amount of principal required, unless it's in the original contract; I can speculate on the reasons why contracts normally don't permit this, but that's not what a reference desk is for, so you'll have to wait for someone more knowledgeable on that. Please note that avoiding high payments has often been the reason for people urging governments to inflate their currency; see our Free silver article (and Cross of Gold speech), which discusses proponents' advocacy of inflation partly because it would raise prices and thus make it easier for them to repay loans. Nyttend backup (talk) 21:12, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Note also that these costs are incorporated into mortgages. For standard fixed-rate mortgages of a given amount, a longer term will have a higher interest rate than a shorter term; part of this difference is to account for future uncertainty with respect to prevailing interest rates. Further, fixed-rate mortgages have higher rates than the initial portions of adjustable-rate mortgages; in that case, the customer is paying the extra interest early as a hedge against future uncertainty. In short, why? Some do. Those that do not are priced accordingly because customers are willing to pay for that assurance, not because lenders have a particular need to not track the current interest rate.

Further, I would expect (but don't know) that major lenders of fixed-rate products are in turn taking out fixed-rate loans themselves at slightly better rates to hedge. So rather than lending at (making up numbers, but vaguely reasonable ones) 4% and trusting that inflation will keep that profitable for 30 years, a bank might lend at 4% and simultaneously borrow at 3% to lock in that 1% difference as income regardless of the future performance of the economy. — Lomn 21:30, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

• See Graduated payment mortgage loan. Loraof (talk) 00:58, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Why did you change "higher" to "hwigher"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:52, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

• Didn’t know that I did—a slip of the finger on a touchy keypad. Loraof (talk) 03:22, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Banks actually don't need that. In the worst case they will bluntly cancel the contract arguing else they would have to file for bankruptcy, which of course also would cancel all contracts. So Lenders can easily be forced into a new deal more favorable for the bank since in this sense, in the end, the bank is always able to cause a Foreclosure, no matter the lender fulfilled his part of the contract, his payments, without flaw and is willing and able to continue that.

In fact this is just yet another proof for the well known international proverb: The Bank always wins! --Kharon (talk) 07:39, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

The bank is the lender; the homeowner is the borrower. How would the bank's merely unilateral threatening to go bankrupt allow it to pressure the borrower to pay more? If, as you say, the contracts were actually voided, then the obligation of the borrower to pay would be voided. That's not how it would work. The bank would go into receivership and its loans would be taken over by another party under bankruptcy court supervision. This is all highly regulated legal and financial business that needs to be addressed by a lawyer or financial advisor. μηδείς (talk) 19:59, 10 December 2017 (UTC)