Showing posts with label Obama housing plan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama housing plan. Show all posts
Friday, February 10, 2012
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Obama Home Foreclosure Plan
Mortgage modifications have a bad rap, yet President Obama is depending on them to stop the foreclosure crisis.
Modifications continue to be pushed as the best way to get struggling borrowers back on their feet. The jury is out on whether modifications work long-term. One recent study showed about half of borrowers with modified loans fell behind within six months.
Still, Obama is giving modifications a central role in his $75 billion foreclosure prevention program.
The program, which starts on Wednesday, calls for loan servicers to lower struggling borrowers' interest rates so that total payments are no more than 31% of their gross income. The government will subsidize part of the reduction, as well as kick in incentives for the servicers, borrowers and mortgage investors to participate in the modifications.
read the CNN story
My thoughts: Woo Pig Soooie!!! Here is some more taxpayer money for you.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Bernanke on the Housing Bailout
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that the embattled housing market has crippled the economy, and at-risk homeowners need a bailout - even if they knew they couldn't afford their home in the first place.
"Some borrowers presumably knew what they were getting into," Bernanke said before the House Financial Services Committee. "But from a public policy point of view, the large amount of foreclosures are detrimental not just to the borrower and lender but to the broader system."
"In many of these situations we have to trade off the moral hazard issue against the greater good," he added.
read the CNN story
My thoughts: Bernake remains a moron.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Ed Glaeser on the Housing Plan
The housing plan that President Obama revealed on Wednesday, like the stimulus
package, was presented as a single solution to a potload of problems. The plan is being promoted as a far-reaching intervention that will ease the suffering of delinquent homeowners, keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac solvent, bolster declining housing prices and rationalize the mortgage renegotiation process. If the plan were actually a serious attempt to fix every problem in the housing market, it would be much more of a mess. As it is, it certainly has its flaws, but its great virtue is that it doesn’t try to fix everything. Instead, it is aimed at two problems already squarely in the government’s lap...
Many Americans understandably feel that this policy is rewarding people who took too many risks. Still, given the extreme solutions to the housing mess that have recently been put forth, I think that we are getting off cheap...
The plan is moderate, and in today’s atmosphere, I view moderation as a triumph. Yet we should at least be aware of its shortcomings...
Still, by focusing on two problems instead of trying to fix everything, the plan avoided many of the greatest policy pitfalls. It could have been much worse.
read the entire essay
My thoughts: "It could have been much worse." This passes for economic analysis? Has the threshold been lowered that much? Are taxpayers supposed to be relieved? This is insanity.
It a policy is bad, it needs to be opposed. Period. End of discussion. This so-called "housing plan" is rewarding people for making dumb decisions. These people are not homeowners; they are home occupiers. "A family earning less than $44,000 a year has a $213,000 mortgage on a $190,000 house. By any reasonable standard, this family cannot afford that house." Really, why is that the problem of taxpayers? These people, borrowers and lenders, made bad decisions that they should have to bear the financial pain of that bad decision. Government theft is not a solution to economic problems. Ever.
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