Posted by
Bill Crawford on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 12:39:36 PM
We're all still waiting for the details. They aren't in any hurry to give them out, either, for a few reasons.
First, they aren't getting any cooperation from all the mortgage holders. They want the loan guarantees, but they won't give up the information until they see a check in front of their faces.
Second, the bad news is that the money needed will have to cover about 7% of the home mortgage market extant, plus interest. This is an enormous amount of money, and Guethner does not have the political skill to sell it. Obama will have to. The good news is, the money is an up front guarantee only. The mortgages are all attached to hard assets- land and property- that can be sold by somebody and taken off the taxpayer lien eventually.
The worst part is, nobody, especially the Democrat crowd, is up to telling the people in these houses that they don't begin to have the wherewithal to renegogiate their mortgages, and must be foreclosed. Many of these people are not going to lose anything tangible in the process, being that they didn't put any money down to purchase. But a series of government officials made a living telling them they deserved a house, and don't want the grief and lost votes in reversing that. These pansies all want somebody else to carry that burden.
Maybe they can all hire Bush back to do the dirty work for them. It stands to reason that they will want somehow to be able to blame the Republicans for the upcoming foreclosures. It is a herculean task in a town where they run everything now.
So, for the time being, nothing gets done, and the stock market stays in limbo- along with all your 401-K's. Obama has nobody else to blame now. Eventually he will have to do something about these mortgages. If I were him, I would start by pelting Dodd and Frank with ripe fruit. You want to blame somebody else? Start with the people who deserve it frst.