Pivoting Like a Laser
Remember that financial crisis? You know, the one that built up under Clinton and Bush 43 thanks to a rent-seeking Fannie Mae and a race-baiting ACORN? The one that nearly brought down the entire banking system? The banking system that had been complicit in selling trick mortgages to unqualified homebuyers who couldn’t even have afforded decent mortgages? And how the contagion spread to Wall Street as the crappy loans were bundled up with safe ones in risky credit-default swaps which the ratings agencies graded AAA so they could be sold off to unwitting investors?
That financial crisis? Autumn of 2008? We’re still reeling from it? Remember?
Well, hey, they haven’t forgotten about it in the White House, either — no, sir! In fact, the President himself is giving some serious thought to doing something about it already. Here’s the outline of the plan:
The administration has been working for weeks on how to implement a mortgage relief program. President Barack Obama could include a nod to the plan in a speech on job creation next week, sources familiar with the administration’s plans said.
The refinancing initiative would allow certain borrowers to refinance loans that are backed by government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or the Federal Housing Administration, the sources said.
A broad-based effort to automatically refinance millions of mortgages is not in the works, yet the administration is looking to take targeted changes to an existing program that would allow more borrowers to take advantage of low mortgage rates, including allowing borrowers to refinance even if they owe a significant amount above their property’s current value.
The idea is to help struggling borrowers refinance at current low interest rates, which would cut their monthly payments and free up cash for other spending. The hope is that this could drum up overall business activity.
It looks — of course — like Fannie and Freddie and Wall Street get of scot-free in all this. And absent any real details, it’s impossible to say if the new plan will work any better than the old plan, which accomplished diddly.
Three years later — three years! — you have to wonder if even good plan is enough. Americans got raked over the coals by Fannie, Freddie & Wall Street. Then they got snookered by a new President who ran as a moderate but then used the crisis as an excuse to govern as a hardcore Progressive.
So after nearly three years of nada, don’t be surprised if Americans don’t respond well to the President’s plan — whatever it turns out to be.
Show of hands; who really expected that F, F and F would be affected in the slightest in the aftermath of the mortgage crisis? It was a foregone conclusion that they were all going to come out smelling like roses. The biggest public ire was reserved for GoldmanSachs, JPM-Chase and BofA (who all received a proverbial slap on the wrist with a wet noodle). The connected always win.
Great, this is like sending someone down to fix the heater after the iceberg tore a hole in the hull of the ship. If you bought a home five years ago you were probably hoping to be RICH by now, not sitting with a depreciating asset worth 20-40% less than what you paid for it and headed lower. Someone like that, even with a secure job, is probably looking at getting the hell out and not refinancing at a lower rate, because the idea of sitting with an “investment” that may be underwater for years is more depressing than listening to an Obama speech. They are already “freeing up cash” for other spending by simply no longer paying the mortgage, knowing the banks are in no hurry to foreclose and have to write down the value of the loan and take a hit to capital. Folks could end up living FREE in homes for YEARS so why the hell would they bother to refinance? This info is all over the internet, it’s not a secret; some lawyers and counselors are advising homeowners to do it.
The president’s plan wil be what it’s always been, bailout Wall Street and political cronies with YOUR MONEY…
Change you can believe in
What’s going to happen to those saps who act on this man’s plans/promises? For all with eyes to see, ears to hear and a brain to consider, Obama has a history of lies, lies, lies and broken promises never more than vote catchers. But hey, they worked. Maybe this one too will work to keep him in the driving seat to his ultimate goal of totalling America as viable nation, to conclude the plans of the “liberal Democratic Party” elaborated during this past half century.
Who believes a single word this man and his staff of flim-flam artists say? He relies on his celebrity/incumbency for support among people. The people he hates, despises and of whom is ashamed. Still he is the Messiah, who can argue with that?
Then there are those, having reached the legal age for adulthood, who vote for him because “he’s so cute”. What can you do?