Oh, this’ll help:
The Obama administration may expand efforts to ease the housing crisis by banning all foreclosures on home loans unless they have been screened and rejected by the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program.
The proposal, reviewed by lenders last week on a White House conference call, “prohibits referral to foreclosure until borrower is evaluated and found ineligible for HAMP or reasonable contact efforts have failed,” according to a Treasury Department document outlining the plan.
Banks are already too frightened to lend money. And if this thing gets approved — and I suspect it will — then loan officers will have to think a third time before approving a mortgage. First, they need to figure out if you’re a good risk. Then, they’ll have to guess if they’ll get in trouble for not lending money to someone with connections/victim status/etc. And after all that, banks will have to take into consideration whether you’ll use HAMP to screw them out of their money somewhere down the line.
That giant sucking sound you hear is… well, it’s this goddamn Administration. From a little something I wrote last year called, appropriately enough, The Grand Unification Theory of Sucking:
Next headline, sans link: NYT MONDAY: TENSIONS GRIP OBAMA ECONOMIC TEAM… DEVELOPING…
Well, duh.
Let’s pretend for a moment that, god forbid, you break your arm. And somehow you end up with a team of doctors all trained at Obama University. As you lie there on the table in the ER, one doctor treats your arm by banging on the unbroken one with a ball-peen hammer. The second doctor takes the unusual course of setting your hair on fire. And the third one uses leeches.
Undeterred by your arm’s stubborn refusal to set, soon the doctors start blaming one another. And even though all of them are doing nothing but compounding your injury, none will take any blame. In fact, the louder you scream, the harder they go to work on you.
That, apparently, is what’s going on in the West Wing these days. Our economy is being managed by Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Howard.
Last headline, again no link yet: OBAMA PLANS FOR NEW BANKING REGULATIONS… DEVELOPING..
So now in walks a fourth doctor. This one has some Percocet and a splint, and when you see him you think, “Oh, at last, someone who knows what they’re doing!” At which point, Hospital Administrator Obama shoots the fourth doctor in the face with a pistol. And wait until you see the hospital bill – they’ll charge you for everything, including the bullet.
Are the banks too scared to move? Then threaten them with an all-new regulatory environment, one which might leave them as screwed as a GM bondholder!
Just how damn right do I have to be when it comes to the ugly, the bad and the stupid? It’s truly dispiriting sometimes. Cassandra, I think, got off easy — didn’t she get run out of town? I’m kinda stuck here.
This Administration has gone well past beating the dead horse of the Regulatory State. Soon they’ll have us feeding off the ruined carcass.
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