Bush offers mortgage bailout

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by DoctorD, Aug 31, 2007.

  1. BenReilly

    BenReilly New Member

    Apr 8, 2002
    If there's one thing you can be certain about it's that people who are responsible like you are far more likely to have a better standard of living. The "DUMASSES" of the world are always getting into trouble.
     
  2. Matt in the Hat

    Matt in the Hat Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 21, 2002
    Brooklyn
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Since when did mistakes stop having consequences? People should not be rewarded for bad choices.

    This proposal also keeps the real estate market artifically inflated which actually perpetuates the root problem. But as long as you think it's hunky dorey....
     
  3. Kobranzilla

    Kobranzilla Member

    Sep 6, 2001
    NY F'in City
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    Nat'l Team:
    United States

    Nettie had his Wheaties this morning. Too bad they were laced with crazy flakes
     
  4. Matt in the Hat

    Matt in the Hat Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 21, 2002
    Brooklyn
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    With rubbish like that you can now stop calling yourself a conservative
     
  5. Chicago1871

    Chicago1871 Member

    Apr 21, 2001
    Chicago
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I'm sure the Democrats will be agreeing with his proposal. This move is decidedly liberal, which is why the conservatives among us are crying foul.
     
  6. Chris M.

    Chris M. Member+

    Jan 18, 2002
    Chicago

    I wasn't specifically talking about Obama but was thinking more about the effect of lobbyists on the administration and the congress NOW.

    However, since you brought it up, ;) I do think that Obama would be very hesitant to step up to the plate for big lenders (credit card and home) and he certainly wouldn't do it because they sent him on a nice golfing excursion to Scotland (or for some a tour of the finest public mens rooms throughout Europe and Asia).

    He demonstrated where his focus would be during the debate on the bankruptcy bill two years ago:

    This bill does a great job protecting credit card companies from the few bad apples who try to escape their debt, but what does it do to protect the American public from the credit card companies who try to take advantage of them?

    Mr. President, the bankruptcy crisis this bill should address is not just the one facing credit card companies who are enjoying record profits. We should be addressing middle-class families who are dealing with record hardships.

    As Senator Dodd, Senator Feinstein, and others have pointed out, this bill also fails to deal with the aggressive marketing practices and hidden fees credit card companies have used to raise their profits and our debt. Charging a penalty to consumers who make a late payment on a completely unrelated credit card is just one example of these tactics. We need to end these practices so that we're making life easier not just for the credit card companies, but for honest, hardworking middle-class families.

    And if we're going to crack down on bankruptcy abuse, we should make it clear that we intend to hold the wealthy and the powerful accountable too.
    As it is now, this bill makes it easier for a company like Enron who just bilked their employees out of their life savings to declare bankruptcy than for the employees themselves. In my own state, we even had a mining company by the name of Horizon declare bankruptcy and then refuse to pay its employees the health benefits it owed them.

    The Mine Workers involved had provided a total of 100,000 years of service and dedication and sacrifice to this company. They spent their lives working hard. They did their part. But Horizon didn't do its part, and it was allowed to hide behind bankruptcy laws to leave these workers without the care they had earned.

    This is wrong. It's wrong that this bill would make it harder for these unemployed workers to declare bankruptcy, while doing nothing to prevent the bankrupt company that put them there from shirking its responsibility entirely.

    What kind of a message does it send when we tell hardworking, middle-class Americans, "You have to be more responsible with your finances, but the corporations you work for can be as irresponsible as they want with theirs"?


    I also have confidence in his ability to see the big picture and to work towards solutions that prevent us from getting into the pickles we seem to find ourselves in all too often. Reforming lending practices? Sure. Good idea dubya. Would have been a GREAT idea about 4 years ago.

    Obama has demonstrated an ability to see the bigger picture in advance that would serve us well. From his predictions of chaos and secterian violence in Iraq before the war; to his continuing hard work with Richard Lugar to try to secure all of those nukes floating around the former SSRs; to his preparations for avian flu.

    Things that ordinary people AND our government don't focus on because they have not yet blown up in our faces. I want someone proactive.
     
  7. bojendyk

    bojendyk New Member

    Jan 4, 2002
    South Loop, Chicago
    According to CNBC, there have been plenty of cases in which borrowers have been told that their ARM is actually a fixed rate, only to learn later that this wasn't the case.
     
  8. Matt in the Hat

    Matt in the Hat Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 21, 2002
    Brooklyn
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Those people should go to jail. But something tells me that's the exception and not the rule.
     
  9. IntheNet

    IntheNet New Member

    Nov 5, 2002
    Northern Virginia
    Club:
    Blackburn Rovers FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Knowing how important this subprime issue is to the economy and the lending institutions, Bush is reaching across the aisle to achieve Democrat agreement and promply solve the problem; you and yours would "cry foul" no matter what the president does.
     
  10. Chris M.

    Chris M. Member+

    Jan 18, 2002
    Chicago
    In Illinois, just about everyone uses an attorney to buy or sell property. Virtually no one does when refinancing. I never understood that as a review of the lending documents is second only to insuring clean title. I am guessing that if required or if it were common practice that you could probably get an attorney to show up and review and explain the docs to you for $200 or maybe even a little less.

    It floors me that people will sign things commiting themselves to 100,000, 500,000 a Million or more without spending the time or energy to unerstand what is in the documents.
     
  11. Matt in the Hat

    Matt in the Hat Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 21, 2002
    Brooklyn
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This won't solve anything. It only perpetuates the problem you socialist.
     
  12. Chicago1871

    Chicago1871 Member

    Apr 21, 2001
    Chicago
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    If you mean those of us who are economic conservatives, then you would be right. Bush has rarely, if ever, in his time in office given us a reason to support him.

    Also, he isn't reaching across the aisle as much as standing on the other side.
     
  13. Matt in the Hat

    Matt in the Hat Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 21, 2002
    Brooklyn
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Shame there is no punishment for such poor decsion making, isn't it?
     
  14. Flyin Ryan

    Flyin Ryan Member

    May 13, 2004
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This has so thoroughly pissed me off. Here's my rant:

    Do not think for one second anyone this actually helps people getting foreclosed. Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd were pretty much calling for this as well in the last couple weeks, both have heavily received money donation from Wall Street firms and banking institutions. This is merely so f***ed borrowers can continue paying their home payments. So who this actually benefits are the people receiving the money - the big banks, cause they will continue to receive a cash flow cause they did not do their job properly and took on bad loans.

    Who pays for this? You and me. We work hard and save our money diligently, and because of that we are now going to help a person pay his home payment cause he is not smart enough to realize he can't afford a $500k house on a $50k salary paying only interest every month. You can help the guy all he wants, he'll never own his home. That wasn't his intention if he got an interest-only mortgage.

    Just one more sign that the Republican and Democratic parties are corporatists at heart. The huge profits of the housing boom were profited and tucked away. Now, the house of cards has all fallen and these profits have "disappeared" and these companies are crying and screaming for Fed rate cuts and for a federal bailout.

    Well, I'm thinking of going to buy a Ferrari. I've always wanted one. I'll take out a car loan to pay it, default after two months, and then the rest of you will help me pay the rest of it off. Have a good day!

    Some links:

    http://michellemalkin.com/2007/08/31/bush-pulls-a-hillary-on-housing/

    http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2007/08/the-grand-chara.html
     
  15. KevTheGooner

    KevTheGooner Help that poor man!

    Dec 10, 1999
    THOF
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Andorra
    LOL. Good one, ITN. You must be a writer for the Simpsons or something.
     
  16. Chicago1871

    Chicago1871 Member

    Apr 21, 2001
    Chicago
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    You do realize you are taking contradicting positions here.
     
  17. needs

    needs Member

    Jan 16, 2003
    Brooklyn
    It's not a government handout if white people use it.
     
  18. Flyin Ryan

    Flyin Ryan Member

    May 13, 2004
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    1. Those houses will go in foreclosure regardless. You might as well accept that. We are VERY EARLY, this is going to last awhile. The only way they will not is if the government pays the house payments. Your neighbors bought their houses because they wanted to sell within two years. If they did not, they would have taken a fixed mortgage. Not one where they only paid interest or it was an ARM or it was neg-am. If they did want to live there long-term and took an exotic, they're just idiots and we're going to leave in distress sooner or later anyway. When you moved in, was it a high turnover neighborhood? If it was, you were a sitting duck.

    2. Everyone in your neighborhood, including yourself, are going to have at a minimum 20% haircut from peak price if every house in your neighborhood is risking foreclosure. The prices are unsustainable. The reason these exotic mortgages took off was people wanted to buy a house and could no longer afford the traditional mortgage. That of course leads to the presumption that prices are too high. Prices should have come down, and they did not.

    3. While I understand your concern, it's not my business or the government's if your neighborhood and your house goes down in value. You made a business decision to move where you did, and it might result in a bad effect.


    I saw an article yesterday of couples that voluntarily entered foreclosure. They had made their payments on time and were not in distress. The reason they did it was they saw they could just rent double the house for half the money. So they just mailed their keys to the bank and left. Think about that for a second.

    We have awhile to go.

    "Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin, it does not work."
     
  19. Attacking Minded

    Attacking Minded New Member

    Jun 22, 2002
    Exactly.

    The banks need us. They need us to continue to make our payments. They need to maintain the fiction that we are building equity while they skim off the cash flow. If enough people realize that equity is more lie than truth and cash flow is truth, we are going to see a lot more of this. Their only hope is that the bankruptcy laws are so punitive that people decide the pain of skipping out on a mortgage is worse than the benefit.
     
  20. nicephoras

    nicephoras A very stable genius

    Fucklechester Rangers
    Jul 22, 2001
    Eastern Seaboard of Yo! Semite
    The banks aren´t being bailed out. They are not the ones holding the mortgages. But lots of hedge funds would be in favor.
    Truth is, these measures wouldn´t do much. Tax relief on assumed income and more help with sub-prime mortgages won´t help banks and will not do much for people who have bought McMansions. This is a proposal with zero teeth.
     
  21. nicephoras

    nicephoras A very stable genius

    Fucklechester Rangers
    Jul 22, 2001
    Eastern Seaboard of Yo! Semite
    Cash flow has to be converted into something to be meaningful. You may have cash flow, but if it is being put under your mattrass, how is it "real"? The whole point of lending is to trade equity for cash flow.
     
  22. nicephoras

    nicephoras A very stable genius

    Fucklechester Rangers
    Jul 22, 2001
    Eastern Seaboard of Yo! Semite
    Big banks do not keep a lot of these loans on their books. They were sold long ago. It probably helps the banks as much in that they are counterparties to a lot of leveraged funds that are having trouble with market value tests. (Think Bear Stearns and LTCM.)
     
  23. Attacking Minded

    Attacking Minded New Member

    Jun 22, 2002
    Yes and in the case above they traded their cash flow from mortgage payments to rent payments.
     
  24. nicephoras

    nicephoras A very stable genius

    Fucklechester Rangers
    Jul 22, 2001
    Eastern Seaboard of Yo! Semite
    Just because that particular trade highlights something doesn´t mean all do.
     
  25. ratdog

    ratdog Member+

    Mar 22, 2004
    In the doghouse
    Club:
    Chicago Red Stars
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It was clear all along except to people like MITH, VFish, wingtips and a few others who 12-16 months ago were still regaling us all about how we had entered a new era of endless prosperity because of Bush's tax cuts and how "housing prices never go down". Even earlier this year they were all about how anyone who thought that the mortgage mess would effect the rest of our economic system were a bunch of Chicken Littles. Granted, all they were doing was parroting what they saw on Kudlow and in the WSJ Op Ed page because they don't know any better, but there ya go.
     

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