"Stop the insanity" is the first phrase that comes to mind after reading this headline. Why? Think about what is truly happening in the mortgage market and where all of this is headed.
Basically, the government is trying to overtake the mortgage market through endless regulation. They feel they must do something or else and are succumbing to pressures to "bail out" a market that was in desperate need of a correction to bring itself back to reality.
But is "over-regulation" what we truly need? Don't take me wrong here as I am all for added regulation which protects the consumer, but when the government steps in, they tend to overdo it. Allowing Freddie and Fannie to go into the Jumbo market, even if only temporarily, is one case in many of how the government is throwing Band-Aids on the gaping wound. Sure it stops the bleeding some, but basically just prolongs death.
Paulson and Bernanke are doing everything in their power to Band-Aid the mortgage market. Bernanke and crew are cutting the Fed Funds Rate and Discount Rates even with inflation showing signs of growing and the economy slowing. He is giving stagflation an "open door". Both are looking for any changes they can make or get other parts of the government to make in order to "save homeowners from foreclosure."
Who stands to win though? The homeowner? Not likely.
The real winners in this game they are playing are the lenders and other financial institutions that are struggling due to their risky lending practices or over leveraged positions on mortgage backed securities. Citigroup, Wachovia, Bank of America, Washington Mutual, Countrywide, the list goes on and on. All are shouldering huge losses and will likely continue to do so into 2008. They "need" the government to do something.
The homeowner's facing foreclosure, for the most part, deserve to be foreclosed upon. While the media and government play that the typical foreclosure is a subprime borrower facing increased mortgage costs due to their payment adjusting, that represents the minority, yes the minority of foreclosures out there. Factor in that the government portrays the mortgage professional that sold them the loan as an unscrupulous one and reality shrinks even further from the truth.
Again, don't get me wrong. There are unscrupulous originators and there are homeowners that truly should be helped somehow, but they are the smallest percentage of the pie.
So, why is the government willing to screw up the entire industry over the few? Well, because that is what they do. They disguise "bail outs" as "homeowner salvation plans". They usually go out of their way to appease the minority groups on an issue, while sacrificing the desires of the majority groups. (Note: I am not talking about racial or ethnical issues here, so don't even go that route in any comments please).
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