Is Obama preparing a trillion-dollar, mass refinancing of mortgages?

why is in our national interest that people have an easier time with their mortgages? why does a random taxpayer give a damn if a guy is underwater? too bad for him. he shouldnt have bought the house. the government can make any random group of people have it easier, at the expense of everyone else. but why?

fannie and freddie clearly should not exist.

why cant we let people just be free? why cant we let people sign contracts between each other and manage their own lives? i dont care if you are evicted from your house or whatever. go live somewhere else. if you are paying more than your house is worth, too bad. good for whoever you are paying. it isnt the responsibility of the government to manage the mortgage and housing market.

those are not benefits. its cronyism. why do i want some borrower to reduce his payments? maybbe i am friends with the guys who is paying. why take sides, its not my business!

 

I agree with you that there were a lot of fortunes created during the housing boom but the banks were doing alright also. I am a capitalist so I do not begrudge people for doing well except for when it is done on the back of someone else. There is blame aplenty as it pertains to the housing issue and I certainly do not think that people who bought more house than they could truly affored or those who over invested deserve our tax dollars.

But, as Cajun Sensation alluded to earlier, just about all of these cases have been foreclosed on and are out of the system. What remains are people who bought a home in their price range, who had the credit rating, who did what they were supposed to do but due to the poor judgement of so many others their homes are worth considerably less than what they paid for it. I am talking about people who are current on their mortgage. What harm would it do for the banks to lower interest rates for these people with the backing of freddie or fannie (I hate them too, but it's what we got right now)?

I don't want the banks to have to eat it.....I am not on a witch hunt here. I just want solutions, ways to get our economy moving again. The housing market is a big impediment to that right now given that housing is usually what helps pull us out of typical recessions. I own a few mattress shops and when the housing market is good, people buy mattresses and I get to take the family on vacation again, etc. You see where I am going with this.

 

but housing slumps dont hurt everyone. if houses are not selling well, maybe more people are renting, and that is fine, good news for landlords. and what if i want to buy a house, it is great for me that houses are cheaper now. why do we want to hurt landlords or people who want to buy cheaper houses. maybe i am glad you got foreclosed on so i can buy your place for cheap. why wont this sort itself out? if we fix it with government, then wont the people who caused it just do it again? cant we make the people who spent way too much on a house bear that responsibility?

i really dont see why people would buy more house than they can afford. if they bought the house as an investment, then too bad, shoulda invested in stocks or something. things dont just increase in value for perpetuity. a crash was inevitable.

i know a guy who sold his house at the top of the housing market, made a killing, then he moved into a rented house. he made out like a bandit. good for him. smart people know how to manage these things. i dont care about the idiots who dont know what they are doing.

 

you guys just don't seem to understand that you can't just stimulate an economy forever. There have to be downturns and when those downturns work themselves out, the economy gets going again. Governments role in the economy is to soften both the peaks and valleys of economic cycle. Red, you've been talking about how the economy is doing so much better and arguing about it relentlessly, now you want more stimulus because the economy is struggling. Which is it?

 

Foreclosure is bad for everyone involved. It is bad for the home owner because they lose there house. It is bad for the bank because they have to pay someone to go through the hassle of paperwork, notices, regulations, etc. It is bad for the neighborhood because it decreases house values when a "Foreclosure" sign is in the yard 3 doors down.

Someone has compiled a list of the Top 5 Reasons to Stay Out of Foreclosure and I think it contains some useful information you should read.

 

another brake on the economy is taxes and debt that pays for bailouts.

you and i have vastly different ideas about the role and scope of government.

if people want to buy houses, fine. if they dont, also fine. if they live in rentals, ok. if they take out mortgages, ok. if they fail to pay those mortgages, then that is risk that should be managed by the folks that gave the mortgage, not anyone else. if a foreclosure happens, so be it. maybe it will make the lender adequately cautious next time. and if that means the housing market is smaller, so be it. maybe it mean rents go up and existing houses are worth more. thats fine. we just need to leave it alonw. we dont need to stimulate anything or take money from person A to give to person B.

again, the mere existence of fannie and freddie is absurd.

 

you need to come to the realization that money the government spends doesnt come from narnia. when the government "moves things along", that means they take money from one person and give it to another. thats not fair. maybe just let the people keep the money and buy houses with it, or create jobs, or even (god forbid!) rent a house.

my landlord takes the money i pay him in rent, and he started a small business, he creates jobs. but i dont own a house. it isnt a negative for the economy that i dont own a house. we need to stop favoring one set of a decisions over others. we need to stop thinking "we need to get every american to own a house and make political decisions to that end". we need to just let the market function.