mallarde

CNBC's Specious Reporting on the Housing Plan

What is so damn tragic about a family moving? It is like a family moving to a rental is akin to slaughtering their first-born on the back patio. I live in a rental. I have moved 4-5 times over the last 10 years. It was not life shattering.

Move! And don't expect me to pay $.01 to spare speculators the annoyance of dealing with movers.

Foreclosure Moratoriums: It's Time to Get Real

And User 357704, what does all this moving of continents in order to slow the decline in housing prices accomplish? So what, you kept prices from falling a little while? You transferred money from taxpayers to speculators, so what? And maybe you took money from banks and mortgage securities holders and transferred it to speculators, so what?

No one in the Obama administration or in Congress talks this through. So we "keep people in their homes" a little while longer. So what? They don't have to rent, is that the idea? We save the economic waste of them hiring movers? Isn't that stimulative, though? Or maybe we avoid traumatizing little Billy when we force him to move into a rental?

I think the implicit assumption is that by propping up the housing market home owners will continue to go further into debt and be nice consumers again. That and we can hire all the illegal aliens and other people and get them building houses again.

None of the "benefits" from propping up the housing market -- presuming it were even possible -- has any appeal for me on a policy basis.

Foreclosure Moratoriums: It's Time to Get Real

I would agree that we need more regulation of mortgage brokers and the whole real estate industry.

But I do not want to subsidize all of the irresponsible home buyers who knew, knew that they could not afford their loan payments unless their house increased in value and they sucked the equity out. Families had plenty of options. They could rent. They could move to the Midwest or other regions where housing did not become like a casino. They could even forgo having a family until they felt financially able to buy a house.

It is impossible to get inside the heads of these millions of people to determine whether they were gamblers or just naive... or what combination of the above applies. I suspect that 95% knew and were dreaming of 15% per year gains in equity.

The author is correct that any money thrown at propping up the real estate industry will be wasted. It's like trying to hold an iceberg in place that is drifting across the ocean. It is too heavy and any force applied is wasted energy.

Americans Will Be Refinanced by Any Means Possible

derryl, who cares if the rest of the world chokes on the derivatives they bought. I would prefer to allow Wall Street firms to suffer their own extinction, allow new players to enter the field and let foreign firms die, too. They took on the huge risk. They deserve it.

Why move mountains -- or continents, or planets -- to save these firms? Allow new firms to enter their space. Middle-tier investment banks can replace the old names. Isn't this the "creative destruction" these same capitalists love the talk about?

Maybe the government should be subsidizing healthy, smaller firms so they can replace the ones that got drunk on derivatives.

Americans Will Be Refinanced by Any Means Possible

Yes, markg. The paper shuffling could work for so long, just like a Ponzi scheme. Now one of these economic luminaries that the government listens to must explain that Americans need to earn money before they can spend anymore.

The Economics and Ethics of Mortgage Default

In CA in most circumstances the lender has a choice -- take the home and suffer any deficiencies or go directly at the borrower for the full loan amount, giving up the security interest.

Fannie and Freddie: Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

The hybrid public/private form of these entities is absurd. Only the two-dimensional mind of George Bush and the opportunists that surround him would advocate for such a stupid thing.

Either it is a for-profit venture weighing risk and return or it is to serve the public interest by supporting the mortgage market. One or the other.