Only the Federal Government is This Stupid
The Article: Housing rescue plan passes key Senate test
The mortgage aid plan would let the Federal Housing Administration back $300 billion in new, cheaper home loans for an estimated 400,000 distressed borrowers who otherwise would be considered too financially risky to qualify for government-insured, fixed-rate loans.
So let me get this right. We have 400,000 people who are fiscally irresponsible. So fiscally irresponsible in fact that they have chosen not to make payment on one of the fundamental requirements of human life: shelter.
Beyond the lack of fiscal responsibility, the very same 400,000 people also lack a fundamental requirement for American success: foresight. They couldn’t tell that they were over-extending their finances when they signed the documents to purchase their homes.
I think you can see where I’m going here.
400,000 losers. 400,000 people who made bad life decisions and who should suffer the consequences. 400,000 people who have proven they lack foresight, fiscal responsibility, and desire to provide for themselves the basic necessity of life. 400,000 people who signed a contract to pay for their home who ended up unable to hold up their end of the agreement.
So please, someone, anyone, tell me– why exactly should the fine taxpayers of these United States bail these folks out? Why should we exert our confidence in these deadbeats to the tune of $300,000,000,000?
Oh yeah. I know the reason. It’s an election year.
We are fools for allowing our Congress to buy votes in this fashion.
I just want to add:
If you were to take the 300,000,000,000 one-dollar bills that our Congress plans on using to bail out these folks and stack it, how high do you think the stack would be?
A mile? Two miles? 100 miles? 1,000 miles?
Try 20,689.7 miles.
How about if you laid the bills end to end? Surely it’s a much larger number, but how much larger?
Laid end to end, 300,000,000,000 one-dollar bills comes out to 29,071,969.7 miles total.
How much is that really?
And lastly, if laid end to end, it would take light a whopping 2 minutes and 36 seconds to travel from end to end.
This bailout is just insane.
Mike
I guess you’ve never had to try and recover from a catastrophic (or worse, disabling) illness. Or been out of work for longer than you expected or your finances allowed for. I haven’t walked in those shoes, thankfully, but I did bury my Mother after she had.
I don’t disagree entirely with your premise, Mike. The government is bailing out some people who consciously made some poor decisions and likely will continue to do so. However, describing all 400k of these people as losers is just arrogant. Especially in an era where Congress has two faced the arrangement by making it harder for people to declare bankruptcy. Individuals lately get crappier treatment than corporations do. We’ve had no problem bailing out Bears-Sterns when it made dumb decisions. No one called their CEO a loser.
I’m not saying you agree with those policies (you probably would call B-S’ CEO a loser), but I think your outrage is a little overbroad. With the deceptive lending practices that took place during this housing bubble, many of these people were never told they couldn’t afford that house. The lender just lied on their credit score to get the loan to qualify.
There is no question a sense of individual accountability and responsibility needs to be at play here, but a little empathy can go a long way too. I agree that the bailout is a little excessive, however.
I can definitely see your points, Doc, but of course I have to disagree on a few of them
For those who have true hardships, I have no problem loaning tax dollars at a market interest rate with deferred payments for a period of time, if necessary, to keep them in their homes. Those situations cannot be foreseen. I, of course, would much prefer state support in those situations, and even better than state support would be family support along with voluntary community support.
But I do not agree with you about deceptive lending practices. Surely you have purchased property before (I know you have.. heh). When you purchased your property, was there an attorney there? OK good. Who paid for that attorney? Gotcha, you did. So, whose attorney was that– the lender’s, or yours? Yep, yours. Who was that attorney representing, you or the lender? You, and only you. And who is to blame if the proper questions are not asked of the attorney? The lender? I don’t think so.
I was a loan originator for a while. In fact, my brother-in-law owns a mortgage company. A large portion of his business is subprime (no surprise– prime borrowers typically go to a bank). As far as I am aware, he has never, ever closed a loan without an attorney present. When our loan was closed (through his company), we had an attorney. We asked him questions. He answered them. If he didn’t, we would have walked.
In fact, our loan was accidentally listed as an ARM when we clearly wanted an FRM. We pointed it out to the attorney, and he stopped the closing until proper docs were generated and delivered. If we wouldn’t have noticed that and ended up with an ARM that adjusted upward to the point where we couldn’t afford it, whose fault would it be? Squarely, ours. And who would be responsible for rectifying the situation at that point? Us, and only us. Not you, not our neighbors, not the other taxpayers. It would be on us. Any monies or credit report damage or any negative consequences would be considered tuition at the University of Things That Shouldn’t Be Repeated.
People don’t get suckered into loans. Stupid people take out bad loans. Unfortunately, while ignorance may be bliss, stupidity comes at a price. The vast majority of these two-car-two-kids-$100/month-cellphone-$150/month-cable-television-annual-vacation-just-another-$10/month-payment-idiots who are going into foreclosure are likely very deserving of what is coming their way.
And yeah, we should never bail out a failing business or industry. There is just no constitutional mandate for it.
Hey wait, there’s no constitutional mandate to help people with their mortgages, either.
Pesky constitution. Let’s scrap it.
Your rebuttal…?
Mike
I think I’m in agreement with your compromise vs. bailout. Otherwise I think we were close to being on the same page before, I just wasn’t crazy about calling some of those folks losers.
Yeah yeah. But Doc, this is a blog. I have always been under the impression that all blog posts must meet a minimum requirement for blanket generalizations and outrageous statements.
Would it be better for me to call us– the 304,033,845 people who are footing the bill– losers instead?
Eh, the way I see it, losers all around.
Mike