Is that like Big Oil?
Or Big Crane?
Big Banana?
Posted on 07/22/2008 10:12:18 PM PDT by politicket
WASHINGTON -- House and Senate leaders have largely hammered out a compromise deal on a mammoth housing package that would permit the government to bolster Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in an emergency, overhaul supervision of the housing-finance giants and allow the government to insure up to $300 billion in refinanced mortgages.
The deal comes after tense negotiations and is likely to remain a source of contention when the House of Representatives votes Wednesday. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that a temporary measure to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could cost the government as much as $25 billion. And despite repeated White House veto threats, lawmakers plan to include a $4 billion program that would allow local governments to buy and rehabilitate foreclosed properties.
It remained unclear whether the White House would follow through on veto threats, particularly because administration officials have actively lobbied in support of major provisions.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
They’re going to be voting on this in the House tommorrow (7/23)! Call/write/fax your Congress critter and ask them to vote NO!
No more private profits but public losses! No bailouts for irresponsible borrowers and lenders!
Enough is enough!
LQ
$300 billion here, $300 billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about big money.
There is a tomorrow folks, and we need to quit spending like there isn’t.
Democrats Have Plan for Gasoline and Mortgage Crises
In a bid to “kill two birds with one stone,” Democrats in congress have introduced the Transportation and Housing Options for Gas Price Relief Act of 2008. This bill calls for the federal government to issue every American a “good pair of walking shoes” and mandates that “large appliance boxes be set aside as temporary housing for those who lose their homes due to mortgage defaults.”
“The beauty of this plan is that the housing will be portable,” said an enthusiastic Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore). “People will be able to live closer to jobs they can walk to. We will simultaneously strike a blow at both suburban sprawl and obesity. I’m confident we’ll look back on these days as a blessing because we were motivated to make changes we all know we have to make, but lacked the will to make without the pressure of high gas prices and mortgage foreclosures.”
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
The liability to the US public is potentially over a trillion and well known to the House and Senate. Interestingly and to our detriment, major countries have loaned Fannie and Freddie money, and they take precedence over shareholders..China has about $376 billion, next Japan, Belgium, Luxembourg, S korea, Cayman ISlands and maybe some more...their total is about $1.2 trillion. China, with an approaching $2trillion in forex dollars, is in potential complete control of where the dollar index goes..if they wish to cruch the dollar to any infinitesimal or maximal degree they can do it. Japan has almost a trillion forex dollars, and can be overpowered by China. China can challenge the yen and cause the yen to rise so that low ‘carry trade’ interest rates can endanger the credit derivative interest rollover costs. The US itself has essentially no forex dollars to defend withg, even less than the FDIC has in its quiver against bank failures. Congress is disinforming the public as to what the risks are with Fannie and Freddie. Plenty of articles are printed daily now on the facts of the situation. It is dire, indeed.
Honestly it makes you want to just hang every member of Congress.
We had safeguards in place and the Congress demanded the loan industry ignore them.
I’m not expert enough to know how accurate you are, but I’m certainly open to your explanation. I’m not very happy about it to say the least.
“Oh foreign nations holding trillions of U.S. dollars is a good thing...”
Socialization of our economy. The politicians in Washington fear having too many people put out of their homes prior to Nov.
And whats more, the money needed is in the order of 1.2 Trillion dollars not the measely 329 billion they are dedicating to this fiasco, a sure sign that this is a short term prelection fix.
Artificially keeping property values high does us no good.The market should dictate what homes are worth, not an artificial bailout designed to prolong the gravey train of loose money that got them into this fix in the first place, and which will articially inflate property values for a few more months, based on the money available to lend, not on true market value.
Now the RE crash will come after next November.
Then it will be time to buy that condo in Florida now going for 225 K for about 50K to 80 K.
50 - 80K for a condo fits that estimate.
Both parties agree, everybody wins!
(that of course, was a joke)
These bailout bills are going to do nothing but reward people who bought more than they could afford, took on more debt than they could manage, and artificially prop up real estate prices in most markets when they should be allowed to correct to mark to market prices.
The lenders and financers that were primarly responsible for creating this whole mess (those that haven’t gone out of business) are rewarded as well.
Freddie and Fannie are in deep trouble and that needs to be addressed. But I flat out reject any housing gambler bailout package attached to any such initiative. Let this correction run its course.
Social Security to follow...
The GOP members of congress if asked to remove pants would all have “Democrat bitch” tattooed on their butts
Before a DIME of MY money goes to these crooked loan companies I want EACH AND EVERY PENNY siphoned from the executives and fund manager CROOKS to pay for this. And then throw them UNDER the poorhouse. They thought it was PERFECTLY okay to gamble with MY money for THEIR profit. They should be PUNISHED.
I think you could even get the libs to go along with that one!
Let your elected officials know this! They’re voting on the bailout bill today in the House!
LQ
That’s a Lithuanian crane company.
“We had safeguards in place and the Congress demanded the loan industry ignore them.”
Henry Cisneros and Bill Clinto thought that the old rules, only lending to people who could pay it back, were racist and discriminatory against those who had lower incomes.
The new rules were more inclusive.
Look how often Cisneros’s name comes up in the current news in regard to this “crisis”.
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2008/02/clintons_drive.html
Golly, it was easier than I thought. One comment to this article runs roughly: How DARE you blame Clinton when it’s Bush’s attempt to crash our economy with his phony war?
We can now use dollar bills as toilet paper when we run out at home. It will all be just worthless pieces of paper.
;-)
Freakin' Congriminals. People should be going to jail over this national crime, not getting bailed out.
MEGA CORRUPTION ALERT.
This is straight from the Geraldine Ferraro school of campaign finance. In order to finance her campaign for congress and avoid campaign limits, Ferraro "purchased" a property from a supporter at a deep discount and sold it a few months latter for an 80,000 profit (a ton of money in the early 80's) and put the money into her campaign.
With this provision, you (Mr. or MRS. local politician/Kwame Fitzpatrick) buy a dilapidated/boarded up property, have a "supporter/straw buyer" get a loan from a politically friendly bank to purchase it at a huge profit. Of course the property goes almost immediately into forclosure, but the Kwame Fitzpatrick clone gets the local govt. to purchase the property using federal dollars to make the bank whole.
This should be called "THE FEDERAL FUNDING OF LOCAL CORRUPTION ACT".
Don’t take this as argumentative, but are you sure this took place under Clinton Cisneros? I thought some of this did take place under Bush. Is that a mistaken premise?
LOL, there you go. Well, the policies that set this in motion did take place at a specific point in time.
I have no problem with it being under Clinton, I’m not sure why I thought it had taken place under Bush.
Is it the ten year balloon payments that are coming due now, that is exploding this situation at this time?
CNBC is reporting:
"A bill to help troubled homeowners and the shaky mortgage market gained momentum as President Bush dropped his opposition to the measure and the House prepared to vote on it later Wednesday."
The ‘red alert’ by Denninger this morning...
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
So we'll have to pay federal taxes for the fannie/freddie bailout and then to make it even more Kremlin-like, we'll have to pay state/local taxes so our local gov't can buy foreclosures, preventing the taxpayers from buying any, and preventing the housing prices from taking the downward turn in prices that they should be taking.
Every way you look at this the taxpayers/serfs get screwed and government/royalty and business gets paid.
Wow, he’s pretty animated on this. What is the down side here if we don’t short up these institutions. Does it destroy the ability for these institutions to draw foreign investment? Doesn’t that have a negative impact on the industry as a whole?
Frankly, I’m not sure of the answers to these questions.
How do we get rid of these people? (politicians) They’re all in bed together and once elected they stay in power thru top corporate positions that they obtained from passing laws that benefit said corporations.
“.....but reward people who bought more than they could afford, took on more debt than they could manage”
Ain’y no way Congress is gonna indict an outfit that plays by their rules!!
“Every way you look at this the taxpayers/serfs get screwed and government/royalty and business gets paid...”
what you’ve just described is Medieval serfdom.....
I think the quote goes: The Democrats are the evil party and the Republicans are the stupid party. When they agree, it is both stupid and evil.
Please remind me why I support the Republicans?
Bush did nothing to change it, but it was not his initiative. I can imagine the howls from the NYT and chanting from the sycophants if bush tried to “prevent the poor from owning their own homes” or whatever.
I think it's great that home ownership is up, it's an American Dream, but Heinlein’s principle of TANSTAAFL is still valid.
Cisneros blames Wall Street for the problem, not his policies, and Bush today also blamed Wall Street for “being drunk”.
Thanks for pointing that out. I think some others did too.
It was a lousy program. I agree that it is good to see more people in their own homes, but at what cost.
Who didn’t know this would fall out? And that leads to the question of why this was implemented knowing that?
I still have this nagging feeling that the U.S. is being undermined by both parties to usher in some new plan full of bilge.
A backlash is coming.
You do realize that under the bankrupcy reform, the fist mortgage has to be fully paid even if the loan to value is upside down?
Under the old law the lender paid a price for inflating the value of the collateral. Under the new law there is no such risk.
We already have enough interfearance artificially impacting the flow of the market. This is just trying to fix the fix which is going to need a fix.
> “A bill to help troubled homeowners and the shaky mortgage market gained momentum as President Bush dropped his opposition to the measure and the House prepared to vote on it later Wednesday.”
Oh, [BLEEP]!
Why in God’s name did I work so hard to elect Republicans? Why? Why? Same old CRAP.
At least I’m saving money this year by not enabling the RNC to promote the latest RINO/Dim wannabe.
Have you called Congress yet? I have. There’s always a faint hope when we rise up, as we did for the vote on illegal immigration.
I hope I have the diacritical marks correct, or a Lithuanian Catholic nun will come after me.
But YOU could liely persuade me to buy a condo! LOL.Especially in Baja.
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