I was yelling at the TV when he said that. Palin could have literally destroyed him and the messiah on that point, but she let it pass.
She should have replied “you know Joe, the idea you just proposed is the just about worst idea I have ever heard. 94% of Americans are current in their mortgages, and the for the 6% that are not, I would propose gov’t incentives to the banks to ‘workout’ the mortgages that can be saved. Unfortunately, not all of them can be. It should be between the mortgage holder and the borrower to decide, not the courts. If you allow a judge to reduce both the interest rate and principal on the mortgage, what does that say to the 94% of the people who have not bought more house they can afford, who have not used their house as an ATM, who have not bought a house to speculate and flip, and who have made sacrifices to stay current in their mortgages. “What you are proposing is socialism, not capitalism, and if we were to embark on a plan like yours, what bank would ever make new mortgages? To make a new mortgage with the knowledge that a judge can invalidate the terms at his whim, and without any recourse reduce both the interest rate and principal, would be crazy.” If you were to do this, you would create a huge incentive for more people to simply stop making mortgage payments and hope they can petition the court for better terms.”
When I heard that, the first thing I thought was “Those b-tards are going change my principle...they will probably raise it because some other idiot will have their dropped.”