Something about the government's mortgage bailout plan incenses me above all. Maybe it's because, as a genuine home-owner with a mortage, I understand the economic issues involved more than those surrounding more exotic financial holdings. The fairness, the morality, the nuts-and-bolts financial arrangements are clear-cut and as accessible as they are instructive. It is simply unfair and divisive to burden all taxpayers for the mistakes of a few. It is immoral to reward the fecklessness of the loaners and loanees involved. It makes no economic sense to attempt to float the bloated real estate market with government intervention. And there is something so terribly corrupting about empowering courts to declare contracts made between citizens null and void.
Q: How can this be happening?
A: Grown-ups are not in charge.
Put another way, good-faith efforts made to stabilize the economy--when they are not simply undertaken in an evil, deliberate attempt to replace free enterprise with Marxism--by eliminating the consequences of unwise, foolish and irresponsible actions are symptomatic of the stunted, childish mentality now shared by multiple generations of citizens who lead this country.
The Washington Post reported this week on the Obama program to "steady the housing market." Wholly corrupt it, is more like it. The paper reports:
The program has two key elements: a refinancing program for borrowers with little equity in their homes but current on their loans, and a $75 billion program to help reduce mortgage payments for struggling borrowers.
There is a lot to say on this. Just for starters:
1) "Borrowers with little equity in their homes but current on their loans" make perfect renters! NB: My paternal grandparents rented all their lives in Brooklyn, NY, and I never heard them wishing the government would grant them, in effect, a down payment.
2) "Reduce mortgage payments for strugglng borrowers": In other words, get in there and change the contract the lender and the borrower knowingly signed. How corrupting it will be to teach us as a nation that signed contracts negotiated in good faith are no llonger binding--and according to the government! Besides, isn't it a fact of middle class existence that most of us "struggle" to make those monthly mortgage payments anyway? Isn't anyone supposed to be responsible for himself anymore?
Apparently not. Increasingly, the Obama plan appears to require the creation of a growing government-beholden class of Americans who will support his government power grab of all our institutions and markets at all costs.
The seemingly widespread acquiesence to this nefarious plan is exactly what happens when children grow old ... but not up.