Chucky Schumer Wants To Pay Your Mortgage

[red states rule]

Dumb: Buying a house you can't afford with no down payment and a loan whose monthly payments will explode in a few years.

Dumber: Lending money to people who can't afford a traditional mortgage, especially when they have lousy credit ratings and don't substantiate their income.

Dumbest: Bailing out dumb and dumber, especially with taxpayer money.

State and federal lawmakers, community groups and housing advocates are proposing schemes to prevent the victims of the subprime loan crisis from losing their homes. I hate to sound callous, but it's hard for me to know who the victims are in this mess.

If mortgage brokers or lenders used inflated appraisals or made false or misleading statements, they should be prosecuted or at least forced to restructure the loans. If borrowers lied about their income or assets to get a bigger loan, they too should be prosecuted.

But many people got into the subprime mess because they were willing to believe a fast-talking broker who told them they could buy a home, or a bigger home, or take more cash out of their home than they could with a conventional mortgage.

Keeping people in homes they had no business buying is wrong in many ways.

A new report from the Joint Economic Committee of Congress cites a study that said "a single-family home foreclosure lowers the value of homes located within one-eighth of a mile (or one city block) by an average of 0.9 percent."

The head of that committee, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has been a vocal proponent of a bailout of subprime borrowers.

"The federal government can send in an infusion of (money) to prevent foreclosure," he said earlier this month.

for the complete article
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/22/BUGU9PB34E1.DTL

 

[William Joyce]

The loudest member of Congress. As it happens, he's not also the wisest.

 

[SpidermanTuba]

Dumb: Buying a house you can't afford with no down payment and a loan whose monthly payments will explode in a few years.

Dumber: Lending money to people who can't afford a traditional mortgage, especially when they have lousy credit ratings and don't substantiate their income.

Dumbest: Bailing out dumb and dumber, especially with taxpayer money.

So you were against the bankruptcy legislation that the big lenders pushed through a few years ago?

But many people got into the subprime mess because they were willing to believe a fast-talking broker who told them they could buy a home, or a bigger home, or take more cash out of their home than they could with a conventional mortgage.

Keeping people in homes they had no business buying is wrong in many ways.

A new report from the Joint Economic Committee of Congress cites a study that said "a single-family home foreclosure lowers the value of homes located within one-eighth of a mile (or one city block) by an average of 0.9 percent."

The head of that committee, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has been a vocal proponent of a bailout of subprime borrowers.

"The federal government can send in an infusion of (money) to prevent foreclosure," he said earlier this month.

for the complete article
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/22/BUGU9PB34E1.DTL

[/quote]

I think we can agree that this could be a serious economic problem. And its funny but this has been going on throughout history - entire economies built on thin paper, that collapse. In fact, the majority of the US economy is now based on pushing paper, not on selling real tangible things.

If its so bad that they're talking about government bail-outs - it may be too late anyway.