Underwater Adventures

[howeird]

Something didjiman said on his LJ which needs answering, but it's trending off-topic in that thread so I'll be a good netizen and clutter up my own journal with it instead.

He asked if I expected the problem of houses "underwater" to have been fixed in two years. My original comment on his page was not about underwater, it was about foreclosures, two very different things. But my short answer is I expected the foreclosure flood to be stopped by government action within 6 months of Obama's taking office.


Houses being worth less than what you paid for them is a paperwork issue. If you want to live in it, it doesn't matter what it's worth. Until you sell the house, it doesn't matter what it is worth compared to what you owe. And don't give me any arguments about home equity loans - your home is not a bank account, and if you treat it like one that's your own fault.

Foreclosures are simply the bank's decision to take back a house because you have failed to meet its payment schedule. A bank can choose to not foreclose, and the whole point of a bank bailout, I thought, was to give the banks the assets they would otherwise lose when they made the decision to not foreclose. Trillions of dollars. The banks took the money and continued kicking people out of their homes. A strong attorney general could have fixed that. Can anyone even name our attorney general? I can't.

Comments

[didjiman.livejournal.com]

I should have said, "in danger of foreclosure" of course. In any case, the fact that the banks took the money and still kicking people out means that a) they are a*sholes, but we know that, and b) there are genuinely lots of houses with unpaid mortgages. The money wasn't earmarked as "offset to new losses," but to rebuild the capital. If the mortgage money isn't coming in, then it's a loss.

Of course I agree that the bankers should be whipped and lashed for not offering to rewrite the mortgages such that at least they get some money, but then blame the bankers.

[howeird]

I don't really care what the money was earmarked for, because it's just numbers on paper. The fact that the Obama administration did not use those trillions of dollars to help people stay in their homes is a FAIL. And it's the administration, who gave our tax dollars to the people who caused the crisis, who need the whipping. If I had wanted that level of stupid I'd have voted for Palin.

[didjiman.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, thew execution leaves something to desire. Certainly it can be the case. No one is infallible. Sure, fire the incompetent. The whole lot if you must.

But it still does not get to the point of my post - the oppositions scenarios are far worse and the Democrats are wimps that are not standing up to fight.

[howeird]

But it still does not get to the point of my post
Of course it doesn't. The reason I posted here is I had a different point to make.

[didjiman.livejournal.com]

Oh Eric Holden, and I didn't google that :-)