02-18-2009, 10:50 PM
beerman wrote:
Gutenberg, could you clarify your comments for me? I suspect others understood what you were saying, but I did not. thank you.
As an interesting side note I just got back from a board meeting where a lawyer was very frustrated that a portion of the bailout money will be going to speculators or to people who made incredibly bad financial decisions. He made almost the same comment that kj made, that we are essentially subsidizing someone's lifestyle. I would have to admit I agree but I don't know how any criteria could be setup to exclude those people and still accomplish the goal of keeping people in their houses that otherwise would lose them. Perhaps exclude mortgages that are not on primary residences would be a start?
It's in the nature of doing something to help others out, there will always be persons who take advantage. About all that can be done is to do your best to make the rules so as many are helped who did not get themselves intentionally into trouble and exclude as many as you can who did. Being that you are dealing with humans, imperfect in every way, there are going to be less than perfect results and processes. Or you can do nothing while trying to get the "perfect" set of rules and see things get much, much worse.
One thing I would like to see in the provisions for aid, is that if any mortgage does get a mark down in value is a recovery rule. That if the owner does eventually sell for more than the marked down value, that profit would go to pay back into the program and reimburse the support. That woould be similar to what was done during the '80's for farmers when the agriculture credit market dried up.