Complaint filed by California AG Brown

License revocation by Washington state

If there’s a bailout it’s to the lenders who have the worst mortgages and can use these options. Right not Countrywide appears to have that dubious honor, but they are also likely to be bought by Bank of America and perhaps not even exist by the time this becomes law. So, it’s really not aimed at helping any particular firms, just the mortgage industry as a whole.

Basically, we taxpayers who tried to live ‘within our means’ are being asked — yet AGAIN!! — to bail out the reckless, the ignorant, the ‘in-the-moment’, those who received bad advice, and the criminally fraudulent.

ignorance is solvable.
Poor advice means the people who gave it should pay more.
The criminally fraudulent belong in prison, and at this point I am so angry about the whole mess that as far as I’m concerned the feckless politicians who made the crap laws can join them for a short stay.

I think if there is anything that unifies ‘the American people’ right now, it’s white-hot wrath at being asked, yet again, to underwrite and bail out fraudulent, reckless opportunists who told those of us who tried to be responsible that we were rubes.

And guess what?
Now the government, by bailing out frauds on our dollar, is telling us exactly that: we’re a bunch of rubes.

Telling people they’re a bunch of rubes for trying to be responsible and socially considerate is not smart.

Lack of leadership.
Only really strong leaders — based on ethical conduct — can ask people to make the kinds of changes this will need.

OTOH, maybe we’ll just end up impoverished as our problems mount because we can’t tolerate moderate discomfort now for huge benefits over ten years.

Clinton was a great leader, diminished by the very forces who brought us BushCheney. I wonder how happy they are now that they all got exactly what they asked for?

I still don’t know what the Housing bill contains. I suppose I could have a shufti over at the LOC site. But is it, in fact, a bank bailout bill with only solicitude for the beleaguered homeowners?

It has a lot of things passed in earlier sessions and a couple of important new things: it lets lender & borrower sell the mortgage to the government if they both take a pre-determined loss and the government will rejigger it from an ARM to a fixed-rate; it also sets up a fund to buy some mortgages. All this is aimed at shoring up the weakest end of the mortgage market and setting a lot of homeowners back onto fixed-rate plans they can afford.

If there’s a bailout it’s to the lenders who have the worst mortgages and can use these options. Right not Countrywide appears to have that dubious honor, but they are also likely to be bought by Bank of America and perhaps not even exist by the time this becomes law. So, it’s really not aimed at helping any particular firms, just the mortgage industry as a whole.

As well-versed as I’ve become in FISA, frankly, I can’t imagine telling my neighbors facing foreclosure that defeating immunity is more important than them keeping their house.

I can. This is an error in logic, FISA is actually is more important than this. Things can and will be done about foreclosure, this is nearly impossible to stop. And it’s not even an exclusive choice, either.

I’d rather see the bankruptcy reform EW mentioned that would allow a judge to reduce the principle amount a petitioning borrower still owed, or would like to see that in addition to the loan guarantees the bill offers. That would deal with the problem of falling prices/ negative equity leading to downward spirals, and would have responses naturally tailored to the widely varying local price conditions that we see (Ooo those Californai cramdowns!). Borrowers would have to live with the consequences of declaring bankruptcy, but would at least have an action they could initiate, instead of being at the mercy of the lenders, and the lenders, as the professionals in the matter, would have to bear a more equitable portion of the pain of those original foolish deals (though I think they might have to acknowledge some losses in the D-S bill also).