Hostile Takeover: Obama's Mortgage Crisis Solution

By Jim

We should really call the over-reaching and power grabbing by the Federal Government what it really is: a hostile takeover. It disgusts me to no end how arrogant the Obama administration behaves in their “noble” quest to manage every part of our “much too difficult and confusing” lives.

Obama’s new plan to address the housing crisis includes mandating the 5 largest private banks to pay out a ‘settlement’ to many of their borrowers. This settlement, to the tune of $26 billion dollars, will serve as “restitution” to hundreds of thousands of borrowers if they lost their homes to foreclosure in the past 4 years, and will help current borrowers refinance or reduce their principle.

Over 80% of the people who this supposedly applies to, do not qualify because this proposal only covers private bank owned loans. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans (or government owned or subsidized loans) are not required to put up money, or provide the same service to their customers.

The fact of the matter is that over the years leading up to the housing meltdown, the Department of Housing and Urban Development forced lenders to adhere to dramatically loosened mortgage qualification requirements in their “noble” gesture to let more and more Americans enjoy the dream of home ownership. Of course, the consequences start coming forward when under-qualified individuals are lent more money than they can afford to pay back responsibly, and the Department of HUD ends up being a major contributor to the housing meltdown. So let’s make some sense of Obama’s solution: The government forces the big banks to put up 25 billion dollars of their money and profit, give it away to their borrowers as a settlement, because they’ve somehow done something wrong and deserve to pay a penalty? Or better yet, millions of Americans took loans for more than they could handle, did not uphold their agreement to pay back these loans, complain that their real estate “investment” lost value as if real estate isn’t supposed to have any risk, and they get rewarded for it? And all of this is the evil banks’ fault? If this isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is.

Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I think this is setting the stage for the Federal Government of the United States to itself become the biggest bank in the country. What better way to ensure the failure of your competitors than by getting to write the rules they play by, while exempting yourself from those same rules? I would not be surprised if the federals took over the banking industry completely because it would fit in perfectly with the nanny state philosophy. How much better could we be protected from bad loans and predatory lending, than if our “protectors” are the ones doing the lending? Does this make me sound like a New World Order conspiracy nut? I hope not, because I don’t think it is that far-fetched.

I hope that more people wake up to how much power they are letting the government take away from themselves and the children of future generations. This has long since become a fight for our freedom that we can no longer afford to ignore.

Read more at The Bitter Americans