Ben Stein Says 'Bailout' Is A Scam: Use Money To Bailout Homeowners Directly
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....Maybe the bailout should not be of the banks at all, but of homeowners themselves. Maybe if we make the government the buyer of last resort of homes.... quote from Ben Stein!
dude or dudette, check the title of the article & see what Ben Stein said. i know there was only one picture in teh article, but try to keep up anyway!
i hate to break this to you - the RTC didnt "buy" anything... it disposed of trouble assets.
Nice to know some people still have funtioning brains. God bless you.
Right, the very same Ben Stein who a year ago was parroting the same line as everyone else, that sub-prime was contained, the number of defaults was relatively small and wouldn't impact the economy.
Apparently, and unlike Ben, you've not yet woken up to the fact that "mortgage-related asset" is an entirely different kettle of fish here.
Check your history. The RTC was set up to distribute the assets, after the taxpayers had bought them, to the tune of about $125b out of the total $160b cost of that debacle.
There are way more than two parties at fault... the government, GSEs, Wall Street, banks, the real estate industry and home "owners" all screwed up.
But the home "owners" are most at fault because they all voluntarily signed legally binding contracts that, due to stupidity and greed, they couldn't honor. They shouldn't have to be protected from themselves and making them out as victims only perpetuates the problem.
Our culture of entitlement and lack of personal responsibility got us into this mess and until that changes we won't get out of it... any fixes will only be band-aids.
But the home "owners" are most at fault because they all voluntarily signed legally binding contracts that, due to stupidity and greed, they couldn't honor. They shouldn't have to be protected from themselves and making them out as victims only perpetuates the problem.
Our culture of entitlement and lack of personal responsibility got us into this mess and until that changes we won't get out of it... any fixes will only be band-aids.
The goverment sets a bad example, spending beyond it's means. Oh wait I forgot they can just take more of our hard earned money.
This is a case of the banks shifiting responsibility of mort. payments .
to the ..naive, uninformed investors until "the emperor has no clothes" moment slowly but surely came about. What happened?
In the past the banks kept these loans in their portfolios and the quality of the mortgages had to meet a criteria that minimized risk to less than 1% . When their mortgage warehousing system changed to bundling and selling to the public ie pension plans mutual funds etc the garbage stuffed in them increased.
like the meat packers of years ago who use to say" you don't want to know what goes into the making of sausage." As time went on with loan to value exceededing 100% of the inflated value placed by the appraisers. with option arms and other exotic mortgages you got some pretty rancid sausage that caused the sickness we see now.
There are no easyl solutions to this and there is enough blame to go around from wall street to Washinton.
banks were coerced to make loans to the unqulafied borrowers whith the help of various action groups who accused the lenders
of racial bias. i'm not saying this was not true but it helped them rethink lending procedures when the loans could be offloaded.
I have no answers but here are a few things i would do:
1 For the new homes or condos a mandated short sale (this is method allready in use) the builder and the bank take a haircut on this,
2.The speculative investor, or flipper has the properties auction off an absolute auction.
3 Have all home loans become recourse loans so the high 6 and seven figure mortgages become the respnsibility of the borrower.
in some states CALIF. they are not
The above won't solve the problems but they are a start and may help the lending institutions to make better sausage
cheers john