The Politics of Foreclosure
Who
says
bipartisanship is dead? From President Bush to
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and
John Edwards, to Mitt Romney and John McCain,
virtually everyone in Washington agrees: The government
must Do Something to stop home foreclosures across the
country. These leaders agree on the total presumption of
homeowner innocence. The
borrower-as-victim and lender-as-predator storylines
are etched in stone. Can`t let reality get in the way of
election-year pander-monium.
Special guests at the State of the Union address are
usually extraordinary heroes, entrepreneurs or citizens
who`ve gone above and beyond the call of duty. On Monday
night, one of those guests was an Indiana woman whose
claim to fame is that she called a 1-800 number and was
assisted by the
"Hope Now Alliance," a group Bush convened,
which, according to him, "is helping many struggling
homeowners avoid foreclosure."[2008
State Of The Union]
Subprime victims are the new heroes. Welcome to the
politics of foreclosure.
Housing Czarina Hillary immediately jumped on the
president`s address and on news that foreclosure rates
skyrocketed 79 percent over the last year. She
reiterated her call for "a 90-day foreclosure
moratorium on subprime mortgages and a 5-year freeze in
rates on subprime loans." Borrowers who knowingly
bought more house than they could pay for have no place
in Hillary`s world. "It is indisputable that brokers
and mortgage companies lured families into mortgages
that were designed to end in foreclosure," she
stated in a
Denver Post
questionnaire this week.
Continuing the theme of duped borrowers, Sen. Chuck
Schumer is crusading for more federally subsidized
"mortgage counseling." He wants $200 million more,
in addition to the $180 million for "Housing
Counseling Assistance" that he helped stick into the
omnibus spending bill last year. A significant portion
of that will go to government-approved counselors
affiliated with left-wing activist groups such as La
Raza and ACORN.[
House Passes $146 Billion Economic Aid Package,
By David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times, January
29, 2008]


