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]