Freddie Mac Regulator Cordially Invites Homeowners To Bite Him
Oh HI, 31.4% of homeowners that are underwater on their mortgages ! Would you like to change your name to Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, or perhaps even just “bank”? Because if not it is too bad and so sad for you, since the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac regulator just said no WAY hozay to a plan that might actually help you, because of "freedom" and "personal responsibility." And yes, Freddie Mac and Fannie maybe got hundreds of millions of dollars from the government in a no-strings-attached bailout, but that was DIFFERENT. Helping rich people and large institutions makes them better whereas helping homeowners and Poors just encourages irresponsibility, DUH.
Via Reuters :
The regulator for government-run housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said on Tuesday that using taxpayer-funded bank bailout money could encourage defaults and not make a big improvement in reducing foreclosures in a cost-effective way for taxpayers.
"The anticipated benefits do not outweigh the costs and risks," said the Federal Housing Finance Agency's head Edward DeMarco, who has come under intense pressure from the government to agree to the plan.
… Geithner pointed out that DeMarco's own data showed that the program would help nearly half a million homeowners andsave taxpayers as much as $1 billion.
The housing regulator responded saying that figure only applied to a group of homeowners that had not made a mortgage payment in a year and would assume all those borrowers would win a mortgage write-down -- a scenario deemed unlikely.
Rather, DeMarco's analysis showed that the projectednet benefit to taxpayers would be $500 millionin the best case scenario and its experience has shown that the likelihood of successfully modifying mortgages was small.
See? It would only save $500 million dollars for taxpayers, but we could just as easily make that up by eradicating NPR, Planned Parenthood, and food stamps, so why even bother. And whose fault IS it that homeowners are underwater on their mortgages anyway? Is it the borrower’s fault, for listening to then-Chairman of the Fed Alan Greenspan, who assured borrowers that there was no housing bubble ? Or is it the borrower’s fault, for falling for the deliberately misleading machinations of multibillion dollar financial institutions ? It is, of course, the borrower’s fault, so they are on their own.
Wang? IBM? An abacus? Thing is, if that program is so old, it must have been incredibly hard to fiddle with it so it could work in anything modern. Bear in mind, the system came from a series of banks that recently failed and were subsequently bought by my employer. Maybe that&#039;s why they failed?<br /><br />---
&quot;The housing regulator responded saying that figure only applied to a group of homeowners that had not made a mortgage payment in a year and would assume all those borrowers would win a mortgage write-down &mdash; a scenario deemed unlikely.&quot;
And what, other than your own fucking intransigence, would make it &quot;unlikely&quot;? That&#039;s a dickish move straight out of the GOPtard playbook.