If your parents were anything like ours, they reared you to be responsible people. That responsibility included picking up your toys, cleaning up any messes you may have made, admitting to and owning up to your mistakes and perhaps most importantly, being accountable to yourself and others for your actions.
Your parents are a bunch of saps.
Looks like Congress and a reluctant White House fearful of losing more seats to the Democrats if they are accused of “not doing anything” are getting closer on a housing mortgage bail-out deal.
You can read more of the gory details here, but the long and short of it and why the whole notion of bail-out frosts us is that money is coming out of the pockets of responsible home-owners to keep irresponsible people in their homes.
Now lest you think we are being too harsh, let's try a more clinically detached angle: the free-market was working just fine in flushing out those people that had no business being in the housing market in the first place. This subsidization of bad behavior both practically (by artificially lowering the “cost” of ownership) and psychologically (in way over your head? no worries – mulligan!) only promotes more bad behavior because the bad actors are being rewarded instead of being kicked to the curb as would happen naturally if the free market were allowed to do its thing.
It really does become a self-fulfilling prophecy: If we want to keep irresponsible people in the housing market AND encourage more irresponsible people to enter the market, then by damn, we certainly have the means.... your means to do so.
So…. are we off the cold, heartless bastard hook?
Friday, March 14, 2008
Suckas!
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4 comments:
Irresponsible? A harsh word, but accurate.
As many of you know, we were homeowners of over 17 years. But the opportunity to shore up a buisines plagued with work/comp and liabitity insurance premiums tripling with the equity in our home presented itself.
I took the opportunity, against the advise of those who cared for me. Irresponsible? YES! I have no one to blame but myself. I lost my home of almost 18 years and have no one to blame but ME!
As one who lost his home in this mess.....Dean, you are off the hook! Irresponsible is exactly the word to describe us. Do not feel obligated to bail me out! I f&%$ked up, not the banks.
Thanks for those who stood by, prayed and gave my family moral support as my family realized the error of my ways.
See how it works?
Dean,
Sounds a little like the argument that "amnesty is the solution to illegal immigration." The amnesty only encouraged more bad behavior.
By the way, the free market will be especially effective in solving this particular problem because the pain is being shared across the economy. The homeowners who are losing or at risk for losing their homes, the banks who made dud loans and the secondary markets that did not properly evaluate risks are all feeling the pain. As a consequence, there are strong incentives to work out private solutions as well as strong disincentives to future bad behavior. This mess could be cleared up in less than a year if it was left alone by the federal government. You are already seeing the disincentives working in my previous post on this subject.
Road Dawg-- THANK YOU for acting like an adult. You're bloody near a national treasure in that; it takes a very big man to be able to say "I screwed the pooch." I wish I actually knew you so I could try to help-- I hope that there are folks nearby to help you through this more bloodless version of "Oh crud, I jacked up."
Speaking of illegal immigration...has anyone else heard that a lot of the loans ended up going to those who were, ah, something other than legal recipients?
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