A writer for the Los Angeles Times, Paul Thornton, editorializes about the added cost that the government is putting into his homebuying quest. I will let Paul make his point below, but the pandering of Presidential politicians to the public during election periods always has a cost. Typically it is the promises of pork for votes, trying to give something to a part of the electorate to show that you either care or will comet through for them.
This year the issue is foreclosures and the major candidates, most notably Hillary Clinton, are floating billion dollar bailouts to those in risk of losing their homes. While this sounds great, the reality is that the markets have to hit equillibrium and the more government intervention that comes in the longer it will take.
Here is Paul Thornton’s take on the situation:
But that’s where Hillary comes in to foil me again. This looming crisis comes on the eve of a presidential election, and homeowners, do they ever vote. In the Democratic field, at least two candidates have proposed some form of Washington meddling that would keep the housing market from going where it clearly wants to go — i.e., down. Earlier this year, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd proposed a onetime, multibillion-dollar bailout at taxpayer expense of borrowers behind on mortgage payments. Sen. Clinton suggested a temporary “foreclosure timeout.” Sen. Barack Obama wrote to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., “We cannot sit on the sidelines while increasing numbers of American families face the risk of losing their homes.” Thankfully, talk of timeouts and bailouts has cooled in Washington — for now, anyway. But with California — ground zero of the nation’s housing bubble — coming so early in the 2008 presidential primaries, and with the rate of foreclosures unlikely to crest any time soon, imperiled, debt-ridden homeowners will doubtless press the populist field of Democratic candidates to promise them a break. If conservatives can use a silly issue such as same-sex marriage in 2004, what’s to keep Democrats away from rising foreclosures in 2008? If Clinton resurrects her “foreclosure timeout,” or if by some political miracle, bailout proponent Dodd still has a shot in February, the presidential election could end up presenting the biggest roadblock to my hopes of eventually owning a home that isn’t in a suburb of Phoenix. via the Los Angeles Times.
Click here to for a Free Foreclosure search in your area.
No related posts.
