When I wrote the first installment of BailoutWatch this January, I intended to post occasional updates to keep readers apprised of the ongoing housing bailout efforts. Well, the truth is that I haven’t even been able to keep up.
That column wasn’t even the first on the subject — it had followed hot on the heels of this one. Since the January post, the bailout attempts have been coming fast and furious. They’ve also been getting progressively more irresponsible and transparent in their attempts to reward the very institutions that enabled the housing bubble in the first place.
Let’s go through a selection of recent bailout-related developments.
What the fed and our
What the fed and our house/senate is doing is in my opinion much scarier than what the private lending sector did for the past several years. Two years ago there was so much singing and dancing about how all the lenders were going to get what they deserve. What we are witnessing is in my opinion the most irresponsible response to a domestic problem since the depression.
SD Realtor
The biggest problem with all
The biggest problem with all of this is that J6P does not understand what is happening…not really or not nearly as well as most of those posting on this site, Ben Jone’s Blog, IHB, etc.
If most of the general public really understood what was happening, then you would see an uproar. It is this general ignorance of causes that kept Ron Paul from getting any real traction in debates. His comments didn’t resonate…yet.
I took a couple of masters’ level courses in the past two months out of Long Beach and one of the instructors was talking about the economy and the housing market. He began to ask questions of the class as to the origin of the “subprime” situation at the dumb media likes to label. I kept my mouth largely shut…and for good reason too. I can tell you that out of about 20 people in that class, none of them understood why these thing were happening. They all blamed it largely on a looming recession that will keep people from being able to buy at current prices, cost of gas, “bad loans”, inflation.
Not one mentioned the Fed or interest rates being too low. Not one mentioned affordibility ratios. Not one mentioned fraudulent applications, not one mentioned credit expansion.
In fact, several people had mentioned that they wanted to know how the current Presenditial candidates are going to “help them stay in their home…”. Hmmm, take a wild guess at what that really means.
I spoke to the professor outside of class about this. His views were laregly in line with most here although I could tell that I knew more than he did about this subject. His advice to me was to try to explain this like I was talking to 5th graders. That is the problem though. This subject can’t be adequately explained that way without leaving a lot of gapping holes.
JWM, don’t knock 5th
JWM, don’t knock 5th graders! They have open minds and often lack the bias of older people. Sure their math skills are slightly less developed than most adults (only slightly though). On balance I bet you could get 5th graders to understand what is happening.
If you could it would then serve as a solid basis for educating adults. You’d just need more pictures.
Josh
Yeah, I’ll whip up some
Yeah, I’ll whip up some animated power point slides….or how about a comic book format?
Capitalists on the way up,
Capitalists on the way up, Socialists on the way down.
Capitalists on the way up,
Capitalists on the way up, Socialists on the way down. Wow that was deep, pass the bong dude.
Josh