I think it’s pretty simple, but I’m just a simple guy.
The government is never going to bail out the people. They may bail out any of the big banks that may have exposure and dress it up like its a people bail out.
There is good history of this happening through the IMF lending to third world country’s where we bail out the defaulting country but payment must be made immediately with the proceeds to the lender (U.S. bank), who then gives them a new loan.
The lenders themselves may try and prolong the agony but in the end the market will win out and the excessive crazy financing will get purged. Anything beyond that is noise IMO.
However its one more reason to own gold. If they try and monetize fanny’s and freddies debt that will be just one more reason in a parade of reasons for the dollars decline.
Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. I read that somewhere. Funny how things change but stay the same. Hell, the habitat for humanity staff actually try to talk residents out of refinancing their 0% loans into subrpprime and only convince 35% to keep their loan. You can change the loan but you can’t change the person. Double the credit limit of every person with a maxed out credit card and show me that none of them hit their new max and I’ll agree that this will work. Give them economics classes, televise Robert Shiller’s lectures from Yale and reprogram their t.v.’s so he’s on every channel, I’d watch.
These ideas will get a lot of publicity but I doubt these programs get to many actual people, it’s just spin. Milton’s “invisible hand of economics” has never been denied by the government and it never will(sorry for the cheap econ 101 reference but he died this year and I still miss him).
On a side note I was driving home and heard a commercial for a law firm asking people who had a pay option or neg am mortgage to call an 800 number to join a class action lawsuit and it sounded just like an ambulance chaser personal injury ad. I wonder how many alternative loan products will be offered after the companies begin to factor litigation costs into them. Right or wrong, the legal costs are going to make the product vanish for at least a decade. Don’t believe me, ask small aircraft or silicone breast implant companies about what class actions can do to a product.
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