Decius wrote:
Given that home prices are not going back up, banks may be in a position where the losses they would take on principal by adjusting these mortgages are better than the losses they would take from going out of business if too many of these mortgages foreclose. However, so far it sounds like this is only happening in cases where the bank has already gone belly up, the mortgages have been bought up at pennies on the dollar, and investors looking to buy the mortgages are unwilling to do so if they think that future "jingle mail" is in the offing.
Unfotunately, the right thing to do was for DC to underpin the mortgages themselves, not the liquidity of the banks. This would've created a floor for the housing market. Even if the government only paid $.50 on the dollar, that would've given a clearer path to reckoning than what we have now, which is a humongous bubble in foreclosures about to pop, more stagnation and unemployment, and another humongous bubble in the commercial RE sector about to burst, causing a hamster treadmill of economic contraction for arguably the next 10 years. I blame Obama.
The banking sector has pilfered tax payer money and lined its pockets. The sensible thing to do would've been to let the gamblers fail. It would've been really hard, but it would've been quick. People could've still gotten their money if you simply underwrote the FDIC and bumped up the deposit limit, which happened anyways. Except most of that money just went to keeping zombie banks alive so that execs could get golden parachutes and their assets traded at bloated prices.
I see this, in some respects, as a path to sanity, instead of the given situation where everything is going down and the question for homeowners is how badly are you going to get fucked before you get out - with the weakest going earliest but with no end in sight for those with the means to hold on... millions of people paying underwater mortgages for years, praying for inflation... The impact this has on the mobility of our society and people's ability to save for retirement may contribute as much to our economic malaise as the direct costs.
From your keyboard to God's ear. It was already impossible to retire for most Americans before this all happened. Good luck now, even if you have a decent standard of living. Because if this doesn't wipe you out, your health care spending will.
