Dueling Messiahs
December 10, 2007
December 5, 2007: President Bush is set to announce a plan to help struggling homeowners avoid losing their properties, including a temporary freeze on low, introductory mortgage-interest rates that would otherwise jump higher in the next few years.
http://wsj.com/article/SB119688188491114732.html?mod=djemalert
Headline #2: Clinton calls for subprime rate freeze
December 5, 2007: Senator Hillary Clinton spelled out the details of her subprime bailout plan Wednesday, calling for a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures and a five-year freeze on the interest rates of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs).
http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/05/real_estate/Clinton_foreclosure_prevention/?postversion=2007120516
BUT WHAT ABOUT US? (You know, the responsible ones)
A letter to the editor in the Saturday/Sunday December 1-2 Wall Street Journal:
If I understand correctly, mortgage lenders, urged on by non-profits such as Acorn Housing Corp., made loans to sub-prime borrowers who had inadequate income to meet their mortgage payments, either from the outset or after the expiration of low initial rates. These borrowers were really only qualified to have less pretentious homes or to rent rather than own. Now, after getting the loans and living in homes they weren’t qualified to own in the first place, they and the non-profits who encouraged them to do so, assert that the mortgage owners or mortgage servicers, such as Citigroup, should accept a loss and enable these borrowers to live in homes they cannot afford. “You loaned me too much money and put me into too good a house; therefore you should subsidize me so that I can continue living over my head.”
As a shareholder of Citigroup, I am supposed to take the fall? The logic and equity of this escape me.
Ebert WeidnerChagrin Falls, Ohio
