9.02.2006

Foreclosing Upon Bush's "Ownership" Society

I guess the ownership Bush and his pee-ons meant was the banking industry holding the mortgages upon which they could foreclose at new record rates. From Stranger at the bountiful Blah3:

Atrios has a post up about those rapacious Option ARMs and how people are getting suckered into even higher mortgage rates by seductive numbers that turn out to be flat-out false, then follows it up with a 'cautious prediction' of a massive wave of foreclosures that is about to hit homeowners at all income levels. He suggests that the Dems get out in front of this by coming up with solid proposals to ensure that people all over this country don't get tossed out of their houses en masse.

While it can be pointed out that there's a sucker born every minute and that the people going for these mortgages are doing so willingly, the banks are guilty of putting thousands of families in jeopardy of losing their homes. That isn't right, and there should be a crackdown on these lending practices. Dems are the ones who could do it, and they should. It's a good idea, and it would be a good policy idea even if there weren't a foreclosure epidemic looming on the horizon. Bush and his thugs have let the banks get away with murder when it comes to bad lending practices (see Bankruptcy Bill), and the Dems should start casting themselves as the Protectors of the Little Guy now. As in yesterday.
As for the "sucker every minute", I suspect a fair number of these folks "buy" into this awful plan because circumstances have already pushed them into such dangerous financing in the misguided hope (impossible in the Bush years of only billionaires being worthy) of holidng onto homes already set for foreclosure, thinking they could pull themselves up and out later.

I myself have been in this position, but have not gone for the mad financing. Instead, my home and I are about to part company. ::sigh::