The squeaky wheel gets the grease: Barack Obama attempts to prevent foreclosures

The Obama administration appears poised to “help” the housing market, while taking us deeper into the downward spiral known as socialism. The plan to help borrowers includes four components:

1. Offer lender incentives to reduce the borrower’s mortgage balance.

2. Double the incentives given to lenders to modify second mortgages, such as piggyback loans.

3. Offer incentives to lenders who allow owners to sell their home through a short-sale, rather than foreclosing.

4. Have the FHA help underwater borrowers by taking up to 10% of their mortgage balance.

At this point, you might be in shock. When you purchased your home, you might have actually preferred another property but didn’t buy it because the payments would have been a stretch. You saved for a down payment, have a good credit history, and wanted to make sure you could handle your mortgage. You’re responsible, and you tried your best to do things the right way.

Now, we have people who should have never owned a home getting help. These are the people who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford and didn’t understand. This practice, with all its easy money, contributed to a rapid, unsustainable increase in home values. Lenders are certainly not blameless, but too many people seem to look past the irresponsible behavior of borrowers. Then what happens? They get rewarded by having their mortgage balance reduced, payments lowered, and the ability to refinance into a loan with a lower interest rate. Would you like the same benefits? Sorry, you pay your bills on time, so you’re not eligible. If you had only skipped a few.

By this point, you might be wondering how this is going to be paid for. Like many other things, this program will be paid for using TARP funds. You remember TARP, don’t you? It was the slush fund requested by Hank Paulson and George Bush that never seemed to have a firm plan for its use. Now, it is nothing more than a slush fund to use at the President’s discretion.