Around the Media: Housing Bailout Bill
Posted on July 25th, 2008 by beetlbumjl Tags: bailout, Bloomberg, debt, Dick Armey, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, housing, Joe Stiglitz, mortgage, NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, writedowns
Economist Joe Stiglitz comments in the Financial Times, criticizing Fannie’s and Freddie’s free lunch, but ultimately takes a middle of the road approach.
The NYTimes claims that the Housing Bill Has Something for Nearly Everyone. (What, the check to pay for this thing? How about renters? If we miss a rent payment, we are liable to be EVICTED. Where is our bailout?)
Bloomberg reports that mortgage writedowns will total $1 trillion. (Article quotes a hair brained scheme where the gov’t buys millions of houses and then blows them up to help brace housing prices. At this point, I’m not sure who’s being sarcastic and who’s not. But seriously, if you wanna to see something really blowup, watch that gross national debt ticker, over on the right, after this bill passes.)
Former Republican House Majority Leader, Dick Armey blasts the Republican party in the Wall Street Journal. He advocates a five year phase out of either GSE should they access credit lines from the Federal Reserve or Treasury.
More to come…
5 Responses to “Around the Media: Housing Bailout Bill”
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July 25th, 2008 at 10:44 am
According to the stuff on CNBC there doesn’t seem to be any consistent estimates on cost of the bailout. Politicians and ‘experts’ are quoting different numbers all the time. One of the estimates I heard was around 30 billion which would put a $100 burden on the average tax payer. Maybe the $1 trillion estimate would call for a bond issue or whatever it is these monkeys come up with. The war cost is around $500 billion if I remember correctly, so most people pushing this bailout would be perfectly ok with yet another wealth redistribution. Next stop is universal healthcare.
July 25th, 2008 at 11:45 am
According to this CNBC screenshot, the breakdown is as follows:
New Housing Exposure for Gov’t, Fed, GSEs (in billions):
Fed = $346
FHLB = $274
Fannie/Freddie = $621
FHA = $90
Total = $1.33 Trillion Dollars
July 25th, 2008 at 11:53 am
What about the renters? Well it looks like they have taken to the old system of those with property have voting rights. Instead of voting rights its wealth redistribution credits.
I think to pay for all this the federal government should take ownership of all air and rain, start collecting it and having auctions. Perhaps they should just break the stop button on the printing press and force hyper inflation so we stop worrying about the bailouts. Who cares if they spend 1.33 trillion dollars if in a week it buys a loaf of bread?
July 25th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
We’re all renters. Some of us are just level 1 renters.
July 26th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Neither presidential candidate voted, no surprise, the bill passes, moves onto the current president.
Peter Schiff, economic adviser to Ron Paul, sums it up well, “The price tag is staggering and for all the bailouts and stimulus packages, all the government can do is exacerbate the losses and shift the burden through inflation. Nor can the government resurrect bubble home prices and the fantasy of real estate riches that went along with them.”