Obama throws $75 billion lifeline to homeowners

Thursday 19th February, 06:57 AM JST

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Betzee at 09:09 PM JST - 20th February

Such funding includes military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs and veterans' health care."

Veterans' health care is, like, an ongoing expense which can be projected. Some of those with injuries which would have killed them in previous wars are living, thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, but it may be a life which requires round the clock care since there's only so much medicine can do for the severely injured.

By contrast, the financial bail-out is not envisioned as a permanent item in the budget.
SuperLib at 11:39 PM JST - 20th February

He was comparing money spent so far, not future costs.
adaydream at 12:11 AM JST - 21st February

Yeah, let's just allow the people who bought homes and had been supporting their families for 15/20 years, and george bush signs bills that paid corporations to send their jobs over to China and India, to fail and watch their homes go into foreclosure.

Let's just allow those homes to sit on the market and watch the housing market to sink even deeper.

The rich have the right to have their 2nd, 3rd and.... home loans reworked by the courts, but if you're poor and have only one home, the courts can't help single home owners.

If we can't help middle America, then why should we help the rich and infamous? < :-)
smithinjapan at 12:36 AM JST - 21st February

SuperLib: "He was comparing money spent so far, not future costs."

Actually, if you read the comment I made last night about the report you cited, you'll see that included projected costs to be up to $1.7 trillion. Anyway, glad you're not criticizing Obama.
SuperLib at 12:57 AM JST - 21st February

Why would I include projected costs when we're talking about money that has already been spent?
WilliB at 12:49 PM JST - 23rd February

"Lifeline", bah! He is asking the Chinese to lend him money for more government pork, which future generations will have to pay back.

Rick Santelli nails it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THZeE15gWZQ
nisegaijin at 09:41 AM JST - 25th February

Yeah, another nail in America's coffin. Let's punish the successful and reward the failed ones. Why should anyone bother with their mortgages now? Obama is gonna pay for all!
JOKERXJOKER at 12:22 PM JST - 25th February

another futile effort..to save a sinking titanic, no matter how many trillions u pump in, its like throwing them in the sea..the bubble economy had been burst. Wild, lavish and uncontrolled spending by most of the middle and higher income Americans had landed them in hot soup, i think the best way is change the mind set of U.S consumer, anyhow this is useless, considering U.S citizen still live in their dream. ..i eager to see U.S economy went down the drain, when the time comes U.S might will become a war monger (where there is war , there is profit from blood money) and just start another round of world war which is predicted by Nostradamus...that will halves the world populations..before the brink of Armageddon..(World war 3, or known as religion war of ignorance). U don't need to believe in what i wrote, u just need to wait and see....hahaha
DanManjt at 01:24 AM JST - 26th February

Snap polls strongly suggest Americans overwhelmingly support Obama's plans. Talk about the using the Bully pulpit.

Right Wing Blow Hard Rich Lowry describes:

Obama is "trying to redefine extensive government activism as simple pragmatism, and if he succeeds, might well shift the center of American politics for a generation."

Obama told the rich point blank their taxes are going up, told the people of America that government and only government can solve their problems, and the American people approve of him and his plan more today than yesterday.

Well that's the lay of the land, Rich, after eight years of failed Bush policies, and thirty-eight after failed Reagan economics. I'm calling it:

We have now entered into a new domestic order, a Center/Left grand coalition that will last another generation.

Looks like you, Rich, and all you Republican buddies are, now what was that word....

Oh yeah,

inconsequential.
OhioDonna at 02:03 AM JST - 26th February

Right on, Mr. President. I am going to have to pay for others mistakes. I did not tell those who are in trouble to buy houses they knew they could not afford. I am not responsible for the banks poor decisions to lend said buyers the money. Some parts of the stimulus I am ok with but other parts are outrageous. I don't mind the senior citizens getting a little of the money, they deserve it.
goodDonkey at 04:46 AM JST - 26th February

OhioDonna said:

Right on, Mr. President. I am going to have to pay for others mistakes. I did not tell those who are in trouble to buy houses they knew they could not afford. I am not responsible for the banks poor decisions to lend said buyers the money.

Right on OhioDonna we should let the whole economy tank so you can bask in your moral outrage. I am paying for my home just fine. But I understand there are others lest fortunate than myself. Many, many, many people are not able to meet there mortgage for one reason and one reason only - they lost their job. They had no problem paying their mortgage for years but now there are no jobs to be found.

It's a good time to be holier than thou, isn't it? Never mind that the true cause of the crisis was speculation in general, unregulated derivatives, specifically Credit Default Swaps, and the bundling of those sub-prime mortgages. If the sub-prime mortgages would not have been bundled and sold but rather held by each bank that wrote the loan then individual banks would have felt the pain much earlier and been forced to pull back on such practices. However banks wrote these toxic loans and then shipped them out in a bundle with good, solid loans. Thus allowing them to write new ones and bundle them with good loans and in turn ship them out also.

The conservatives were in power and it was their job to regulate practices that would bring down our economy. It is a fact there was less enforcement of regulations during the last administration let alone new regulations that were needed on instruments like Credit Default Swaps, in which there is absolutely no regulation and every bank that went down had exposure to these financial liabilities.

I am for as little regulation as possible and allow the market to operate free and without restraint from the government in general. But anyone with half a brain can see that a monopoly will cheat the public if given the chance. We have regulations on monopolies for that very reason. There is a good reason we said an accounting firm must not be a corporation's auditor and advisor due to somewhat recent events with companies like Enron. There are excellent reasons why, after the crash of 1929, U.S. regulations forbade banks using borrowed money to purchase stocks well beyond any reasonable capitalization. Also there was put into place a limit on margins investors could maintain. There had been investors without even one real dime invested on a stock they owned.

The past administration did not enforce current regulations properly and did not modernize regulations to meet the explosion of the market's dabbling in derivatives.

I am not saying people do not need to take responsibility. However, we need to inject money into the economy, stabilize home prices and rid the market of a large proportion of its toxic assets. How could anyone choose punishing those, who may rightly deserve it, over the survival of our economy, I'll never understand. If you don't know that we almost had a complete meltdown of our financial markets and we would have had a depression if that happened then you do not understand what happened last autumn when the large brokerage firms, investment insurance firms and banks took a dive to the level of insolvency.

Obama is doing a good job in restoring our economy. I would ask that the group responsible for the chatter of economic morality just shut the hell up. That ship has sailed when the last administration failed to properly regulate the financial markets.
goodDonkey at 05:38 AM JST - 26th February

To the group that believes that stock market reaction should dictate our country's economic policy or even a determinant factor in gauging the success of such policies on a day to day or even week to week basis should learn that investors are very rarely economists or have a graduate level of finance education. First off, I am not saying the opposite, that economists and highly educated finance persons are rarely investors; they are frequently investors. But as far as investors go, the ones with any advanced knowledge of finance beyond reading and analyzing cash flow statements, balance sheets, income statements and statements of shareholders’ equity are extremely rare. But we are actually talking about economics which is quite different then high finance. Anyone who thinks the daily stock market trading is an accurate measurement of the work Obama's economists to successfully revive our economy is completely clueless. Very long term market response has some value in one small area of economics but the opinions of the investors may still have no real relationship to the health of America's corporations or economy during the long term period which the investor's reactions were measured.

I am not saying confidence is not a major factor. However if Obama is able to repair some of the systemic problems and inject capital into the economy the market can't help but respond favorably over time. In other words fix it and they will follow.

Some people may say that I think I know what I am talking about. I do. I got top grades in my advanced level of study. The one think I learned that is most important is that I don't know squat. I don't know how to fix the economy. I don't know any of the answers that are truly important to our economy and our financial markets stability. However, I am smart enough to know these people claiming Obama is wasting money don't know what the hell they are talking about. Most of them rely on the information that during the Reagan years they saw taxes cut and the economy improved. They have not got a clue how, during the Clinton years taxes went up on the upper middle class and the rich and everyone because of the gas taxes, but the economy soared like it never had before. Ever! Not in that short amount of time! So they continue to spout off about how Reagan was a genius and that he understood economics or some tripe like that. I also know that most of the time it is impossible for individuals to get economics right. It is usually the nexus of collaboration that can best discover how the dynamics of economics are effecting the current economic environment. It generally takes huge consortia to achieve any level of reliability and rarely is any person or group of persons able to predict much concerning the future.

Obama has pledged that he will adjust policy to follow any path that is successful and abandon any path that does not appear to be productive in reviving our economy. That is the absolute best economic position to take right now. We must be willing to try a variety of things to stimulate our economy. We must change.
DanManjt at 06:03 AM JST - 26th February

Good Donkey

Thanks for your posts.

As for Wall Street, well, we know what they really want. Bailout with no strings and a return to the good ole days of the bubble. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And I want a toilet made of solid gold, baby.
rollonarte at 08:10 PM JST - 26th February

Yeah. Why take responsibility for your financial decisions when Democrats are so eager to help and even reward those who don't?

Lately I've been thinking: why try to improve any dimension of your life?

You'll only put some young 'community organizer' - with 40 or 50 grand in student loans - out of work.
goodDonkey at 11:06 AM JST - 27th February

What the hell are you talking about rollonarte? I take responsibility for my financial decisions; can you name a Democrat on this thread that doesn't?

We are talking about the nation's economic survivability and you are trying to tie your party's failure into our party's repair of a decimated financial system just because we are willing to not use people who screwed up as pawns.

I noticed you failed to answer the question of whether you would rather punish those who took those toxic loans or would you rather see the economy restored? Those who took the loans were in a bilateral contract; where is your moral outrage for the banks who entered into these contracts?