Economy: It's About Bloody Well Time

Harry Reid apparently found these somewhere in Washington:


Because, according to Raw Story, he has decided

[...] to defy a threatened White House veto and try to win passage of a bill to curb rising home foreclosures by changing bankruptcy law.

"I have no expectation of reaching any agreement with the White House," said Reid a day after the administration warned the bill would need changes to get President George W. Bush's signature.

"I have tried for seven years" to reach agreements with Bush on a variety of issues, but have repeatedly failed, said Reid, a Nevada Democrat, at a news conference.

"So we are going to do what we think is best for the country," Reid said. "If we get 67 votes (in the 100-member Senate to override a possible Bush veto), that's great."

Now don't get your hopes up too high, peoples. We here at La Casa de Los Gatos are still saying, "Be still, my beating heart."

Is he really gonna do it? Are we gonna see sixty-seven of the idiots in the Senate stand behind him?

Now's the time to start pressuring your Senateschmuck to get the fuck in line and vote with Harry. Now, a caveat here: we're not saying the bill as it exists is just peachy-keen and we totally buy into it. We have not yet read the bill, and we don't know what's going on. We plan to get our eyeballs on a copy but we're no financial genius, so we can't promise to update this post with the latest and greatest.

We do refer you to Bonddad's blog, which has a fine analysis of the housing crisis. La Casa de Los Gatos is fiscally conservative. We don't believe in throwing money (assets, resources, whatever) away. That means we don't believe Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have lost billions over the past quarter should be angling to lose even more by raising the cap on their investment portfolios.

We believe the "subprime mortgage crisis" was created by greedy lenders and greedy consumers working hand in glove with an inattentive and duplicitous government that relied on hocus-pocus as the mainstay of its economic policy. If financial idiots like ourselves who have to read Managing Your Money For Dummies can figure out that something's wrong with the mortgage industry, there is no way that the Misadministration's economists can pretend they didn't notice.

Thus, we say, let's all scrutinize this foreclosure bill. We think people who bought houses for investment, and speculators, lazy mortgage brokers and lenders who failed to do even the most rudimentary financial checks or even duplicitously tried to push on consumers loans they should have known said consumers could not afford, don't deserve a bailout, and certainly not at the expense of those of us who have carefully budgeted and saved and been responsible consumers and taxpayers. On the other hand, there are many people who were bamboozled into buying and failed &mdash or did not know enough &mdash to read the fine print.

Some people deserve rescue. But rescue doesn't have to equal bailout. A good rescue would be for the very banks who are found to have engaged in duplicitous practices to be forced to freeze homeowners' mortgages at a rate that allows such homeowners to pay off their loans. This would serve the dual purpose of punishing the greedy and duplicitous lenders and simultaneously temporarily staving off the impending collapse. However, we doubt that such a course of action will commend itself to the rich and powerful who rule the nation. Still, we can try to remove the most egregiously unfair provisions and add language that achieves the goal (staving off impending fiscal collapse) without overly burdening the taxpayer or letting lenders go scot-free.

The Dim Son will undoubtedly stamp his little feet and throw a hissy fit. That's fine. Mr. 19 Per Cent is not exactly a force to be reckoned with any more. And we well know that his desired "changes" to the language of any bill will serve only his wealthy and powerful friends, or as he has referred to them, his "base." While simultaneously screwing common working people.

Image from WhoHijackedOurCountry

We gotcher base right here, Chimpy. Vanculo, you worthless little putz.

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