Wasting Time With Alex
Thursday, January 14, 2010
A little reality about our economic situation
Despite their best efforts to put a positive spin on how bad the economy is these days when democrats control everything - the “It’s Bush’s fault” or “The greedy Bankers/Wall Street/capitalists did this to us” copouts no longer are getting traction, as more and more people realize who the real guilty parties that set up the conditions that caused the collapse and then continue to make decisions that negatively drive the economy, are - even the progressive guardians of what should be news in the MSM can’t do a good enough job of keeping the talking points going. Case in point, this AP piece on foreclosures. First there is the bad news that things are not letting up as they have otherwise continuously claimed:
MIAMI (AP) - A record 2.8 million households were threatened with foreclosure last year, and that number is expected to rise this year as more unemployed and cash-strapped homeowners fall behind on their mortgages. The number of households that received a foreclosure-related notice rose 21 percent from 2008, RealtyTrac Inc. reported Thursday. One in 45 homes were sent a filing, which includes default notices, scheduled foreclosure auctions and bank repossessions. In December, more than 349,000 households, or one in 366 homes, were hit with a foreclosure-related notice. That represents a 14 percent spike from November and a 15 percent jump from December 2008.
The leftists keep telling us that the economy is on the right track for a recovery, but reality has a way of squashing those lies. We all know that we are still losing jobs at an alarming rate, that the only sector that has shown job growth is government - which has to rob even more money from the productive private sector to finance their expansion keeping the cycle spiraling downwards - and that millions are simply giving up look for jobs. The real unemployment numbers, those without jobs or only able to work part time despite their best efforts, are fast approaching the 20% mark, and according to some might even be over that. Couple the continuously rising unemployment with these massive foreclosure numbers - without jobs people can not keep paying for their homes no matter what government does in the short term - and that’s what these numbers show. Of course, the leftists can put a favorable spin on the story by laying blame on the evil capitalists, and AP does not disappoint.
Banks repossessed more than 92,000 homes, up 19 percent from November. That increase was likely due to lenders working to clear their books at the end of the year, RealtyTrac said.
Oh, those evil and insensitive lenders! How dare they! Don’t they know they are hurting innocents? Don’t they know that their actions hurt the economic recovery?
Stemming the tide of foreclosures is an important step for the real estate market and the economy to recover. Because foreclosures are usually sold at heavy discounts they can lower the value of surrounding properties. Cities lose property tax dollars from empty foreclosures and declining home values, straining local economies. Home prices have stabilized in some cities, but are still down 30 percent nationally from mid-2006. The foreclosure crisis isn’t letting up. Between 3 and 3.5 million homes are expected to enter some phase of foreclosure this year, said Rick Sharga, senior vice president of Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac, which began tracking the data five years ago.
Damned lending institutions! They are stealing tax dollars from municipalities and driving down the real estate values, all of which is preventing these brilliant democrats running the economy from straightening things out. How dare they! These numbers keep going up, and up. Don’t they know people need their homes and such? And it could have been much worse. I agree, and I suspect it will get much worse too, but not because of the same reason the AP wants you to believe. Hold on, here it comes..
High foreclosures forced the federal government and several states to come up with plans to prevent or delay foreclosures to help troubled borrowers. “It was bad, but it could have been much worse, and it probably should have been worse,” Sharga said. One plan intended to help homeowners is the Obama administration’s loan modification program known as Making Home Affordable. Lenders participating in the program have offered trial loan modifications to 760,000 eligible borrowers since it was launched in March. A loan modification changes the terms of the loan, such as lowering the interest rate, to make the monthly payments more affordable.
Oh heavens! Our collectivist government officials, feeling your pain, are doing things to soften the blow and help you out! Of course, the unvarnished and ugly truth is that if these democrats were less hostile to the private sector and actually allowed real capitalism to work, the private sector would actually do things that make it profit, and in the process create much needed jobs. The things that would actually help people pay the financial obligations they have entered too. Not to mention pay taxes too. The things that would actually help the economy turn around. Instead we get program after program from these leftists twits that literally disincentives anyone from doing anything that would create jobs. And they are not done yet. From the “Healthcare reform takeover” to “Cap & Tax”, the capitalism hating class warfare agents of envy driven politics are piling up program after program that guarantee the private sector will do anything but create jobs. Many small business owners I know are hunkering down, looking at how many people they will have to let go to cut cost and wait out Washington’s mad dash to destroy what has allowed American prosperity, and hoping they do not have to simply call it quits and let it all go. And it is not that these collectivists have a problem understanding this connection because they point it out right in the article:
Economic issues, such as unemployment or reduced income, are expected to be the main catalysts for foreclosures this year. Homeowners with good credit who took out conventional, fixed-rate loans are the fastest growing group of foreclosures.
However, the problem is in the solution they champion. Big daddy government will save you, not by helping create conditions to get you employed, but by burdening the whole system even more. We have not run out of paper and ink to print new money on, and that debt we kept harping about while first republicans ran the show, but forgot that along with the tax cuts, which did spur economic growth, and did so despite the impact of the 9-11 attacks, they needed to reign in spending, then followed by a democrat controlled congress which spent like there was no tomorrow and used the media to Blame Bush since he was stupid enough to sign the bill so he could get the stuff he really needed, isn’t that important. Who cares that the democrats have managed to create as much new debt in a single year as it took republicans and spend happy democrats to do in 8 years of Bush? And why bother or worry about the fact that it looks like their continuing plans will create so much more new in the next few years that it will make this past one look like it was a good one. Anyway, back to the government solution.
The Mortgage Bankers Association on Wednesday recommended changes to the government’s program to account for borrowers who’ve lost their jobs. The program, for example, should include a suspension of payments as the first step for borrowers with a temporary loss of income.
And how long will we give these people a break for? At the rate things are going there is no chance of any kind of job recovery in site. And anyone claiming otherwise is a lying moron. Maybe they will take it to the next step and just tell the lending institutions to hand over the titles to these properties to these poor people. I guess that lady that claimed Obama would pay for her house, new car, and even her food might have known a lot more than the rest of us idiots that still keep trying to do the right thing.
Look. This is real simple stuff. There will be no economic recovery without the creation of incentive in the private sector where wealth gets build. The collectivist might live in denial, but the truth is that wealth is only gobbled up by government. Unfortunately anything that would incentivise the private sector will not happen while the people in charge get their power and control from class warfare rhetoric, which requires profit to be seen as an immoral and dirty thing. No amount of fudging or slight of hand will make things better however. At this point we are left praying that November comes along sooner than later and the democrats simply get “Clintoned”.
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