LEE’S SUMMIT, October 24, 2011 – The old saying is, if you at first you don’t succeed, try and try again: Understood within that saying is that you learn from your failure and then try something new. Yet the more I watch what Washington is doing the more I’m reminded of Einstein’s definition of insanity: to do the same thing and expect different results.
President Obama has used all the credit of the United States of America in his first 3 years in office; raising our debt by $4 trillion – and he still has a full budget year to go. The $447 billion jobs bill could not even get all the Democrats in the Senate to vote for it, but all the rhetoric is about the obstructionist Republicans.
When the president wanted ObamaCare he did not worry about the Republicans because he had a majority in both the Senate and the House. Nancy Pelosi’s famous quote “we have to pass this bill to know what’s in it” came back to mind this month as the CLASS act was removed – quietly – from the ObamaCare funding formula. Yet a very large sum of money was calculated into the first 10 years of ObamaCare based on volunteers signing up for the CLASS act and not being eligible to collect the money till they were enrolled 10 years.
Is there a reason this was not recalculated and then posted for all to know?
I’ve Blogged about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s role in the 2008 Economic Crash as the housing bubble started by Jim Johnson – then CEO of Fannie Mae – and Bill Clinton both of whom wanted housing for everyone; is that akin to FDR’s “a chicken in every pot”? A home for every American: Whether they can afford it or not?
President Obama is headed to Las Vegas, target of his 2009 speech about the avarice of Executives who have boondoggles in Vegas. Las Vegas has very high unemployment, the housing market is devastated, and President Obama will bring to them the Hope and Change of the HARP program.
Do you know what the HARP program is? Well if you didn’t like TARP (Toxic Asset Relief Program) and you didn’t like TARP 2.0 (that was the 2009 repeat of TARP and like most sequels of a bad movie it was more useless than the first): Meet the Home Affordable Refinance Program. It was launched in 2009 with great fanfare and gave true hope for change for those who could not afford the homes they were living in. The Obama administration promised it would help 3 to 4 million Americans underwater in their mortgage; and it reached almost a million (894,000 to be more precise).
Since HARP was so successful, we’re going to hear President Obama speak the greatness of the new Housing plan; where – by executive order – the President will tell the Federal Housing Finance Agency (the bureaucracy that oversees Freddie and Fannie now that the government bailed them out) to expand the program and reach more people.
The FHFA announced some changes that come wrapped in beautiful unintended consequences (much like Bill Clinton and Jim Johnson set in motion back in 1994). The one that concerns me the most because it has such inflationary connotations that I wonder if it won’t have a mini bubble effect: FHFA will be removing the current 125% cap on loan to value for mortgages backed or owned by Freddie or Fannie.
So we tried to get people to buy homes they could not afford, and it led us to blowing up the economy. You can blame Wall Street all you want, but they were only a tool used by Johnson, Clinton and Bush to promote the lending of money to anyone who could fog a spoon (if you don’t understand call me, I’ll explain).
Now we’re going to tell the new oversight group that they have to change the rules to make it more flexible and let people refinance loans that were risky and failing to begin with. It makes no sense to me. Yet it is a kindness; but it is only temporary. John F. Kennedy made a beautiful point that applies today: give a man a fish, feed him for a day – teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
HARP and TARP have not done any good, but the money has been spent. Now we’re going to boost the economy one more time by inflaming housing values with smoke and mirrors? It seems to point to the Einstein Definition.
The following video is a campaign add that will welcome President Obama and his entourage of political friends to Vegas.
In this election cycle Presidential Candidate, President Obama continues to run against the Republicans in Congress, believing that since their ratings are lower than his (see the Rasmussen Poll graph below) that he can win in November. His attacks on them are relentless; but I thought he was running against the future nominee of the Republican Party – not currently in Congress, unless Ron Paul is nominated but that’s a long shot right now.
If the engine of American enterprise is the success of small businesses creating jobs; then why is the jobs bill that was torn apart from the rest of the jobs bill address only Police, Firefighters, and Teachers? Where is the Free Enterprise part of that proposal?
Respectfully Submitted,
The Lee’s Summit Conservative
