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A Housing Bill of Horrors
The New American ^

Posted on 08/08/2008 8:04:21 PM PDT by djsherin

In response to the housing crisis, the American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 (H.R. 3221) passed in the House (272-152) on July 23 and in the Senate (72-13) on July 26. This legislation added another new agency to the goliath federal bureaucracy, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), to oversee and regulate three Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs): Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Bank System. The new FHFA is required to consult the Federal Reserve before issuing any regulations, orders, or guidelines concerning GSEs through 2009. Thus the Federal Reserve’s power has been enhanced to cope with the disastrous Greenspan legacy.

An emergency monetary “bazooka” has been provided the Treasury for defending the viability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Treasury secretary was given open-ended authority to increase the existing line of credit to Fannie and Freddie for 18 months. Ammunition for the monetary bazooka came through increasing the debt ceiling by $800 billion (8.2 percent) to $10.6 trillion. The Treasury was also given authority to buy stock in these two investor-owned companies through 2009, demonstrating open abandonment of free markets through governmental manipulation of the price of select stocks. Rep. Ron Paul expressed concern about the lack of effective standards for congressional oversight of the Treasury’s expenditures. Congress has relinquished significant control over the federal purse strings.

Three hundred billion dollars for FHA loan guarantees was also authorized through fiscal year 2011 to assist borrowers at risk of foreclosure to refinance into affordable fixed-rate mortgages. The plan requires that voluntarily participating lenders take a write-down on each existing mortgage off-loaded to the FHA lender. The government or taxpayers are then liable for losses on subsequent defaults by those borrowers, some of whom entered into their original loan agreements irresponsibly and/or through lenders that competed using disreputable practices encouraged by government policies.

Authority was also provided for $3.9 billion in grants to state and local governments to buy abandoned and foreclosed residential properties. Builders and lenders otherwise saddled with those properties should benefit.

The housing bill also included provisions that advance a surveillance state. A Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry was created. Among the information to be collected in its database will be the fingerprints of people working as loan originators, which in its broadest sense could mean all workers in the mortgage industry. Lastly, all credit-card transactions will now be reported to the IRS, to facilitate better taxpayer compliance concerning credit/debit card transactions, thus to increase tax revenues and help offset the spending provided in the bill. As Rep. Ron Paul said, “The trend is not good.”


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bailout; govwatch; housing; johnbirchsociety; spending

1 posted on 08/08/2008 8:06:10 PM PDT by djsherin
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To: djsherin
disastrous Greenspan legacy.

whatever. and a fiat switch to a gold standard will make everything OK, right?

2 posted on 08/08/2008 8:09:42 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand
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To: the invisib1e hand

lol!

don’t get any on you.


3 posted on 08/08/2008 8:12:31 PM PDT by ken21 (people die and you never hear from them again.)
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To: djsherin

I propose a bill that eliminates every federal agency with four letter acronyms-FEMA. I suspect that many of the other four-lettered agencies would soon become a 3 lettered agency.


4 posted on 08/08/2008 8:16:04 PM PDT by mirkwood
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To: djsherin

” Ammunition for the monetary bazooka came through increasing the debt ceiling by $800 billion (8.2 percent) to $10.6 trillion. “

And people wonder why the dollar has lost value. Dubya is the son of a previous President alright, it just happens to be Lyndon Johnson. Another idiot liberal from Texas, who at least called himself what he was.


5 posted on 08/08/2008 8:16:44 PM PDT by Pelham (Press 1 for English)
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To: djsherin
Three hundred billion dollars for FHA loan guarantees was also authorized through fiscal year 2011 to assist borrowers at risk of foreclosure to refinance into affordable fixed-rate mortgages.

My, Congress is so generous with the people's money to bail out those who don't know how to keep themselves financially solvent.
6 posted on 08/08/2008 8:27:44 PM PDT by Man50D (Fair Tax, you earn it, you keep it!)
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To: the invisib1e hand

“and a fiat switch to a gold standard will make everything OK, right? “

It handcuffs deficit spending as Kennedy and LBJ learned when they were confronted with Triffin’s dilemma. Nixon chose to deal with it by breaking the last link to the Bretton Woods system which led to the erosion of the dollar.


7 posted on 08/08/2008 8:28:13 PM PDT by Pelham (Press 1 for English)
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To: mirkwood
I suspect that many of the other four-lettered agencies would soon become a 3 lettered agency.

Do you mean like the IRS? I hope not!
8 posted on 08/08/2008 8:29:39 PM PDT by Man50D (Fair Tax, you earn it, you keep it!)
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To: djsherin

There was also something in the bill that pertains to eminent domain, but I don’t recall the wording, except it is probably not good for private property rights. After all, isn’t housing private property? At least it was until the government weaseled their way into the mortgage contract review business with numerous regulations blah blah blah.....


9 posted on 08/08/2008 8:48:11 PM PDT by o_zarkman44
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To: o_zarkman44

I believe it included 3.9 billion dollars for eminent domain use. Don’t quote me on that number, but I remember seeing it flying around somewhere.


10 posted on 08/08/2008 8:56:09 PM PDT by djsherin
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To: the invisib1e hand

Gold is fiat?
A gold standard prevents government from printing out vast sums of money thus devaluing the dollar.


11 posted on 08/08/2008 8:58:27 PM PDT by djsherin
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To: djsherin

“Lastly, all credit-card transactions will now be reported to the IRS, to facilitate better taxpayer compliance concerning credit/debit card transactions....”

So if a guy buys something in Virginia and doesn’t pay NY State Sales Tax, he gets a letter from the NY State Tax Commissioner ?....hmm...and this does not violate the Interstate Commerce Clause because the dimRATS say so ?...
and where was the ACLU when this hole ripping clause was added to this Bill ?...

When i die, just remember to turn my pockets inside out and pin a note: born free, paid the dues and taxes, a pain in the ash til the end.


12 posted on 08/08/2008 9:33:58 PM PDT by billmor (The American Voter--the Sleeping Tiger. Kicked in the back end.)
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To: djsherin
Gold is fiat?

Is that what I said?

13 posted on 08/09/2008 9:10:03 AM PDT by the invisib1e hand
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To: djsherin
...“The trend is not good.”

as my favorite writer pointed out, on the surface, it looks like a sham. The least onerous feature is fingerprinting of mortgage brokers. Who gives a rip about that? Securities brokers have been fingerprinted since before I was one back in the '80s, and with mortgages being securtized, there's little point in resisting that nitpicking feature.

Be more concerned about the monitoring of your transactions and the fact that a freaking bank wrote the law to begin with -- and not just any bank, but the bank that owns the toxic Countrywide.

A little like letting insurance companies moonlight as doctors.

14 posted on 08/09/2008 9:18:59 AM PDT by the invisib1e hand
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To: the invisib1e hand

Oops, no. I read it wrong. Sorry. What do you mean by what you said though?


15 posted on 08/09/2008 1:55:06 PM PDT by djsherin
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To: djsherin

Eminent Domain related issues in the Housing Bill: http://www.libertymatters.org/newsservice/newsservice.htm

President Bush just signed another taxpayer-funded piece of constitutionally challenged legislation to bail out 400,000 home buyers who face forclosure in the failing Bush economy. The government’s latest intrusion into market issues, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, may have far-reaching ill effects on private property, however. Among other provisions, “it creates a new regulator for ailing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and establishes a $300 billion program to expand the Federal Housing Administration’s ability to guarantee mortgages.” And, writes John Berlau, “of all the unintended consequences of the housing bill, one of the most ironic and far-reaching may be this: that whatever security marginal homeowners have from foreclosure, their homes will be far less safe from being taken by a bureaucrat through eminent domain.” Included in the package is $3.9 billion for Community Development Block Grant funds. Those funds will allow cities and counties to take private properties and then sell them to private developers, thanks to the 2005 Supreme Court Kelo decision. The Senate made an attempt to protect property owners from greedy governments by inserting a clause stating, “No funds under this title may be used in conjunction with property taken by eminent domain unless eminent domain is employed for a public use.” But, that clause disappeared from the House version after House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson got their heads together. The new language allows bureaucrats to use the billions in federal grants to seize homes for general economic development, as provided under Kelo, and then pull the old “bait and switch” by creating a new project to sell the land to developers, likely not a violation of the House bill. “All in all,” writes Berlau, who writes the Open Markets blog for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, “this new language means that…there will be virtually nothing stopping states and localities from using the federal housing grants to help themselves to confiscate housing.” How ironic that a man who won his first Governor’s race by championing private property no longer believes in its importance to the future security of individual Americans or our nation.

‘Kelo’ Property Rights Protections gutted from housing bill
Congress’ bailout opens doors to eminent domain seizures:
http://www.libertymatters.org/newsservice/2008/faxback/3253_emdom.html


16 posted on 08/09/2008 9:17:29 PM PDT by givemELL
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