Posted on 04/04/2008 11:23:12 AM PDT by Beloved Levinite
On his radio show last Saturday, Larry Kudlow & his 2 guest analysts correctly claimed that the "mortgage crisis" has been way overblown, to make it seem that the sky is indeed falling. He said that only about 5% of homeowners are in, or are in danger of foreclosure, which of course means that a great majority are unaffected. They also revealed that many of these "homeowners in crisis" have gotten into trouble due to very low downpayments, accepted by anxious, greedy and/or "pressured" lenders.(zero or 1-5% - ie: they had no business buying a home they could not sfford in the first place.) And when the market values dropped, they had no "equity cushion" to be able to ride out the storm. Their adjustable rates go up, payment is now "unaffordable," market goes down & their houses are now worth much less than their loan balance. And so they either just walk away or wait around for the local sherriff to *make* them walk.
NOW, here's the interesting "Obama angle" in all this, suggested by Kudlow: Apparently, many (most?) of these people in crisis are "minority homeowners" and pressure "to approve" is being brought upon some lenders by inner-city law firms, such as the one that Obama may have worked for in Chicago. All under the guise of "anti-discrimination." (ie: forcing these lenders to approve loans to minorities regardless of "affordability," that would otherwise have been "wisely" rejected.) Any lender deemed "rascist & discriminitory" by these "minority-representative law firms" would be out of business in short order! The "negative news" would spread like wildfire, hence lenders would easily "cave in" to the pressure.
Kudlow stated that if *indeed* Obama was found to be somehow involved in applying pressure on lenders to approve minority applicants, now in foreclosure, it could provide a SERIOUS BOMBSHELL to the "Anti-Obama" movement! I would strongly encourage FReepers to do some investigation into this possibility, as I intend to do, henceforth.
(P.S. - R.I.P. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr. ~ Memorial Service today @ St. Patrick's Cathedral, NYC)
I bet Rush is at the memorial.
He is INDEED!
There certainly was a lot of pressure on lenders to lend to minorities. That is well known.
Cat is out of the bag on that one. The numbers regarding Housing Market are being portrayed as some of the worst ever. The fact is that we are just now beginning to recover from Housing Bubble created by lack of oversight and cheap credit. So the OVERSUPPLY and INVENTORY are going to take some time to burn.
The Wall Street has already shed so many tears that they have convinced the Congress it they don’t get multi-hundred billion dollar bailouts, the world would come to end.
All this has played out on National TV and people BELIEVE that there is severe crisis, even if they don’t understand what it is.
If some Republican tries to take the position that the Crisis is not severe and we have to put things in perspective, they would be accused of NOT BEING IN TOUCH WITH PEOPLE OR REALITY in addition to being heartless and uncaring. The accusation would stick.
The only way a Republican can take position against HANDOUTS for ordinary Americans is to also vehemently oppose BAILOUTS for Wall Street Scam Artists.
Maybe so, but the key is - was Obama somehow involved, now that he is speaking out against the “foreclosure crisis,” which may have been partially created by him! The possibility is quite “juicy!”
“There certainly was a lot of pressure on lenders to lend to minorities. That is well known.”
Exactly.
I have no idea. We'll have to wait to see.
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