Posted on 08/13/2007 7:37:57 AM PDT by John Galt 72
Hillary Clinton Corleone, Mortgage Lender
By Matt Carrothers
August 13, 2007
There is a key sequence of scenes in “The Godfather: Part II” in which a young Vito Corleone exerts his ascending power and influence over New York’s Little Italy neighborhood. A poor widow named Signora Colombo asks Corleone to intervene with her landlord, Roberto, who wants to evict her. Colombo cannot afford to move, and she has no where else to live.
Corleone seeks out the landlord Roberto and offers to pay six months of Signora Colombo’s rent in advance, at an increased rate. Roberto refuses, but soon finds out that Vito Corleone is not a man given to negotiation. A trembling Roberto then visits Corleone and says that Signora Colombo can not only stay in her home, but he will greatly reduce her monthly rent. Roberto leaves, and Corleone’s friend Genco declares, “God Bless America. We’re gonna make a big business.”
The Democratic presidential candidates see today’s Signora Colombos – families who defaulted on adjustable rate, sub-prime mortgages they could not afford – just as Corleone saw the poor widow – as helpless perdente, manipulated by others, who could not survive the mean streets without the helping hand of Don Vito Government.
On August 7, Sen. Hillary Clinton announced her detailed plan to “address mortgage lending abuses.” Clinton’s press statement, found on her web site, begins, “With foreclosure rates continuing to skyrocket across the country, Senator Hillary Clinton . . . laid out a plan to preserve the American dream of home ownership that would crack down on unscrupulous brokers, curb mortgage-lending abuses, assist families facing foreclosure and expand affordable housing options.”
The concept of borrower responsibility is obviously lost on Clinton. She then cites the plight of her own Signora Colombo, a woman named Kristi Schofield. Kristi and her husband can no longer afford to live in their home, because their adjustable-rate mortgage payments grew from $2,400 to $6,000 per month.
Signora Schofield said, “We tried to do the right thing and continued to make the payments as long as we could with our savings and what earnings we had from unemployment, temporary and part-time work.”
Schofield added, “Hillary Clinton is standing up today because she wants to help protect the American dream.”
In truth, Clinton’s plan would heap onerous and needless new regulations on the mortgage industry and establish a $1 billion housing trust fund to help “at-risk borrowers avoid foreclosure.” In other words, Clinton’s plan requires responsible taxpayers to subsidize the mortgage payments of deadbeats unable to comprehend the concept of adjustable mortgage rates.
Worse, if Clinton’s plan and similar plans touted by her Democratic opponents were to become law, the element of risk in borrowing and investing capital would disappear. If borrowers and investors incur no risk due to federally subsidized payments, nothing would stop lenders from inflating their home mortgage rates far beyond market-established values. Government subsidies have already distorted the free market and raised costs through agriculture, college tuition and health care programs.
An August 7 Wall Street Journal article that details the credit and mortgage situation quoted former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who said, “These adverse periods are very painful, but they’re inevitable if we choose to maintain a system in which people are free to take risks, a necessary condition for maximum sustainable economic growth.”
Preach about it, Mr. Greenspan. The ability to risk money in the various investment markets, in startup businesses, in research and development of new products or in a family home fuels our nation’s turbocharged economic engine. These invested dollars, in turn, produce individual wealth for the risk takers, new consumer products and new jobs.
Contrary to Clinton’s pontifications, the American Dream is not to have the federal government make your house payment. The American Dream involves creating and acquiring enough wealth to make your own house payment, own your own retirement plan and have adequate remaining resources for both necessities and recreation.
Not surprisingly, the media and liberals have grossly overstated the so-called mortgage crisis.
Economist Jerry Bowyer, writing in National Review, found that just 0.6 percent, or 254,000, of the 44 million mortgages in the U.S. are currently in foreclosure. Additionally, the breathlessly reported sub-prime meltdown has caused an increase of only 35,000 mortgage foreclosures in the last quarter.
Thirty-five thousand homes in foreclosure is not a skyrocket. It’s a suburb.
A new study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that just 33 percent of high school seniors could explain the effect of an increase in interest rates on consumer borrowing. America’s Signora Schofields do not need a mortgage bailout. They need a lesson in finance.
Without a national crash course in economics, finance and personal responsibility, Ronald Reagan’s Shining City on The Hill could soon become Hillary Clinton’s Cosa Nostra.
Can’t pay your mortgage? Fugetaboutit.
© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
(In a very hoarse voice) "God forbid you should suffer a Federal Indictment or a class-action lawsuit, or a visit by Al Sharpton."
Remember the old economic adage, “What you subsidize, you get more of.”
Yes, the Marxist libs ready with every aspect of socialism to regain and control the White House, your life and your wealth. The government will be God. Hillary is drooling...
“Don Vito Government.”
Yes. The Clintoon vision.
“Kristi and her husband can no longer afford to live in their home, because their adjustable-rate mortgage payments grew from $2,400 to $6,000 per month.”
I have no concept of how big a house (or how much you can borrow) for $2400 a month. Anybody??
....Bob
it’s october, 1917, all over again for them.
Do you think FDIC is a bad idea?
California? We’re talking a medium size home in Marina Del Rey with three bedrooms and a toilet.....
Oh, pullleeeeaaassseeee......you shouldn't be living so HIGH, Ms. Schofield.....
Sheesh in midwest that’s about 4000 sq feet. Depends where. And if it was interest only, probably bigger.
Living on the dole and buying a house for $2400/month with an ARM, good planning. Did they expect that the payments would go down? How much "earnings" can be had from UNEMPLOYMENT???????
Ok, let me get this straight: Clinteone wants to take yet more of the money I earn, by working, to subsidize those that can’t afford their mortgage payment by utilizing unemployment checks, part-time jobs and other non full-time work means, thereby creating in me a person who can’t afford his mortgage any longer because a lot of the money I’ve earned is going towards taxes, making me have to rely on these subsidies and creating yet another Democratic voter because I couldn’t afford to vote sensibly any longer because I am relying on socialism to keep my house?
Here’s one remedy. Require that all mortgage holders have a verifiable social security number. That would clean up half the sub prime mess.
“Kristi and her husband can no longer afford to live in their home, because their adjustable-rate mortgage payments grew from $2,400 to $6,000 per month.”
I’m tired of people living beyond their means and then expecting the rest of us to bail them out! I personally wouldn’t dream of paying $2,400 a month on a fixed rated mortgage, let alone something that you know will adjust.
Hillary Clinton has been living off the backs of the tax payer the better part of her life so for her to bail these buffoons out with our tax dollars means nothing to her.
Here’s one remedy. Require that all mortgage holders have a verifiable social security number. That would clean up half the sub prime mess.
don’t we get free homes with free health care?
The queen of cattle futures certainly knows how to take the risk out of investing. MOOOOOVE on Hillary.
Amble Hillary amble!
$2400/month= $28,800/year= 864,000/30 years= one really big house or one overpriced house in an overpriced city. They were trying to keep up with the Joneses and now have mortgaged themselves into debt. I don’t feel sorry for them!
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