Tonight’s first Congressional address by President Obama was, in a word, a snooze. I didn’t hear anything different than before he was elected; not that one should hold much in the way of expectations after only a month in office but gloating over passing a 1,073 page piece of legislation without having even read it was, frankly, pretty crass and should be (yet another) warning to those who would take this man as seriously as he apparently takes himself.
One amusing tidbit was his statement about helping homeowners stay in their homes. Slap me silly and call me a little acorn; “It’s a plan that won’t help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford….”
According to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, however, we should, indeed, help save some of those people for (what else?) the greater good. He uses the example of calling the fire department to put out a blaze set by someone smoking in bed. He said, “I think the smart way to deal with a situation like that is to put out the fire, save him from his own consequences of his own action but then, going forward, enact penalties and set tougher rules about smoking in bed.”
As if going out of her way to give Ben a bit of justification, Sheila Blair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., told NPR, “I think it’s just simply impractical to try to do a forensic analysis of each and every one of these delinquent loans.” Which not-so-subtly tells us that homeowners who overstated their income or assets to get a mortgage they couldn’t afford will most assuredly be making the line even longer by standing there with their hands out, too.
Sorry, Ben, but you just can’t legislate morality. Sure, if my next-door neighbor is stupid enough to set his house on fire, I’m willing to pay the taxes to have the firetruck come over and put it out. Because then my house won’t burn down and possibly kill me, too. But when it comes to matters that do not directly involve life and death – and no, those few extra thousand square feet you and your spouse and maybe one child rarely rattle around in don’t count – you can, as the President is so fond of saying, do the right thing and do whatever it takes (you great Americans, you) to hold people accountable for their actions. If we’re losing “5 million jobs a month” (according to Nancy Pelosi, anyway), surely there are a few thousand accountants in the mix who would be happy to have a job, even a temporary one working for the FDIC. The truth is that fairness is not really so impractical – unless you have another agenda.
Honestly, if people are that stupid as to get in that far over their heads – predatory lenders or no predatory lenders because no one held a gun to anyone’s head to borrow more money than they could afford to pay back – let ’em go find something within their means and put that money – our tax money – towards insuring that everyone can do simple addition and subtraction.
This will also kill 2 more birds with one stone. We’ll need more police officers to keep up with arresting ACORN members for tresspass and breaking and entering, thereby creating more jobs and, following the precedent set by President Obama, create yet another law-breaker revenue stream.
It’s just as viable an idea as those stellar ones coming from the Ivy Leagues, if you ask me.