Comments on: Obama Backs Bailout Measures for “Unfair” Mortgages

By: Dave Jackson

Dave Jackson — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:14:34 +0000

The way I understand it, the federal government will be repaid on the zero-interest, nonrecourse loans. Loans for homeownership properties would need to be repaid within two years, while loans used to create rental housing would have a maximum loan period of five years. Dave

By: Chuck

Chuck — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:10:34 +0000

Are you an idiot sickle? A criminal enterprise? Get the facts straight and check to see when they issued their last opinion on those financial statements. Additionally, it is not the auditors responsibility to make sure investors are diversified or that people make on debt that they plan on repaying. Its about education, not assigning arbitrary blame.

By: Sickle

Sickle — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:51:42 +0000

The failure of Sarbanes-Oxley is pretty profound given the current mess with KPMG, rating agencies, etc. We’ve added a lot of regulatory costs for no apparent gain.

Agreed, but I believe that the problem is that lobbyists for the affected industries were given too much power in crafting that Act. I don’t think the problem is necessarily too much regulation, but more that the regulations themselves were poorly designed.

By: Chris Kinnan

Chris Kinnan — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:51:38 +0000

The failure of Sarbanes-Oxley is pretty profound given the current mess with KPMG, rating agencies, etc. We’ve added a lot of regulatory costs for no apparent gain.

I agree that perspective is needed…the Fed’s “temporary” window for investment banks is far more troubling. But the Dodd-Frank plan is also the starting point for all kinds of mischief… the reality is that this is a multi-trillion dollar asset price correction and taxpayers should not have any direct exposure to it, on moral and on fiscal prudence grounds.

Yes, the Isakson tax incentive plan is one of the more useless ideas out there.

By: Sickle

Sickle — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:38:19 +0000

My understanding is that the Dodd plan does, in fact, differentiate between real estate speculators and run-of-the-mill homeowners, so I’d like to see a little more research on this before we decide that Obama’s flip-flopped on this.

In addition, I’d like to see additional comment on the bill from someone other than the Heritage Institute. The first thing on their page is that the bill “won’t fix the mortgage mess,” but that’s not what the bill is intended to do anyway. It’s just a band-aid for the hardest hit. And HI’s assertion that “lenders will quickly request that this guarantee be made available to all loans to borrowers with poor credit histories or lower incomes” is unsupported. (Even so, they can ask whatever they want, that doesn’t mean they’ll be covered.) And the plan they push, Isakson’s Real Estate Tax Credit, does nothing to help anyone who purchased their home prior to March 2008. That’s a pretty bald-faced switcharoo, trashing the plan that would help people and supporting the plan that would help, well, hardly a soul.

And the default risks are peanuts compared to the taxpayer bailouts of the banks, bond insurers, and credit default swap traders. Notice how KPMG is in the news again for another criminal conspiracy surrounding a shady tax deal costing taxpayers billions? You guys are so concerned about the poor taking your money, while KPMG operates basically like a criminal enterprise ripping us and other investors off as well. And all that risk falls to the taxpayers now. And that’s trillions of dollars, not millions.

It doesn’t make sense to focus so much energy defending taxpayers against minor threats and ignoring the major ones. I have a really hard time getting up in arms about this