Subsidize Bad Behavior?
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on February 21st, 2009 5:38 am by HL
Subsidize Bad Behavior?
President Obama’s massive mortgage-bailout plan is nothing more than a thinly disguised entitlement program that redistributes income from the responsible 92 percent of home-owning mortgage-holders who pay their bills on time to the irresponsible defaulters who bought more than they could ever afford. This is Obama’s spread-the-wealth program in action. Team Obama is rewarding bad behavior. It is enlarging moral hazard. It is expanding its welfarist approach to economic policy. And with a huge expansion of government-owned zombie lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Team Obama is taking a giant step toward nationalizing the mortgage market. Reporting from the Chicago commodity pits, my CNBC colleague Rick Santelli unleashed a torrent of criticism over this scheme. Santelli said: “Government is promoting bad behavior. … Do we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages? This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage? President Obama, are you listening? How about we all stop paying our mortgages! It’s a moral hazard.”
Mysterious Khmer
You wouldn’t have thought it possible. But then, you underestimate the ingenuity of the New York Times. The house organ of the liberal church in America, the Times covered opening day of the trial of one of the worst killers in 20th century history without mentioning the “c” word even once.
