Foreclosed Futures

By artappraiser on Tue, 12/06/2011 - 10:52pm |

By George Packer, "Daily Comment" @ The New Yorker, Dec. 6, 2011

[....] The foreclosure crisis is more than four years old and shows no sign of abating. It never got the full attention of the media, Congress, or the Obama Administration—nothing like health care, financial reform, or budget battles. On the surface (but only on the surface) it involves a private transaction between an individual and a company. This was the gist of the notorious rant by CNBC’s Rick Santelli, in Chicago, in February, 2009, credited with sparking the Tea Party: why should the government bail out the “losers” in the home-loan business, any more than it should have bailed out the losers in the investment-banking business?

It’s both mundane and complicated [....]

We should be long past the point of assigning blame, or worrying about creating moral hazard, let alone rewarding “losers.” Foreclosure is a national tragedy and a relentless drag on economic growth. [....]

URL:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2011/12/foreclosed-futures.html

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Foreclosed Futures

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