October 2008

  • Greetings From Out West

    It might have been that brick to the head as a child (long story), but it was October 6 before I realized the second McCain-Obama debate was October 7. By then I had committed the debate-evening to an Obama phone…

  • Who’s Afraid of ACORN, and Why

    Yesterday I posted here on Rooflines to explain the back-story behind the latest round of accusations about ACORN and voter fraud. Today, the McCain-Palin campaign released the Web ad below attacking Barack Obama for his ties to ACORN. It’s important…

  • Mortgage Buyout Plan Changes by the Hour

    John McCain made news Tuesday night during the town hall-style debate with Barack Obama when he announced his plan to buy up bad mortgages at the taxpayer’s expense. The plan, the McCain Homeownership Resurgence Plan, would spend up to $300…

  • ACORN Under Fire, But Is It Justified?

    With less than one month left until Election Day, the Republican Party voter repression machine is at it again and once again, its target is ACORN. 
Nationwide, ACORN has registered over 1.3 million voters (most of them from low-income, African-American…

  • McCain’s Nashville Flatline

    John McCain’s newly unveiled idea — a buyout of “bad mortgages” to the tune of $300 million — left a lot of viewers bemused about his ideological shape-shifting, and many on the right positively fuming at what they perceived to be the GOP candidate’s suggestion to nationalize a hefty additional portion of America’s mortgages on top of those bundled into securities that are the target of the $700 billion rescue plan passed last week. For a sampling of reaction on the right to what he sees as McCain’s betrayal of conservative principles, read Doug Bandow’s blog. Factcheck.org assessed the truthfulness of McCain’s statements about having a new idea for a mortgage buyout after the Nashville debate and gave them failing grades: McCain proposed to write down the amount owed by over-mortgaged homeowners and claimed the idea as his own: “It’s my proposal, it’s not Sen. Obama’s proposal, it’s not President Bush’s proposal.” But the idea isn’t new. Obama had endorsed something similar two weeks earlier, and authority for the treasury secretary to grant such relief was included in the recently passed $700 billion financial rescue package. Last night, I was struck by how often McCain appropriated Obama’s phrases verbatim at the town hall meeting, all the while trying to demonstrate how unacceptable the Democratic standard-bearer’s positions are—an act of contortionism that just came off as muddled and underscored the intellectual bankruptcy of McCain’s campaign. On top of that, McCain apparently was unaware of how persuasive he finds the Illinois senator’s ideas. more

  • McCain’s Bad-Mortgage Buyout

    The second presidential debate just ended. John McCain threw out a new policy proposal tonight that came as a surprise: He announced that he’d direct the Treasury Department to buy up “bad mortgages” to allow homeowners in danger of losing…

  • Got a House? Cast Your Vote.

    Sounds scary, right? With the foreclosure crisis ushering over a million people into homelessness in the last two years, we’re seeing, again, political machinery go into high gear looking for capital at the expense of the folks who have lost…

  • Planning vs. Development: Can We Really Choose One?

    In theory, the current financial crisis is a good thing for neighborhood planning. With developers slowing down their projects because they can’t get financing, there may be an opening for planners and community leaders to step up their long term…

  • Scapegoating Blacks for the Economic Crisis

    A simple, yet likely powerful, explanation has now been offered for the subprime mortgage-lending and foreclosure problems that have fed the nation’s gravest economic crisis since the Depression. Its simplicity makes one wonder why it took so long to surface: It was the fault of black people. The federal government, another favorite whipping boy, also played a hand in this by trying to increase homeownership among minorities and other “undeserving poor.” The scapegoat duo of “guv’ment” and blacks simply could not be resisted any longer. As Fox News’s Neil Cavuto concluded, “Loaning to minorities and risky borrowers is a disaster.” Watch Cavuto in action as he pumps up the scapegoating: According to many conservative commentators including Cavuto, Charles Krauthammer (_Washington Post_), Lou Dobbs (CNN), and editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal, it is the federal Community Reinvestment Act — basically a ban on redlining — that forced lenders to make bad loans to African Americans, other minorities, and other unworthy recipients in poor neighborhoods around the nation leading to the challenges that are now plaguing the nation’s economy. As Andrew Macurak recently reported here on Rooflines, the argument is gaining traction. And it is utterly false. more

  • Left Behind by the “Rescue”

    At week’s end, there’s not much good news, but instead a world of pain to report. As of today, Americans have a “rescue plan” that doesn’t rescue millions of people sinking under the waves of a turbulent economy. Today’s announcement…

  • House Passes Bailout: Let The Market Soar!

    Amid all of the gloom and doom, perhaps a few positive headlines will help to boost the mood of the nation’s sagging economy. If anything, the Bush-Paulson plan to create a $700 billion Wall Street rescue package “sending the biggest…

  • Who’s Pulling for Struggling Americans?

    Everyone should be outraged that the proposed economic bailout package passed by the Senate on Wednesday night and being debated in the House this morning does virtually nothing to assist troubled borrowers. The House and the Senate bills abandoned help…

  • Does HUD’s “Hope” Float?

    Today’s New York Times editorial titled “Show Us the Hope” slams the inadequacies of both the Bush administration’s and Congress’s attention to the plight of homeowners caught in the foreclosure crisis that is behind the current economic turmoil. The editorialist points to HUD’s Hope for Homeowners program —launched on Wednesday in the midst of the congressional rescue wrangling — as already showing the signs of sinking like a “lead balloon”: Under the program, the government will insure up to $300 billion in new, more affordable loans for troubled borrowers. For the insurance to kick in, however, lenders must first voluntarily refinance the delinquent mortgages by reducing the loan balances to 90 percent of the home’s current market value. In exchange, lenders would avoid the expense of foreclosure and uncertainty about being repaid. The government would stem the social and economic damage of more foreclosures, at presumably little risk to taxpayers. There’s just one problem. At a Congressional hearing in September, lenders were lukewarm about participating in the new program — reluctant, it seems, to take the loss that comes with reducing loan balances. more

  • How to Fix the Mortgage Mess 101

    Here’s the problem with the nation’s troubled financial system in a nutshell: Americans don’t have enough money to pay their mortgages. President Bush’s plan to bail-out the banks by having the US government buy troubled mortgage-backed securities is the wrong…

  • Stop the Foreclosures. Save the Economy

    It is true that the economic well-being of our nation is in jeopardy and that consumer confidence and liquidity is badly needed in order to have any hope of reversing this downward economic slide. The Emergency Economic Recovery Act of 2008 directly and meaningfully addresses financial liquidity but fails to seriously address the core problem underlying the current financial crisis: massive home foreclosures. It is therefore equally true that the congressional focus on bailing out Wall Street cannot be separated from efforts to stop foreclosures. I say this not only because it is the right and fair thing to do, but also because the bailout won’t work without it. Last week, the leadership of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) met with Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and he made it clear that another two million foreclosures were imminent. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said he expects we’ll see 2.5 million foreclosures this year. These figures show a dramatic acceleration of the foreclosure rates we have seen over the past few years. If the foreclosures of these past four years can drive the U.S. economy to the brink of a depression, what can we expect from a dramatic increase in those numbers? more

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