Get ready for the cram down:
Now, maybe higher interest rates on home loans would be a good thing. Home ownership is heavily subsidized in this country, and the reason bankruptcy law currently protects banks from losses on principal is so that they can keep mortgage-interest rates low. But is Congress really going to let mortgage-interest rates rise as a result of this new law? Liberal interest groups already think credit-card interest rates are a crime against humanity. Can you imagine the hue and cry whenever mortgage-interest rates start to tick up?
The more likely scenario is that Congress passes some new law that keeps mortgage-interest rates suppressed, even though the new bankruptcy law has exposed banks to greater risk. If your goal is to re-inflate the housing bubble and create another credit catastrophe, well, there you go.
It’s truly infuriating the way politicians muck with the market, then implement more mucking to deal with the unintended consequences of the first muck, and then blame laissez-faire capitalism for the problems. And the media let them get away with it, repeatedly.
Personally I’d love high rates. That would mean low prices, and I could buy a good property at a good price. Once the cycle comes around again, refinance.
But Congress is bound and determined to fuck with me.
The media don’t let them get away with it — the media fall for it.
“The media don’t let them get away with it — the media fall for it.”
I think it’s more like the media help them get away with it (at least, those few with the ability to at least partly understand what’s going on).
A pox on the lot of them. >:-(
politicians muck with the market
Did you misspell something in that line?
Good question.
Any minute now, I expect someone to figure out that if retirement savings tank, retirees and potential retirees will have to try and re-enter the job market. At that point, unemployment numbers will go double digit.
Easiest solution, quit messing with the markets. Our government choose the hard way.
Truly infuriating!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s truly infuriating the way politicians muck with the market, then implement more mucking to deal with the unintended consequences of the first muck, and then blame laissez-faire capitalism for the problems. And the media let them get away with it, repeatedly.
I want to get a rubber stamp with this paragraph and stamp it on the forehead of every news person in the country. Then every other media person. Then every politician.
Why is something so simple, so difficult to get people to understand?
Barb is right. The media know exactly what they’re doing. I think Rand’s statement belies an unconscious assumption that journalists, if they understood the full consequences of their actions, and the harm it does to people numbered in the billions, they would stop.
Not so. The true narcissist — and you’ve got to be a narcissist to go into journalism — has no trouble with the tragedy of millions, so long as his personal story is happy. The media would cheerfully bring on the Dark Ages if they could, because in such a miserable awful world their stature would be maximized. Independent-thinking, happy, successful, well-traveled, well-informed citizens are not a good market for ghost stories, heroic stories, romance novels, and so forth.
It’s no accident that one of the golden ages of journalism and of story-telling on the big screen was the Great Depression. They would be quite happy to have the rest of us back dirt-poor, sitting in the cheap seats, hungry, our little peasant mouthes agape while they dazzle us with their Cinderella stories.