The Obama administration knew about the foreclosure irregularities?
it appears that the Obama administration chose to tolerate the irregularities that now threaten the housing market and the financial industry because it preferred that banks use their limited resources to focus on giving breaks to folks who couldn’t pay their mortgages, rather than on handling foreclosures properly.
I don’t know whether the irregularities in question justify an extended moratorium on foreclosures. But if they do — or even if they don’t, and we still end up with such a moratorium — then it looks like the Obama administration will bear considerable blame for the consequences.
This is the same economically ignorant mentality that was displayed yesterday on Fox News Sunday by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, when she said that the highest priority was to “keep people in their homes.”
So the government creates the crisis by encouraging people to buy homes they couldn’t afford, and now it’s perpetuating it by insisting on keeping them in them, instead of allowing the market to finally clear. The country’s in the very best of hands.
“We have to spread the wealth around…”
Legally, the banks and the foreclosure process are left to the states to regulate. This would be the first time the President has stayed within the legal bounds of his authority.
The foreclosure process maybe — but the banks? Are you sure about that?
<cough> FDIC <cough>
Banks are regulated at the state level. The FDIC is not a government agency or part of the executive branch. The FDIC is a government sponsored corporation but is wholly autonomous and is beholden to nobody except member banks.