Obama May Ban Foreclosures, Further Decrees To Follow
Courtesy of Tom Lindmark at But Then What
Look, I’m not a card carrying member of the Tea Party and I’m not an uber-conservative, but who the Hell does Obama think he is? When did we mutate from a country of laws to one driven by government fiat.
OK, I’[m overreacting to this story. It’s from Bloomberg and it goes like this:
The Obama administration may expand efforts to ease the housing crisis by banning all foreclosures on home loans unless they have been screened and rejected by the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program.
The proposal, reviewed by lenders last week on a White House conference call, “prohibits referral to foreclosure until borrower is evaluated and found ineligible for HAMP or reasonable contact efforts have failed,” according to a Treasury Department document outlining the plan.
“It is one of the many ideas under consideration in the administration’s ongoing housing stabilization efforts,” Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said in an e-mail. “This proposal has not been approved and there are no immediate planned announcements on the issue.”
She confirmed the authenticity of the document, which hasn’t been made public.
Somewhere in the not to distant past, when someone defaulted on a loan extended from one private party to another, the holder of the security interest had the option of taking back the collateral in the event of default. Now, without benefit of any enabling legislation, let alone judicial review the current administration has evidently assumed that it has some regal right to dictate the terms under which those contracts can be enforced.
Yes, there is a housing crisis in this country and lots of people are going to lose their homes. And, yes, there is an appropriate role for the federal government acting in conjunction with the owners of those mortgages. An absolutely laissez-faire approach to the problem is most likely not the best approach. Nevertheless, any alteration in the manner in which security rights are exercised should be subject to negotiation and agreement among all of the parties. Dictats have never had a place in American society and it’s most untasteful to see them emanating from this administration.
Absent any credible solution to the housing crisis and suddenly politically vulnerable, the President and his staffs’ jerking knees are troubling.
