The President Has One Shot Left to Jump start Housing

The American Jobs Bill is taking water fast since the Speaker and the boys have already said they won't increase taxes for nuthin. Uh Uh. Not going to do it. The fourteen month countdown is here and like the wrestler ahead by two points all they have to do is hang on and let the economy tank and it's game over for Obama and crew. But the President does have one bullet left and it will be his last shot. It could save the economy and his Presidency.

Here it is. Forget about the Jobs Bill. It is too scatter shot anyway. What he should do and really has to do is give the American people back their homes. He can do this and he won't need congress. He can order Fannie and Freddie to immediately change their guidelines and refinance anyone with good credit regardless of the the value of their homes. Anyone. Millions would move to lower rates and get two months off in the process and get their escrow money back. Massive cash infusion for the middle class.

Secondly. Give a ten thousand dollar incentive for anyone buying a new home. It worked before and it will work again. Get people buying homes again. Third. Order all the banks who hold second mortgages to subordinate to the first lien position. The second loans are strangling homeowners by not allowing them to refinance. Third. Give the market back it's equity. Make it illegal to count foreclosures and short sales in comps for appraisals. These should not be counted. They are aberrational and taking away the value for homeowners who have been paying their mortgages on time.

Why do this? Because the crash started with housing and it will end with housing. This was not a normal boom and bust cycle. The crash occurred because lending was broken when the derivative market blew. The middle class backs their hand with their homes. Everything they do comes from this asset. Give the housing market back it's value and middle class people will start to buy again. Hiring will follow. But here is the real reason: The effect would be immediate.

Forget about tax cuts for businesses. Nothing will trickle down. It has to go up. This is what the economists don't get. This is what mortgage brokers and real estate agents know. The President could save his Presidency by doing this. But he has to do it now. He has to focus. Because this is his last shot.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man...sometimes a house is not a home

A Grande Venti Double Shot Extra Dry Skim Whipped

So Starbucks is laying off people. The sky is truly falling. Maybe all our trouble began when we couldn't' even order a cup of coffee without tuning up our windpipes and speaking French. I have to admit I have been a holdout. Oh, I go to Starbucks, but I still use words like small or large. Women pucker their brows and men mutter heathen when they hear me go, "yeah I'll take a small cup of coffee." Cretin. And of course then I paid my ten bucks like everyone else for my coffee and roll and went happily on my way. Americans have always prided ourselves on cutting through the BS and getting down to the grit of things. Let the Europeans take on aires, we are a people who speak plainly without pretension. Then came Starbucks. Shuffling into Dunkin Donuts or 7/11 for a cup of coffee became strutting into Starbucks and declaring, "Yes, I want a grandee skim white chocolate peppermint mocha whipped with a double shot and a slice of your nonfat coffee cake..." Phew. That'll be fifty bucks. Probably about here we should have sniffed a sea change. When ordering a cup of coffee becomes a novel that costs as much as a novel then something has gone weird on the good ship middle class. We had a coffee bubble going and now it has burst and the men in the green smocks are going to be joining us on the other side of the counter. Will the ubiquitous image of well shod people walking down the street holding white cups with curved lids leave the diorama of our cultural landscape? Probably not. Lets face it that has become the image of people who are doing well. People who can afford to pay that kind of money for a cup of coffee and illiterate their way thorough the nomenclature of coffeeology surely have their &^%$ together. But maybe in these harder times, there might be another image, some guy walking down the street with a big 7/11 on his cup and a cold donut, sloshing along, muttering the patois of the boom years like a deranged caffeinated moron...ah, grandee...no....latteee, no venti...uh cappacino espresso extra shot blastoh. Somehow that seems more real.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com