Where the heck was this spirit a few years ago when it was needed? All of the hysteria that we will be hearing about from Paulson and probably soon enough Bush is purely for show because they know the economy is in serious trouble thanks to their incompetence of ignoring warning signs. (Let's not forget Mr. Bubble either, who ignored the issues related to regulating the mortgage industry.) There is nothing that is going to stop the hemorrhaging at this point and intervening now will only add to the cost for everyone including people who weren't greedy on Wall Street and Main Street.
To ask taxpayers who did the right thing, who are in the overwhelming majority, to pay because of the greed of others is too much. Let Wall Street sort out the trouble they created and keep taxpayers out of it. I'm all for them finding a solution that will minimize the negative impact on the financial markets and Wall Street has deep enough pockets to handle this considering how much they made selling rubbish the last few years.
In the administration’s most detailed reaction to the steepest housing slump in 16 years, Paulson said that government and the financial industry should provide immediate help for homeowners trying to refinance current mortgages before they reset at much higher rates.It is only common sense that the administration implements a program of regulations and this should be welcomed. It remains to be seen if the GOP will maintain their usual talking points despite the calls for regulations and bailouts though talking out of both sides never stopped them before. However, it's much too late to have any meaningful impact and this proves yet again that industry is completely incapable of self regulation. This has been unfolding for a long time and will remain a problem for a while to come regardless of how much money the GOP throws at it.
He also called for an overhaul of laws and regulations governing mortgage lending to halt abusive practices that contributed to the current crisis.
Call me a skeptic but I smell a Wall Street bailout much more than a homeowner bailout which is where all of this is probably going. Regardless of what Paulson is now saying, he is investing much too much time in this to think otherwise and the administration has to be sensitive to yet another massive failure during their watch. Nice to see that the administration springs to life so fast when it's Wall Street who is in trouble as opposed to anyone else. Typical.
