The San Diego Union Tribune, the only daily paper covering the entire metropolitan area, is generally Republican in it's editorial positions, with occasional criticism of that party over the last few years.
When this editorialappeared a few days ago, opposing a federal bailout, I was in a quandary. I generally agreed with their position, but I did not want to echo their criticism of HRC expressed in these words:
Even though Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson adamantly denies the plan can be called a bailout, a key element certainly fits that description. It encourages states to float tax-exempt bonds to refinance troubled loans.
But this plan doesn't go nearly far enough for leading Democrats, who want to protect the 400,000 homeowners who are already behind on their loans. A bill to allow bankruptcy judges to unilaterally alter mortgage terms is likely to be taken up by Congress in coming days. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton talks of freezing loan rates through 2012.
I drafted a letter in a way that I could express my opinion, and what I see as coincidently that of many on this site, yet in a way to defuse the subtle implication of the editorial that it was a Democratic Party problem.
Rather than defend or worse, echo their criticism of Hillary Clinton's proposal for a solution, I deflected it by looking at the causes of this personal and economic disaster.
Housing meltdown not a left vs. right issue
Regarding "Compassion trap/Taxpayers not responsible, shouldn't suffer" (Editorial, Dec. 10):
Those buyers unable to meet adjustable rate mortgage payments after they reset were the very people who played their part in the doubling of home prices in five years, to the point that they became unaffordable to working people who did not participate in this frenzy.
Many people besides these buyers are responsible for this nightmare, none more so than then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who willfully ignored warnings in order to keep business booming. And of course President Bush, who until recently was boasting of increased homeownership, ignoring the corrupt mortgages that were fueling this.
It is important to correct the impression that this is an issue of left against right. Dailykos.com, the most popular blog for liberal Democrats, recently had a survey (on this diary) that showed virtually no support among its readers for taxpayer bailouts of those facing foreclosure.
These Democrats understand that this housing bubble was a product of the real estate-financial complex that made a fortune on the frenzy, and were shrewd enough to sell the worthless securitized mortgages to unwitting individuals and pension funds that actually believed in the legitimacy of bond ratings and that the Federal Trade Commission was looking out for them.
This fiasco must play itself out. Houses in some areas must fall in value to what they would have been without their being bid up by those who took bogus, no-risk mortgages. I regret that these sincere people who were misled by the mortgage industry will face personal tragedy. But they cannot be protected without destroying the very contractual reliability that our thriving economy is based upon.
The economic crisis we are now experiencing was clearly predictable, and preventable. There are times when government, as in a responsible FTC or Federal Reserve, can, in fact, not be the problem, but the solution.
A.R.
Encinitas
It was Reagan who spread the canard that "Government is the problem, not the solution." Sure, it certainly can be. But in this case, when Government is delegitimized what is unleashed is unfettered feral greed, that just might lead to the downfall of what was a vibrant functioning economy.
While the Democratic candidates proposals may, in fact, only postpone and ultimately exacerbate this disaster, it was the Republican mentality that got us into this mess, one that there just may be no solution for, from either the left or the right.
I was proud to get this message printed in the newspaper read by hundreds of thousands of conservatives who need a big loud wakeup call with their morning coffee.