{"id":188715,"date":"2010-08-07T20:03:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-08T01:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/08\/07\/no-and-what-is-he-smoking\/"},"modified":"2010-08-07T20:03:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-08T01:03:00","slug":"no-and-what-is-he-smoking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/08\/07\/no-and-what-is-he-smoking\/","title":{"rendered":"No, And What Is He Smoking?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>James Pethokoukis, whose work I have not followed, but appears to have a fair amount of respect from the blogs that I read, is reporting that a number of sources in the Obama administration saying that the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), will, at taxpayer expense, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/james-pethokoukis\/2010\/08\/05\/an-august-surprise-from-obama\/\">engage in a massive program of principal reduction to underwater homeowners<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>Main Street may be about to get its own gigantic bailout. Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. \u2026\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The motivation, apparently, is electoral politics:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>The move, if it happens, would be a stunning political and economic bombshell less than 100 days before a midterm election in which Democrats are currently expected to suffer massive, if not historic losses. The key date to watch is August 17 when the Treasury Department holds a much-hyped meeting on the future of Fannie and Freddie. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you go to the article, and I suggest that you do, because I am just relying on my gut, you also see that investment bankers are talking to their clients to insurance themselves against such a possibility.<\/p>\n<p>I take the statements of investment bankers with a grain of salt.  Their job is to make people buy and sell securities, since they profit each time.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, here is my take:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>HAMP is an abject failure, because, once again, Barack Obama, as well as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber (Geithner and Summers) decided that banks were their &#8220;partners&#8221;, and they just needed some incentives and no oversight.<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Additionally, the abject failure of HAMP is not beginning to hit the news, which might lead to damage control.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>Obama is concerned about losses in November.<\/li>\n<li>Notwithstanding what the teabaggers say, Obama is <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">NOT<\/span> a socialist, he is very much a corporatist, and the idea of this sort of massive government bailout to <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">ordinary people<\/span> is an anathema to him.  He honestly does not want the government to be that activist.<\/li>\n<li>Obama is, and remains, terrified of Republican accusations of socialism.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, it ain&#8217;t gonna happen.  We may see something to fix HAMP, my suggestion would be bankers arrested and made to do the perp walk, but it will be something relatively minor.<\/p>\n<p>Devaluing the dollar, as Roosevelt did, or massive debt forgiveness is simply not in the cards.<\/p>\n<p>Heck, he can&#8217;t even bring himself to bring back bankruptcy cramdown for home mortgages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Pethokoukis, whose work I have not followed, but appears to have a fair amount of respect from the blogs that I read, is reporting that a number of sources in the Obama administration saying that the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), will, at taxpayer expense, engage in a massive program of principal reduction &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188715"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}