{"id":196629,"date":"2008-04-07T21:02:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-08T02:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/04\/07\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-the-wapo-editorial-board-gets-one-right\/"},"modified":"2008-04-07T21:02:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-08T02:02:00","slug":"signs-of-the-apocalypse-the-wapo-editorial-board-gets-one-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/04\/07\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-the-wapo-editorial-board-gets-one-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Signs of the Apocalypse:  The WaPo Editorial Board Gets One Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They label the Senate foreclosure bill a, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/04\/06\/AR2008040601727.html\">A Pro-Foreclosure Bill<\/a>&#8220;:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>We refer to a $7,000 tax credit (payable over two years) to anyone who purchases a foreclosed home within a year of the proposal&#8217;s enactment. Supposedly, this would help clear the nation&#8217;s swollen inventory of repossessed properties, thus propping up home prices more generally. Here&#8217;s the catch. For lenders as well as borrowers, foreclosure is an expensive hassle. If at all possible, most banks would rather avoid repossessing a house, which they must then try to resell. But, by making it cheaper to buy a foreclosed house than a comparable unforeclosed property, the tax credit makes it more feasible to sell one. The cost and hassle &#8212; for the lender &#8212; of foreclosure go down, and the benefits go up. Other things being equal, lenders would be that much more likely to foreclose &#8212; rather than to help homeowners stay in their houses on modified terms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The record of the <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Washington Post<\/span> editorial board lately has been so bad that I&#8217;ve come to wonder if Richard Nixon was innocent.<\/p>\n<p>H\/T <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prospect.org\/csnc\/blogs\/beat_the_press_archive?month=04&amp;year=2008&amp;base_name=the_post_gets_the_foreclosure\">Dean Baker<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They label the Senate foreclosure bill a, &#8220;A Pro-Foreclosure Bill&#8220;: We refer to a $7,000 tax credit (payable over two years) to anyone who purchases a foreclosed home within a year of the proposal&#8217;s enactment. Supposedly, this would help clear the nation&#8217;s swollen inventory of repossessed properties, thus propping up home prices more generally. Here&#8217;s &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,1020,1088,985,1164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-legislation","category-real-estate","category-regulation","category-teotwawki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196629"}],"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=196629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}