Morgtage and other Relief

I gotta hand it to him...Despite the odds, despite how bad things appear to be going, the guy just keeps trying...just keeps pushing.  That ought to be a lesson and an example to the rest of us.

I haven't written anything substantial in the past few days because frankly, I've just been in a funk and in a writer's block...But a friend emailed me recently about this new program the President is about to introduce and it got my juices to flowing again...

President Barack Obama offered mortgage relief on Monday to hundreds of thousands of Americans, his latest attempt to ease the economic and political fallout of a housing crisis that has bedeviled him as he seeks a second term.

"I'm here to say that we can't wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job," the president declared outside a family home in Las Vegas ,the epiccenter
of foreclosures and joblessness. "Where they won't act, I will." Keep puttin em on blast Mr. President, as much as possible.

Making a case for his policies and a new effort to circumvent roadblocks put up by, who else? Republican lawmakers,President Obama also laid out a theme for his re-election, saying that there's "no excuse for all the games and the gridlock that we've been seeing in Washington." Indeed there isn't.

"People out here don't have a lot of time or a lot of patience for some of that nonsense that's been going on in Washington," he said.

The new rules for federally guaranteed loans represent a recognition that measures the administration has taken so far on housing have not worked as well as expected.

While his jobs bill is struggling in Congress, President Obama has tried a new catchphrase — "We can't wait" — to highlight his administrative initiatives and to shift blame to congressional Republicans for lack of action to boost employment and stimulate an economic recovery. As he should. It still angers me that they are willing to let the nation fall off of the edge of a cliff, just so that it can be said that this President is a failure...

Later in the week,President Obama plans to announce new measures to make it easier for college graduates to pay back federal loans. Such executive action allows President Obama to address economic ills and other domestic challenges in spite of expected Republican opposition to most,if not all of his proposals.

While the President has proposed prodding the economy with some payroll tax cuts and increased spending on public works and aid to states, he has yet to offer a wholesale overhaul of the nation's housing programs.

Economists point to the burst housing bubble as the main culprit behind the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, the combination of unemployment, depressed wages and mortgages that exceed house values has continued to put a strain on the economy.

While the White House tried to avoid predicting how many homeowners would benefit from the revamped refinancing program, the Federal Housing Finance Administration estimated an additional 1 million people would qualify. Moody's Analytics say the figure could be as high as 1.6 million. Aint that good news? as the old r&b song said.

Under President Obama's proposal, homeowners who are still current on their mortgages would be able to refinance no matter how much their home value has dropped below what they still owe.

"Now, over the past two years, we've already taken some steps to help folks refinance their mortgages," President Obama said, listing a series of measures. "But we can do more."

At the same time, The President acknowledged that his latest proposal will not do all that's not needed to get the housing market back on its feet. "Given the magnitude of the housing bubble, and the huge inventory of unsold homes in places like Nevada, it will take time to solve these challenges," he said. Time is the bad little word that people don't like to hear, yet is still a reality that we have to deal with in this stalled economy.

In spelling out the plan to homeowners in a diverse, working-class Las Vegas neighborhood, President Obama chose a state that provides the starkest example of the toll the housing crisis has exacted from Americans.

One in every 118 homes in the state of Nevada received a foreclosure notice in September, the highest ratio in the country, according to the foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac. OUCH!

Now check this out, just to reiterate what I've been saying about these damned Republicans. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney proposed just last week while in Las Vegas that the government should not interfere with foreclosures.

"Don't try to stop the foreclosure process," Romney told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "Let it run its course and hit the bottom." IS HE SERIOUS?

That is not a solution, Romney and the Republicans are in effect telling home owners, "Tough luck ,You're on your own."

This is their whole mentality...People need to be aware of this mentallity...Especially people about to lose their homes...I'll bet that that covers a lot of voters from both parties..