Friday, April 25, 2008

Good Washington gridlock

Yesterday's LA Times (also see the LA Land blog) may offer good news, that Washington won't do much.

But even as a key House committee began to mark up the bill Wednesday, there were signs that the measure could be caught up in a crippling political crossfire.

Mortgage industry intransigence, voter anger over possible government aid for speculators and economists' fear that thousands of homeowners might just walk away from troubled loans are contributing to a potential stalemate. ...

"There is no sympathy for anything that smacks of bailout," said Allen Sinai, chief economist of Decision Economics Inc., who recently testified in favor of the Frank bill. "The outrage has shown up very quickly, and means that at this point the government can only go so far."

The article's tone was inaction would delay recovery. No, this case of Washington gridlock could be a good thing, slowing bad actions that would delay the necessary fall of prices back to sustainable levels.

Mirroring a link from other bubble blogs, also see:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

no bailouts!

Anonymous said...

For once, Washington's incompetence may actually save us from these pandering politicians' stampede to bail out the flippers and liars. Initially, I was so disgusted to see my party pandering so (especially Hillary) that I quit the Democratic party and switched to Republican . . . only to then watch the GOP jump on the bailout bandwagon and McCain reversed himself.

Amazingly, only that nut Ron Paul's got it right on what caused this mess (the Fed printing money, everyone else feeding at the trough rather than regulating or reporting), and how to get out (let the market correct and the bubble deflate so we can start buying again).

All this because the mainstream media, the last to know of or understand financial crises, framed the issue wrongly and asked the wrong questions in polls, which made the cowardly politicians run to the bailout idea for cover instead of taking a hard look at their own regulatory failures.

It's bad enough they put us in this mess; now at least have the decency to step aside and let it correct.

Anonymous said...

Click on the "No Housing Bailout" link in this post and send out an already written letter to our representatives. Comments on these blogs go unread by the politicians. We need to tell them what we say on these sites so they know how many people oppose the bailout. The more noise we make the better!

Anonymous said...

No I need the bailout as a strapped homeowner....help me lower my mortgage payment pleeeaaassseee!