Eminent Domain, with a new twist....
http://www.thenation.com/article/177...-domain-plans#
This is the first time I've heard of using Eminent Domain to re-vitalize a community, by actually helping its residents keep their homes, instead of taking them. It's also the first time I've heard about SIFMA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIFMA
http://www.sifma.org/
What do you think?
I thought we discussed this outlandish offense to property rights a while ago. Maybe in the Californication thread?
It's absurd -- the government forces a bank to sell a mortgage at a loss, arbitrarily comes up with a new value of the mortgage and sells it back for a profit to a different bank (albeit one with bona-fide Democratic Party connections).
Then again, maybe some elements of the body politic want tin-pot post-Communist Russian financing to rule the day.
" The amount owed on the loans would then be reduced so that the borrower was no longer underwater, avoiding foreclosure."
Last time I checked being upside down on your mortgage does not cause you to go into foreclosure...
Also what liberals don't understand is that by screwing lenders all you do is raise rates for EVERYONE. By creating additional risk to lend money because some idiotic government group violates property rights you require banks to raise rates to compensate for the additional risk. Lets hope this disturbing trend doesn't catch on.
This sounds completely ridiculous and not at all appropriate. So people who do the right thing and pay their bills are penalised and made to pay for those who take loans they either can't or won't repay?
Being underwater doesn't cause foreclosure, not paying your bills does.
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
If you're a city, town, boro, or municipality.....you really do have to think about EVERYONE. Particularly homeowners with a Bank mortgage. Not just because they're the main source of local tax revenue, but because they have a long-term stake in the community. They didn't just sign a rental/lease agreement for six or twelve months --- they entered into a fifteen or thirty year contractual agreement.
You forget the amount of predatory bank lending that happened during the US mortgage/housing bubble.
Bollocks.
I meant US policies based on de-regulation, not international ones.
For example, I plugged my personal data into a Canadian analytical website during the height of the Great Recession. They would have denied me a home mortgage for any amount, because I was not employed.
And I don't believe predatory bank lending was the problem in the US.
What was? If you can pronounce our problems wholesale and categorically, maybe you're in the wrong profession?
I thought I summed it up earlier.
Well, it's impossible for people to "take" loans they can't possibly repay. Like full-time McDonald's employees earning minimum wage, approved for $500,000 home mortgage loans.
If people can't do it what's the problem? That they won't?
That's the problem with your view of government. You think its the government's job to take care of each and every person. My world view is completely different from yours. Government is there to protect people from violence be it external or internal. Its there to preserve contract law so capitalism can exist. The government that has the power to give you everything has the power to take everything.
I'm not sure what you're asking.My point is that millions of people rely on "loans", from banks and financial institutions, with disparate reasons and economic principles. People can't simply "take" profits in industry sectors unless they already have an upper hand. And it's fairly rare that average US citizens come to the table with an upper hand.
Contract Law doesn't exist simply to protect the party in power, or the party with the most money. And Capitalism doesn't exist in a vacuum.
A government with no power is......
No, that's a pre-civil war view....that was roundly defeated.
That's another outdated mentality, relegated to 18th century platitudes, when the general populace didn't have access to public education, and the 'Free Press' meant someone like Benjamin Franklin, or town criers selling newspapers via paperboys.The government that has the power to give you everything has the power to take everything.
Try again.
"Don't murder people." What an outdated mentality - its old lets get rid of it!
Simply because an idea was around before you were born doesn't make it bad.
Here is anther stab at the process. Since Democracy typically has 2 or more political parties that are contenders that means sometimes your party is OUT. That means if government has the power to involve themselves in the economy at will then the government that breaks bank contract loans for the benefit of borrowers underwater can do the reverse and require borrowers to pay MORE money to bank. The government that has the power to create progressive taxes has the power to create regressive taxes. The government that has the power to silence political speech has the power to censor any type of speech. Do you see the problem with of allowing government interference in our daily lives to be the norm?
I think she wants government to become bigger to give her more issues to complain about.
Hope is the denial of reality
Garbage. You have no need for an upper hand. The whole point of trade is that both parties gain. If either party doesn't gain the trade never happens. Unless people act like idiots then its not possible for one to gain but the other not to.I'm not sure what you're asking.
Nobody is compelled to take a mortgage. Anyone who has one has chosen to take it. I could have got a bigger home with a bigger mortgage that I could barely afford and couldn't if anything went wrong but I chose to take a smaller home with a smaller mortgage that even bad news wouldn't make me unable to make my payments on time. Why should I or Americans who've been sensible in the same way be penalised to pay for the greed of those who've maxed out their debts, taken all the benefits from it and then failed to repay?
For those who've messed up being upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.
Er, come again? You believe the Civil War was fought over those principles, and that because the North won those principles were defeated? Really? Is this some kind of egregious attempt to tie capitalism to slavery or something?
I disagree. Try again.That's another outdated mentality, relegated to 18th century platitudes, when the general populace didn't have access to public education, and the 'Free Press' meant someone like Benjamin Franklin, or town criers selling newspapers via paperboys.
Try again.
No, I expect government to work better for people, with equality and justice for all, what a novel concept.I think she wants government to become bigger to give her more issues to complain about.
Lewk said, "Government is there to protect people from violence be it external or internal." which I agree with. But I did NOT agree with his next sentence, "Its there to preserve contract law so capitalism can exist".
Our founders didn't write the US Constitution to preserve 'contract law' for the sake of Capitalism. That's an absurd interpretation of our history, inter-state commerce, property rights/ownership, and legal amendments distinguishing people from property.
He went on to say, "The government that has the power to give you everything has the power to take everything."....which I see as another conflation of terms, what role government plays -- and whom it serves.
Rand, the public DOES need a government (aka laws/legislators, regulations/regulators) to be a force that pushes against the 'invisible hand' of wealthy and powerful industries, whose first interest is making money (which often means buying political influence first). The US has a pathetic track record in that regard. Our housing/mortgage crisis is Ground Zero.
Lewk is clearly arguing what he sees as the role of government. You can disagree with him, you can argue that the founders did not found this country with the intent of preserving capitalism, but to dismiss his view out of hand because it is, "...a pre-Civil war view," is absurd.No, I expect government to work better for people, with equality and justice for all, what a novel concept.
Lewk said, "Government is there to protect people from violence be it external or internal." which I agree with. But I did NOT agree with his next sentence, "Its there to preserve contract law so capitalism can exist".
Our founders didn't write the US Constitution to preserve 'contract law' for the sake of Capitalism. That's an absurd interpretation of our history, inter-state commerce, property rights/ownership, and legal amendments distinguishing people from property.
Fine, then I'll clarify my opinion, in stark contrast to Lewk's view: our representative/democratically elected/legislative State governments do not/cannot super-cede Federal/National governance. Because we are a National Union of States.
You realize that does absolutely nothing to address what Lewk was saying, right? The role of federal versus state government has very little to do with the more overarching general question of the role of government in citizens lives. It may be what you want to talk about, but that's not the argument he was posing.
Again, I disagree. I think the US population, at large, sees how federal de-regulation has put state resources, and residents at risk. But they don't find satisfaction from state or US congressional legislators. The West Virginia water contamination debacle remains a good example of conflicting influences. IMO, that's because we've let money contaminate our democratic process.
You are conflating disparate topics that don't have anything to do with each other. For instance, it is easy to imagine a federal government that is based solely off of libertarian principles that could perfectly describe the role of government as outlined by Lewkowski. Likewise it's easy to imagine a state government that acts contrary to the limits that Lewkowski believes should be placed on all governments. That you can't separate the two probably says more about your beliefs than it does his.
Probably. But I don't have a problem with California leading the way in EPA standards
(for example)
And I don't have a problem with any state trying to set the highest bar, which other states have to strive to match. Why should a state like West Virginia have lower potable drinking water standards, simply because it's a coal-mining state...that relies on coal-washing chemical companies?
Why should Gulf states have low standards for oil industries, simply because they're predominantly oil-dominated state economies? Why shouldn't the whole nation, and its tax payers, have a competing voice?
It's not a far stretch from energy policy to housing policy, and "government" interventions.
Last edited by GGT; 02-05-2014 at 02:27 AM.
Anyway, I don't have a problem with municipalities using Eminent Domain in this way. It might just be the best way to "even the playing field" between banks and borrowers during housing bubbles.
Assuming this idiocy becomes wide spread do you concede that interest rates will rise higher then they would normally have gone to because of the increased risk?
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