Who Wants to Pay Off Your Neighbor's Mortgage? Raise Your Hand!!!

"The government is promoting bad behavior," Santelli said of President Obama's $75 billion initiative to refinance mortgages."I have an idea," he said on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange floor."How about this, new President and new administration, why don't you put up a Web site to have people vote on the Internet ... to see if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages."Or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people who might have a chance to actually prosper down the road... reward people who could carry the water instead of drink the water."Santelli then turned to the traders."How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?" he asked as boos filled the air."President Obama," Santelli continued. "Are you listening?""We're thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July," Santelli said.Santelli told the Daily News only a handful of the 700 e-mails he got were negative.About the tea party: "I was half-serious, but given the response, I think something is going to have to be done in a very serious way."
http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/02/19/2009-02-19_the_case_against_the_mortgage_bailout_we.html

Hat Tip: Chickaboomer

NYT editorial blames Bush but fails to mention how Bill Clinton started this mess in the mid-90s by relaxing loan criteria. Let's also finger former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan...

"The anti-foreclosure plan announced by President Obama on Wednesday is a decisive break from the Bush administration’s disastrous protect-the-banks-but-not-the-homeowners policy. The president has promised that it will help as many as nine million American families refinance their mortgages or avoid foreclosure. That’s a good start, but given the dire state of the economy, we fear it still may not be enough. For two years, while house prices cratered and mortgage defaults soared, the Bush administration stubbornly refused to compel the mortgage industry to clean up the bad loans that had been made so recklessly; it even refused to give banks any incentives to do so. Some two million families lost their homes to foreclosure."