It used to be that we in the States lived by a rule of effort and reward, and for as long as we didn't breach conscientious norms of human dignity and liberty we were unhindered by any large, singular imposition in the personal quest for gain and merit. In the world of Real Estate, the now-inextricable role of politics has ruined the paradigm.
In an economic sense, we had been free to apply our God-given characteristics to explore entrepreneurial pursuits. We understood that we could lose all that we invested, or improve to the boundaries of our personal limits. The principles behind this were free enterprise capitalism, an original and enduring fixture of our American Soverignty, and the acknowledgement and appreciation for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our will and intellect could be purely applied, without onerous regulation, to the endeavors contrived from the essence and depth of our personal fabric and innate gifts.
Further, if a person or family was in grave need of basic necessities, the neighborhood Church and its endemic outflow of Christian Charity were ever present to supply to those hit by hard times. Though this element of American quality remains alive, Christianity has seen a steady, ever-burgeoning and oft-surging competitior for the "biggest giver" award - the Federal Government.
Of course, the designers of our constitutional republic never intended for this to be extant in American culture. In fact, quite the opposite was the veritable intention of our Framers. Small central government with limited powers, chief among these being the protection of soverignty, had always been the intention. Jefferson and his contemporaries are rotating continuously in their respective graves at the overreach of our federal government in the present fullness of its overreaching bloat. The fat hanging over the belt of recent administrations is staggering, and sickening.
As we have come to collectively realize, by and large, the centralized government has meddled to such a degree in Real Estate as to have substantially fractured the economy at large. By urging, if not forcing, bad mortgage loans through private banks for many years under the auspice of insuring these loans through the Treasury and under the guise of fairness to all, we became [unwitting?] drones in a bubble of unsustainable growth. Via fantastic surges in real estate "value", the entire country was swimming in leverageable 'equity" overnight. The American Dream of home ownership became a farcical effigy as citizens eschewed their trailers and tenement houses for a mortgaged home in the suburbs, burning away the residue of the hallowed, historical mortgage prerequisites of respectable income and savings. Happily we floated along in this surreal picture of prosperity. We were so blinded by money and growth that nary was it considered that the foundation for expansion was purely sand. Sand upon sand.
In the dark days of 2008, and since, America has been in continuous, painful realization of the repurcussions of greed and licentiousness. Tragically few, though, it seems, have been astute enough to recognize the source of the fictitious and superimposed growth as the federal government itself. As a result, the masses turn to the "man behind the curtain", the very originator of the disease, for resolution to the economic apocalypse it has perpetrated. Dr. Kevorkian is now taking patients.
When we look for real estate and mortgage "bailouts", whether for mortgage default, student loans, or otherwise, we're signing a new contract with our indenturers for more time in captivity, and by consequence, in assent to the financial imprisonment of our fellow Americans.
Desperation and its affiliated emotions usually prompt irrational reactions. In the helplessness of our own personal, microsmic personal and familial economic failures, we no longer own up to our bad investments as would have our predecessors of tougher American mettle. Nowadays, we require that there be SOMEONE ELSE TO PAY FOR OUR MISTAKES. It matters little that we're metastasizing our singular debt upon our neighbors who never broke the rules of scrupulousness.
As a simple diagnostic assessment of the anti-bailout platform I am hereby developing, ask simply, "From where does the money come to bail out a collapsing mortgage giant?". Or, "When John Doe is pardoned of a value-to-mortgage deficit, from where does the mortgagee (bank) gain the funds to accept the culmination of these losses?". The answer, of course, is the very institution gratuitously insuring these bad loans in the first place - the US Treasury and the tentacle departments in the federal system. And from whence does the monies originate to fund the disease propagated by the tangled web of affiliated federal bureaucracies? The taxpayer - you and me. And as a final tasty piece of rhetoric to chew on, consider why the Federal Housing Administration continues its prolific reign as mortgage insurer extraordinaire, despite its overwhelming role in the buildup and collapse of the housing bubble from which we continue to collectively struggle. To those active in brokering house sales these days to owner occupants, do you not agree that the FHA is involved in the lion's share of mortgage loan activity? Are we not then funding the next bubble while still in the deadly grasp of the last one? "Recovery" is being fabricated by the very same player as masterminded the first cancerous mass of government-backed mortgages.
Summarily, when the federal government subsidizes the bailout of banks and homeowners, taxpayers bear the burden. While our taxes increase to mitigate this unpayable bill, our national debt increases (which we can NEVER afford to repay) and dollar weakness grows nearer to its inevitable bloodbath. Those conducting this absurd charade understand that money is just numbers in an abstract computer with no physical location. The end game has nothing to do with balancing the budget and paying down our national debt so much as kicking the can down the road and flooding the markets with money supply to delay the inevitable. We're in a load of trouble.
We in the Real Estate business are mostly neutral players in the broader scheme. Mortgage brokers don't generally distribute FHA-insured product with the malice to grow government control and destroy what remains of our economic stability. Realtors don't sell houses to folks using FHA subsidy with the intent to build another government-backed bubble. We're just trying to pay the bills and put food on the table. But when we endorse bailouts in preclusion of the natural consequence of bad decisions and illicit business, we're aligning ourselves with the Federal Government in its effort of self-aggrandizement and improper role as savior of the people. We must be allowed to fail, personally and corporately, in order for the seeds of natural correction find root and nurture. And if the FHA wants to do legitimate business, it needs to align with the principles of conservative, private banks - home loans based on strong income and substantial, un-subsidized down payment. Otherwise, we're lining at Dr. Kevorkian's pharmacy counter.
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