Subprime Bailouts

Philip Greenspun

Governments at various levels have decided that they have to bail out people who spent more than the houses turned out to be worth and the financial companies who weren't wise enough to notice that the U.S. is in fact not short of forests that can be cut down for more sprawl.  Where will the money come from?  You, me, and everyone else who did not participate in the bubble. So? we missed buying real estate with a lot of leverage back in 2000 and missed the big ride up through 2004 or whenever.  Now we get to buy that same real estate at a much higher price and without any upside at all since we won't actually own any of it.

Yeah, what he said.

Of course I can appreciate the misery of someone who's underwater on a \$400K mortgage, but my sympathy goes away awfully quick when I hear them say "We just never imagined this!"

Didn't you notice that that whole "closing" business involved you signing, like, 100 pages of documents that were all variations on "YOU OWE LOTS OF MONEY"?

Giving and receiving multi-hundred-thousand dollar loans is adult stuff. I have friends who are not homeowners because they looked at the risks and decided not to take one of these nonsense loans. Now apparently my tax dollars are going to go to help out the imprudent people who caused my friends to be priced out of the market and, in so doing, my tax dollars will help prop up the prices and keep my friends locked out of the market. This is good for society how?