Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Then There Were Two

While listening to C-SPAN this morning, the host discussed the results of a new poll. It turns out that 8 out of 10 Americans believe that this country is going in the wrong direction.

John Dear's response? "That leaves Bush and Cheney. Yeah, that's right."

Oh, I so totally agree. I work as a lawyer for a housing company and it is a mess in my industry right now. Even though my company doesn't sell homes (we do rentals), we're still in the toilet and having to tighten our belts like everyone else out there.

There are two general sides to the housing bailout debate. One, let's help the poor people who were tricked into these subprime mortgages and have the banks forgive the majority of the loans. On the other hand, home buyers should be responsible for understanding the terms of their mortgages and aren't we just punishing those who have kept up with their mortgage payments all along?

I think both sides have merit (typical lawyer who won't pick a side, heh, heh, heh). I don't, however, think that it is "the rest of us" who are going to have to pay for this loan forgiveness. It's the people we are trying to help! Loan forgiveness is taxable income, people! The IRS will be going after the very people who don't have any money now to pay income taxes on the write-down of their loans.

I'm not sure where we go from here, but look forward to hearing ideas from both sides of the aisle. I just hope we come up with something that actually solves the problems and does so soon.

3 comments:

HereWeGoAJen said...

Yeah, I can't decide what I think about the housing situation either. My husband is an economics major and he had a good idea, but I've forgotten what it was.

Antigone said...

My husband and I discussed the 8/10 stat as well. I argued that the problem was that the 8 didn't agree which direction was the correct one. Too bad. We'll go nowhere because of it.

Nicole said...

So true. We could have very easily purchased a house a year or so ago but we knew our limits and knew that we could not stretch ourselves beyond our means so we continue to rent until it improves. I feel sorry for the people in the situation but at the same time I wonder why they got themselves into it. I dont know where to fall on my beliefs about it.