The heat is cranking up on the seat of Edward DeMarco, acting head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and a holdover from the last administration who has been standing in the way of a meaningful response to the mortgage crisis. FHFA is conservator of FannieMae and FreddieMac, owners or guarantors of a large percentage of US home mortgages, and thus in a position to direct the mortgage giants to take steps that would save taxpayers money, provide relief to struggling underwater homeowners, and revive the US economy. Congressmen Elijah Cummings and John Tierney yesterday released a smoking letter to DeMarco explaining that his agency's own analysis shows that a principal reduction program could save taxpayers $28 billion. http://democrats.oversight.house.gov/images/stories/Cummings_Tierney_DeMarco.pdf Even more revealing, they say a FannieMae whistleblower has disclosed that FHFA was poised to implement a pilot program along these lines just before the November 2010 election but then pulled back for political reasons. Things seem to be getting more interesting. Could we finally see some movement on this critical issue?
Tag: principal reduction
-
People Are Not Corporations, and Financial Journalists Are Not Ordinary People
Posted by
It is getting really old, the exasperation of entitled financial journalists that ordinary folks are not walking away from their underwater homes as much as they supposedly should. The latest to sound this tired refrain is James Surowiecki in The New Yorker (Living By Default, Dec. 19, 2011), who also makes the clichéd comparison to corporate decisions to shed debt using chapter 11 bankruptcy. He calls on underwater homeowners to do "the smart thing" by walking away.
According to Mitt Romney, “Corporations are people.” Whether or not you agree with that proposition, what is empirically true when it comes to debt is that people are not corporations. People don’t view walking away from debts that they can afford as a no brainer if it improves the bottom line. They agonize. They feel bad. They care about their homes and neighborhoods. Walking away is extremely painful, not a simple financial calculation. And, oh by the way, the further down you are in the 99 percent, the more likely that the financial calculation is negative, given impact on credit reputation from defaulting on a mortgage when your income is low. (On the other hand, many people worry about their credit reputations way after they have hit bottom and bankruptcy could actually improve their access to credit, more evidence that people don't take bankruptcy or any other form of walking away lightly.)