From Deseret News archives:
McCain's plan for mortgages is questionable
The last few days over there have been interesting, what with European banks falling like raindrops and Iceland teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But I was especially intrigued by the analysis I heard the other day from Sofia Mathiassen, who is the political editor of a paper called Dagens Næringsliv. Translated, she said, "The thing I have been most afraid of is that we get an overactive treasury minister who comes up with one rescue package after another."
Her words were still fresh Tuesday night when I watched the second presidential debate and heard Sen. John McCain come up with the latest multibillion-dollar plan. He said, "I would order the secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes...and let people be able to make those...payments and stay in their homes."
Please don't read this as an endorsement of Barack Obama. He has as little clue as McCain how to handle the current economic crisis. But McCain's announcement — coming from the candidate of the party that is supposed to understand market principles — nearly had me crawling to the back deck for oxygen.
Before I could do that, however, a neighbor walked in to retrieve his daughter, who had just finished a piano lesson from my wife. He took one look at the television and began saying what I was thinking.
"You know what I want to know?" he said. "I was careful to buy a house I could afford. I've made every single mortgage payment on time and haven't taken out loans against my equity. Why should I have to pay to let people who were irresponsible stay in their homes?"
Until he came in, I figured I was the only one with such thoughts. Neither candidate seemed to have considered it. Nor did any in the zombie-like audience asking questions at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.
But it must be on the minds of many of the overwhelming majority of Americans who pay their bills on time.
