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How will mortgage bailout affect us?

This is America. The land where anyone can become rich if you work hard enough....or if you charge high enough prices. Look at the two biggest economic issues we complain about: housing and medical care. The main beef? They have gotten so darned expensive that you have to really be confident or just plain stupid to buy a home anymore, and you can't survive financially in times of medical duress unless you are in bed with a good insurance policy with a mega-filthy-rich insurer. The market is demanding mind-boggling prices, and thanks to some "brilliant" financing strategies offered to financially ignorant Americans, the megawhopper price tags seem affordable....until you lose a job, get sick, or gas prices skyrocket. Too add insult to injury, then the Fed offers to come in and keep the fat cats from losing their precious, over-speculative and downright greedy company.

Anytime anyone talks about regulating the free market, the silence becomes deafening. No one wants to inhibit anyone else from becoming RICH!!!! After all, YOU might be the next Horatio Alger story, right? It's time to wake up, people. We can't eat our cake and have it too. The prices and profits need to deflate.

Don't think of it as socialism or communism, bec ause it isn't. It's called intelligent survival. By nickel and diming each other for the sake of the almighty dollar, we are destroying the American dream for most of us and filling the pockets of a very, very few of us. Everyone treats the free market like a sacred cow that cannot be touched under any circumstance. ENOUGH!!!! We need to regulate, or else we're going to see more recession, possible depression, and inflation like nobody's business. Does that sound like fun to you? That dollar we worship is going to be worth less and less, prices will ciontinue to climb, and wages will continue to lag far, far behind. It is our economy to mold to our needs. The consumer really holds the reigns. We are the demand. We are the supply. We just need to curb our desire to out-profit everyone else and develop a desire to make basic needs such as healthcare and housing affordable for all but the truly destitute. Do we have the guts and decency to look the almighty dollar in the eye and say, "No, I choose the good of all over personal greed."

You may call it hind sight now but things could be done to prevent further losses in the financial markets, the federal government should have frozen all supprime mortgage contracts and make them non transferable as assets. This would have and still could force all lenders to come to grips with the world of bad irrational and poor judgements in lending. Instead these loans where continually being shuffled around trying to avoid the inevitable, the collapse. If all these accounts had been frozen and mortgage payments put into recerivership it would have forced a renegoation and qualifying of home owners. Many home owners may not have requalified but the many that could have would still be living in their 'dream home'. Even with the Freddie and Fannie bailouts this was not done and they too become a part of the inevetible rupture. Renegotiation of contracts is the only fix that everyone has been avoiding hoping to force the buyers to remain true to these disreputable contracts. However none of governments attempts to enforce contracts has proven worthwhile. What ever continues to happen is the sole responsibilty of government and mortgage companies own attitude that disregards consumers and consumer efforts.

It sounds like, once again, that people who are careful not to overspend or extend their resources to the absolute max, are left losers in this morgage mess. Why do those who are frugal, carefully living within their means, have to get burned by the impulsive, the showy, the debt-ridden, ultra-consumer who always wants more, more, more, no matter who gets stuck paying for it?

I believe our financial system would work better if we rewarded the responsible and careful planners instead of bailing out the flamboyant spendthrifts.

Why don't YOU start a lending or medical insurance company and show everybody how its done? YOU deflate the prices and profits and everyone will flock to your company. The theory that government operation will be less expensive because there will be no profit has been thoroughly disproven. Government has no incentive to cut costs, so they don't. The way to business success has typically been to charge less than your competitors. That is where the fortunes have been made.

Where are the liberals who constantly cry out that "big oil gets too much government welfare"?! We are about to do something worse than any tax break the oil company has received.

If I am stupid with my money will the government come in and take care of it for me? If you say no, and you agree with bailing out Freddy and Fannie, then explain why the government shouldn't bail me out?

Redshirt - our current financial situation is a result of greed and overall deregulation of the housing industry. You can throw out the dreaded "liberal" moniker all you want but the facts point out that giving free rein to big business and cutting any all protective regulations only hurt the 'little guy'. Yes, big oil has gotten government welfare in the form of tax breaks and now we are all paying to bail out the greed of unregulated big (real estate) business.
Satisfied?

I am not sure some of you people seem to really understand what this takeover is going to do. It is going to do very little to assist people that took out loans and now face foreclosure. This takeover will almost solely benefit the big mortgage companies that speculated that they could make big money shifting around these subprime loans. This is just another cooperate hand out. Funny how conservatives are so ready to hand out money to corporations that fail, and sad that they try to frame it as something else.

Hey Republicans...another economic downfall creating even greater financial burden on generations to come. And on whose watch?

To "Another" and all the misinformed, liberal talking-point spewing people here:

When you ask "on whose watch" at the end of every story about bad economic stuff please try and remember that the answer is THE DEMOCRAT CONGRESS.

To "On whose watch": watch who you are calling a liberal talking-point spewer. As a fellow Republican, I was pointing out just that fact. It is the Democratic congress! Chill out!

I understand all those who think that this bailout of bad lenders is wrong. I agree, except that if we don't do it we could send our entire country into a depression, with the entire world losing confidence in the U.S. financial system. As bad and wrong as this bailout is, it's better than doing nothing and allowing an economic collapse. That said, we had better change the rules so this won't happen again. Everyone who's made a fortune on selling overpriced homes (real estate agents, appraisers, home speculators, contractors, ect.) this past decade
are to blame for pressuring congress and the administration to turn a blind eye to irresponsible lending practices. All so they could retire young..........and greedy.

Socialize the loss. Privatize the profit, how neocon!

I borrowed cheap money in 2003, well before the take over of Congress by the Dems. This happened on OUR WATCH Republicans!!! What happened to the Contract with America - term limits, line-item veto...well, we got in power and we went to NO VETOES and now we have seen our terms ended - by the voters. Problem is the Dems have no clue either.

This a very poorly written article and doesn't really explain the problem or consequences. I would suggest calculatedrisk for anyone that would really like to understand the problems associated with the takeover.

GREAT COMMENT, STEVO!!!!

The Bush Administration......the biggest spenders in US history!

Great, another step torwards socialism. This is not the answer. The answer is to let people suffer the consequences of their greed. Makes me sick.

They will continue to fall and fall.

Terrible news. Way to go Republicans, can I have my party back now? You've trashed the place enough.

This will only serve to hurt the market - not the stock market, the real one where the rest of us have to play. What kind of government would knowingly back up debt they know will never get re-paid? I didn't think it would be America, my how things have changed.

No person responsibility + no government responsibility = recipe for disaster.

So I have a home on the east coast and to be responsible did not buy one here because I knew I couldn't afford it. And these other idiots are irresponsible and over-extend themselves and now I get to help bail them out? Disgusting.