Bernanke Says More Must Be Done To Prevent Foreclosures
Fed Chairman Also Urged Help for People Who Have Too Much Credit Card Debt as a Result of Strip Club Charges and Purchases of Big Screen TVs
In a speech before a Florida banking group, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said more must be done to prevent the continuing wave of foreclosures that has hit the real estate industry.
Bernanke had a number of suggestions which included lender forgiveness of interest, lenders reducing principal payments and remedial math lessons for home buyers who couldn’t calculate that their mortgage was 95% of their take-home pay.
“When the mortgage is `under water’ a reduction in principal may increase the expected payoff by reducing the risk of default and foreclosure,” Bernanke said.
“Or the whole loan could default which would kick the crap out of your expected payoff number,” Bernanke acknowledged.
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Fed Chairman Bernanke urges throwing dollars at housing problem since “you could get hurt if we threw coins…”
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Bernanke maintained that, in the event of widespread loan defaults, the Fed stood ready to flood the market with billions of depreciating dollars which would make bankers “kinda whole” on their loans.
At the same time the Fed Chairman urged first-time home buyers to appear on as many game shows as possible because then “they could win a free house for acting like an idiot, which is pretty much what’s going on in the housing market anyway.”
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Picture courtesy of FreeFoto.com
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1 opinion for Bernanke Says More Must Be Done To Prevent Foreclosures
foreclosurefish
Mar 4, 2008 at 10:50 am
Ha, great post. Remedial math classes for the banks would also be a good idea. Or maybe some remedial classes for all taxpayers to show them that when the Fed gives ten billion dollars to the banking industry to bail them out, the value of all dollars goes down. And when the Fed does it over and over again, the people should stop blaming Arabs or Bush or whoever else for rising food and energy prices.
But I guess that’s more than remedial level math. That might be high school level math and critical thinking, which most Americans could never do to begin with. Government schools pretty adequately prepare people to get loans from government-connected banks denominated in a currency whose value is set by…… the government.
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