Guess Who Owned Ally Financial's ResCap? You Did

Many people relish the thought of 'cradle to grave' care proposed by Obama and the 'crats. And if they can't afford their mortgage, Obama and the 'crats propose to reduce their loan and extend the payment schedule to eternity. Next we'll see student loans being forgiven, for the good of the country, of course. Unfortunately, I had to earn my keep all my life and pay for whatever I've got. The government never cut me any slack or gave me a freebie. Welcome to the new America where the guv'ment takes from the rich and gives to the poor to spread America's wealth around.... How's that for trickle-up poverty?

@highdesertcat-the socialist statists believe equality requires the rich to be beaten down to make all equal, ignorant of the reality that they beat down the goose laying the golden eggs.

@highdesertcat "Unfortunately, I had to earn my keep all my life and pay for whatever I’ve got. The government never cut me any slack or gave me a freebie." Um, aren't you the same guy who said: "I retired at age 38 after serving 20 years in the US Air Force and have never been employed since." Here: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/01/2011-the-year-in-auto-sales/ So you went to work for the government at age 18, retired at the ripe old age of 38 with a government pension and government-provided health care for life, never worked another day, and are honestly complaining about "cradle to grave" care and claiming that the "government never gave you a freebie"? Really? Is there any private-sector alternative that will hire somebody straight out of high school and then give them a full retirement before the age of 40? Even the UAW was never that generous.

@highdesertcat "So you went to work for the government at age 18, retired at the ripe old age of 38 with a government pension and government-provided health care for life, never worked another day, and are honestly complaining about “cradle to grave” care and claiming that the “government never gave you a freebie”?" Try looking on the bright side. At least he never used his taxpayer-funded GI Bill benefits to pay for a college education... (It really is ironic to see how many people who live on the government teat like to complain about everyone else who gets just a fraction of the benefits.)

@highdesertcat: "And if they can’t afford their mortgage, Obama and the ‘crats propose to reduce their loan and extend the payment schedule to eternity." You know, when corporations can't pay their loans, they refinance them too. Why can't consumers? But let's be ideologues like you and tell the homeowners who can't afford their homes to screw off. What happens? Well, let's say that this happens to a home three doors down from yours. Let's say that the house would go for $200,000 if it were sold normally, but since it's a foreclosure, it'll go for $150,000 (banks routinely lose about 1/3 of the equity of the home when it's resold). What does that mean to you? It means that every house on your street just lost value, because home values are based on SALES PRICES. That means that when it comes to sell your house, you get less. It means that when you go to refinance your house, you may not have enough equity to do the deal. So, Mr. Free Marketeer: how much are YOU willing to lose in dollar terms to prove your ideology correct?

@highdesertcat baa, I commend you on your attention to detail. However, you did miss some details or did not read them when I posted them. At the risk of repeating myself, allow me to expound: It is absolutely true that I was never again employed by anyone after I retired from the Air Force, and have never had to pay a dime in income taxes again because my official income was too low. I didn't even have to file. We have attorneys in the family. They protect our legal interests. But that does not mean that I didn't work for myself building my house or was a consultant for more than 30 years to my brothers who had new-car dealerships in four different states. And there is also the little matter of my wife's employment by, and ownership in, a multimillion dollar real estate/brokerage owned by her family where they enjoyed being taxed twice on their income, first as a corporation and then as individual tax payers. And whatever meager income I enjoy now, including the VA disability benefits, I had to work for. No one handed me anything for free. Ditto with my wife who went to college on my meager Air Force pay, got her degree and broker's license and dearly paid for the social security and medicare benefits she gets to enjoy now, after turning 65. If you are going to tell the story, please do not omit the parts of significant importance, like, for instance, that we have four sons, each married, all 8 employed, who work and have a very decent income, who also pay dearly into the system to support our hand-to-mouth Wal-Mart-fashion lifestyle. And while you are at it, you might want to add that I currently pick up more spare change each month than all my military, VA and social security incomes combined, doing odd jobs like hauling tile, mortar and brick, or performing construction and repair services for my father-in-laws rentals, all done with my trusty 2011 Tundra. This is not a boast. It is a fact and it also does not disclose that I avoid using the banking system unless absolutely necessary to minimize my exposure to prying government eyes. And I'm not the only one. If you don't know, the underground economy in America is doing very well and has boomed since Obama took office. That does not take away anything from the 'cradle to grave' proponents who would love to see the working stiffs, employers, corporations and banks foot the bill for the freebies they would receive but never earned. OWS anyone? Freebies everyone? And again, Pch101 is right. I never used my GI benefits to get my education nor that of my wife's. I did use Tuition Assistance offered and provided by my employer for my two Bachelor's degrees and for my MBA. Once that was done, we sent my wife to college full time, again at our own expense and with the help of student loans from the General George S. Brown Fund, through Citibank, which we repaid in four years after my wife got her license. Dude! No one gave me anything for free, and there are millions like me who did the same identical thing to get ahead. I'm proud of it, and so are they. Can you say the same for your circumstances? Or are we going to read responses now with a litany of tear-jerking stories that tug at our collective heartstrings? I lived in a shoebox under an overpass or I ate roasted rodents for Thanksgiving Day dinner. But this isn't about my life's story. This is about the fact that we Americans have been suckered by our government to foot the bill for failed entities that should have died and been liquidated, GM among the first and foremost. Olds, I agree with you because I, too, have been an employer of illegal aliens when building my house, or even to this day when I hire day-laborers to help me maintain or repair the rentals. Those people just want to live from day to day, and if I can slip them $100 bill each for an honest day's work, I feel like I'm doing God's work on earth in feeding the poor. MY return on investment in people has paid off handsomely and I have formed quite a sizable cadre of skilled workmen and artisans to draw on to upgrade old homes and bring them up to code. No doubt, Obama is laboring under the same twisted mentality of taking from the haves and giving to the havenots in return for nothing, not even an honest day's work. That, my friend, is the philosophy of grand electioneering and buying the vote, all based on the core belief that it is a far, far better thing to spread America's wealth around, than it is to nurture the hands that feed us. Those hands are increasingly feeding Asians and Mexicans instead of Americans by outsourcing the work to them. You know, of course, that there is no change in sight and the light at the end of the tunnel we are so mesmerized by today is merely a freight train carrying all of America's financial burdens to come home to roost, along with some economic policy chickens. Maybe the rains will stop today and the ground will dry out to where I can do some manual labor instead of having to clarify what I said so people do not misconstrue what I said with their own interpretation of what they thought I communicated. Mike, we have all lost a lot because of our failed national economic policies. NINJA loans for people who haven't got a snowball's chance of ever meeting their monthly mortgage payments is no way to go. I think we should all protect our own interest and live within our means. I did and continue to do so. Picking up the tab for people who overextended themselves and voluntarily took on more debt that they can afford is bogus. There's always the bankruptcy system for them. It has worked wonders for millions. It will work for them too.

@highdesertcat: "Mike, we have all lost a lot because of our failed national economic policies. NINJA loans for people who haven’t got a snowball’s chance of ever meeting their monthly mortgage payments is no way to go." You didn't answer my question. These programs are designed to make it so that people don't get foreclosed on. When that happens, they're not the only ones affected - your home value takes it right on the chin too. So I ask again: how much, in dollar terms, are YOU willing to lose to stand by your "let 'em fail" mentality - $20,000? $40,000? $100,000? (By the way, the folks who lied on their application, and the ones who truly couldn't afford their homes, have already lost their homes. that wave hit three years ago. Current modification programs are aimed at people with real, verifiable income, and have been making their payments, but can't refinance because their homes are underwater value-wise. Giving them a more affordable payment just makes it that much more likely that they'll never face foreclosure. You should really educate yourself on this.)

@highdesertcat Freed Mike: (By the way, the folks who lied on their application, and the ones who truly couldn’t afford their homes, have already lost their homes. that wave hit three years ago. Current modification programs are aimed at people with real, verifiable income, and have been making their payments, but can’t refinance because their homes are underwater value-wise. Giving them a more affordable payment just makes it that much more likely that they’ll never face foreclosure. You should really educate yourself on this.) If they need this program, they "truly" cannot afford their homes. If they can make their current mortage payment, then it's not the government's responsibility to lower their payment. If they can't make their current mortage payment, they cannot afford their house. End of discussion.

@highdesertcat Mike, I thought I answered your question when I wrote WE ALL LOST A LOT. But to answer you more directly, I don't care if the value of MY house falls to zero. I realize you probably read that more than once so let me explain. I own all my property outright. I don't have a mortgage. I am never going to sell my house. It will be passed down to my kids and/or grandkids. In the past, when I did buy a house with a mortgage, I bought what I could afford and lived within my means. I didn't like it and I was severely limited by what the market value of my property was determined to be by appraisers and the County Treasurer. Fortunately, someone bought our house before we left for overseas. I didn't make a killing but I was free of the mortgage payment. So upon my return from overseas duty we resolved to buy property where I was going to retire and physically build my own house on it. We bought 40+ acres of desert land from an octogenarian who lived in a double-wide trailer whose wife had died, and who was going to move to Wyoming to live with his son. We still have the double-wide but it is now a storage area and my gunsmithing shop. We started off modestly with a 1600sqft cinderblock core on a concrete slab poured by a state-approved contractor and for the first five years that we were building we lived on the military base where I finished off my last five years. We all came out on weekends and holidays and build until we had a reasonably basic cinderblock home with 3BR, 3Baths, 1LR, 1Den, 1DR and 1Kitchen. Right before I retired we moved from the base to our property and building/expanding became my full-time job. We didn't stop building/expanding until 1998 and by then we had expanded from 1600sqft to 6000+sqft of covered area with 4800sqft of that being living space. No garage; just a covered 3-car carport. The bottom line is, we did it all within our means and didn't stick ourselves in debt beyond our means. I cannot work up any compassion for the people who stuck themselves in debt way beyond their means and now stand to lose everything. A person knows what they can afford and what is a pipe dream. Bad things happen to good people. And sometimes bad things happen to people who have no business sticking themselves into debts they cannot possibly repay when the economy tanks and they get upside down. BTW, my wife and her family were in the real estate business. When they sold the business last year to a West Texas firm there was a non-compete clause when it came to selling. So, instead, they turned to rental properties and bought up several of those foreclosed and distressed homes, for cash money. Those are the homes I am maintaining and repairing. One person's financial agony can be another person's windfall. And another thing, there will be another round of ARM resets this year and next for homes bought in 2007 and 2008 so there will be even more foreclosures forthcoming as payments will skyrocket.

@highdesertcat "Mike, I thought I answered your question when I wrote WE ALL LOST A LOT. But to answer you more directly, I don’t care if the value of MY house falls to zero." I don't buy that for a nanosecond. But let's say that you really are willing to have your property wealth zapped to zero to prove a political point. Maybe that's OK for YOU, but writ large on the economy as a whole, that's absolute lunacy - you'd wipe out tens of trillions of dollars in wealth. That's complete, utter economic SUICIDE on a national scale...all to prove a political point? That's utter lunacy. You discredit yourself a lot more thoroughly than I could ever hope to do.

@Geeber: I'm a mortgage underwriter. I deal with the Obama refi programs on a daily basis. The program falls into two categories: 1) modification programs for people who are in trouble now but wouldn't be if they could get a break on their housing payment,and 2) refi programs for people who aren't having trouble making their payments, and would like to refi to a lower rate, but can't because their house is underwater value-wise. Obviously, the first program is a mixed bag - weak borrowers are weak borrowers no matter how you slice it, but as far as I'm concerned,if even a small percentage of them can be "saved," that's a blessing to housing prices overall. The second program is an unqualified win-win - these are people who ARE responsible, CAN make their payments, and have done so, but couldn't refi because the housing crisis wiped out their equity. In fact, if you haven't been making your payments on time, you don't qualify for this program at all. I just did a file today for a guy who is saving $600 a month on this program - that's huge. Now he can save, invest or even spend that money elsewhere, and all three of those choices are healthy for the economy. The only argument against all this is ideological, and that pales compared to the actual, real benefits that people get from these programs. I see it every day.

@highdesertcat FreedMike: Obviously, the first program is a mixed bag – weak borrowers are weak borrowers no matter how you slice it, but as far as I’m concerned,if even a small percentage of them can be “saved,” that’s a blessing to housing prices overall. Housing prices need to be allowed to drop to their natural level, and the foreclosure process is part of this. Keeping them at inflated levels is not a "blessing" in any way, shape or form. We've been through a housing bubble that massively overinflated housing prices. The necessary correction will bring them back to normal, historical levels. Keeping them artificially inflated is not a "blessing." It merely penalizes first-time buyers, or buyers who didn't borrow irresponsibly, in order to prop up current homeowners who did. And we have a place for "weak" homeowners - they're called apartments. Freed Mike: The second program is an unqualified win-win – these are people who ARE responsible, CAN make their payments, and have done so, but couldn’t refi because the housing crisis wiped out their equity. In fact, if you haven’t been making your payments on time, you don’t qualify for this program at all. I just did a file today for a guy who is saving $600 a month on this program – that’s huge. Now he can save, invest or even spend that money elsewhere, and all three of those choices are healthy for the economy. The only argument against all this is ideological, and that pales compared to the actual, real benefits that people get from these programs. I see it every day. Using taxpayer money to bail out banks (let's face, financial institutions ultimately benefit from this) and people dumb enough to borrow at the peak of what was obviously a bubble does not benefit the majority of us.