Acton Commentary: The Problem with Government Mortgage Relief

Brittany Hunter
by on Wednesday, March 11, 2009
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In today’s commentary, Sam Gregg writes that “there is little reason to be optimistic about the probable effects of the Obama Administration’s interventionist approach to mortgage relief. In fact, it is most likely to be counterproductive.” More government complacency about moral hazard?

Read the commentary at the Acton Website and share your comments below.

Related posts:

  1. ‘The Morality of Mortgage Relief’
  2. Acton Commentary: The New Mortgage Fraud — Kick ’Em When They’re Down
  3. Acton Commentary: The End of Capitalism?
  4. Acton Commentary: Choosing a Prosperous Future

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  • Clare Krishan

    RE:”As presently configured, the government mortgage relief plan ignores this distinction. Whether we like it or not, it will send the message to many people that they need not face up to the consequences of being financially irresponsible.”
    as I posted to the Mercator.Net thread on the hypocrisy of “compassionate conservative” Big Government

    the commentary from the “opinion makers” like Acton fail to see the beam in their own eye, while bewailing the mote in the eye of their impecunious neighbors — the persons who are most in need of facing up to the consequences of being financially irresponsible are employed at the Fed and Treasury! See Chapter 13 of Hulsmann’s new book “Ethics of MOney Production”
    http://mises.org/books/moneyproduction.pdf
    for the spiritual harm wrought by inflationary FIAT currencies and fractional reserve banking practices that have undermined the hard work and thrift of many millions of ordinary Americans, whether homeowners or not, whose pension funds have been decimated. Who will make them whole? Moral hazard is key to any discussion, but too many at Acton don’t want to touch the hot potato at the root of all the misery (and the full impact of the misery is not yet fully upon us, wait for the credit-card debt securites and commercial real-estate asset backed securities to collapse, and China to sell the Treasury Notes it holds…. Armageddon may be too mild a term for the chasm in moral deficiencies we’re facing … this isn’t goin’ to be a tea-party, for all the tea in China (British idiom: If someone won’t do something “for all the tea in China” they won’t do it no matter how much money they are offered!)

  • peter bergquist

    The issue if being looked at backwards. The moral issue is that all the banks and mortgage companies should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for knowlingly selling mortgahges they knew were bad. With everything else going on in the world no one seems to realize how the creditsm of the USA brought down the home market. Without illegal funding no homes would have been bought that are so far underwater. From Golman to Bofa to the brokers, all should be prosecuted. To allow them to destroy this country with no regard to law or good busniss practices they deserve to have their assets seized and put in jail. That is the real moral hazard. they have been con men. We should prosecute. If a con man sells a consumer anything on false pretenses they are prosecuted. I realize this is not a popular view. We are still bacing creditism not capitalism. Even the government is doing it. Tarp should stay in place for all into all are paid and tallied up. the governmentis out company which is our country and should be run like one. Until AIG for instance pays back their loan for example none should have paid back. the government is in this make money not lose it for 300 million people. the whole concept on economics as we do it now is doomed to complete failure, either of the currency or thethe economy. What we really need is to take over all the anks and consolidate into a peoples bank…like a credit union. All the money is bein shovelled into banks through absurd interest rates. Why should anyone save a dime with interests rates extremely negative. the wholeconcpet f credism was bad for Drexel and put them out of business and will do the same for our country. what we will be left with is large companies which are essentially countries in fact and A gutted usa. Like the French line afteer ww1 our economic theory and busness schools from top to bottom are defunct. We need an Einstein look at things. Seize all teh banks. We dont need them. ever ten years or so they get bailed out. the closet thing we have now is a crdit union but we need newer idea than that. the anking system is and will be a failure.

  • http://www.ethicalworkforce.com Ethics Training

    Banks were led to belief that we are in a capitalist system. If they knew that we were going to socialize the banking system, they would have been less excited to hand out these mortgages.

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