Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries tagged as bailout

The Credit Crisis: Who Brewed the Stupid Juice?

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

What is the root cause of the sub-prime crisis shaking the global economy? We need to know so we don’t allow it to screw up our economy even worse.

Many point to dishonesty and poor judgment on Wall Street. There was plenty of that leading up to the near-trillion dollar bailout, and even now the stock market is busily disciplining stupid, dishonest companies.

Others point to the many people who falsified loan applications to get mortgages beyond their means. That too played a role.

But dishonesty and poor judgment are as old as Adam and Eve. Something more was at work in the present crisis, a crisis of unprecedented scope. Why didn’t profit-minded loan companies run thorough credit checks? Why did they keep pumping out low interest loans to high risk borrowers, ignoring the risks?

It’s as if somebody spiked the financial system’s punch bowl with stupid juice, driving normally prudent financiers to dash, en masse, over the cliff.

It seems that way because it is that way. The brewers of the stupid juice were largely (if not exclusively) politicians in Washington who sought to redistribute wealth from the rich and middle class to poor people with bad credit. These politicians fostered various laws and institutions that directed, cajoled and legally bullied mortgage companies to extend big loans to people with little credit.

A case in point is a group called ACORN—Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Stanley Kurtz explains in an Oct. 7 essay at National Review Online:

“You’ve got only a couple thousand bucks in the bank. Your job pays you dog-food wages. Your credit history has been bent, stapled, and mutilated. You declared bankruptcy in 1989. Don’t despair: You can still buy a house.” So began an April 1995 article in the Chicago Sun-Times that went on to direct prospective home-buyers fitting this profile to a group of far-left “community organizers” called ACORN, for assistance. In retrospect, of course, encouraging customers like this to buy homes seems little short of madness.

… At the time, however, that 1995 Chicago newspaper article represented something of a triumph for Barack Obama. That same year, as a director at Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama was successfully pushing for a major expansion of assistance to ACORN, and sending still more money ACORN’s way from his post as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Through both funding and personal-leadership training, Obama supported ACORN. And ACORN, far more than we’ve recognized up to now, had a major role in precipitating the subprime crisis.

Continue reading "The Credit Crisis: Who Brewed the Stupid Juice?"

Posted by Jonathan Witt in Public Policy at 11:10 | Comments (10) | Trackback

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bailout, Barney Frank, Bush, Congress, credit crisis, Democrat, deregulation, dishonesty, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, free market, loan application, lobbying, McCain, mortgage, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, redistribution, reform, regulation, Republican, risk, SNL skit, stock market, sub-prime, subprime, Wall Street, Washington

The Common Sense Fix

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Dave Ramsey’s got a three step plan to “change the nation’s future.” He’s calling it “The Common Sense Fix” (PDF). Here’s Dave’s prediction:

Whichever presidential candidate or political party that champions this plan from their leadership down will likely become the next president. That is because this plan fixes the crisis while going along with the wishes of the vast majority of Americans.

Check out the plan and share what you think about the nation’s economic future.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Business and Society at 07:39 | Comment (1) | Trackback

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bailout, credit crisis, dave ramsey, mortgage, the common sense fix

Pols Behaving Badly

Monday, September 29, 2008

Last week an email newsletter from Sojourners featured a quote from U2 rock star and activist Bono (courtesy the American Prospect blog):

It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.

The quote is pretty striking given the current shape of the debate over the Wall Street bailout. Bono’s insight is instructive: Once the government takes upon itself tasks that fall outside its regular purview, how do we rightly adjudicate between all the different needy causes? It simply becomes a game of which special interest can hire the most lobbyists.

Indeed, the $25 billion that Bono points out would be necessary to save 25,000 children a day is the same amount that the US government just paid to bailout the domestic auto industry over the weekend.

If the feds are willing to dole out $600-700 billion in corporate welfare for Wall Street, it only seems right that poor families and individuals get their own relative share of government redistribution.

The size of the government bailout relative to the critical debate about the execution of these policies is positively shameful compared to the fiscal cost of the war in Iraq (roughly $560 billion on the upper end) and the critical attention that the war has and continues to receive. Of course dollars aren’t the only costs we’ve incurred in the Iraq war, but they are one salient measure.

On the one hand conservatives often point out that government involvement in provision of welfare should be sharply curtailed or eliminated because it isn’t primarily the government’s task to directly offer assistance to the poor. Rather, that’s the job of institutions of civil society, like church ministries, non-profit charities, and groups promoting individual giving. So it seems inconsistent to claim this and at the same time assert that it is the government’s responsibility to bailout overextended (and therefore irresponsible) corporations with taxpayer money.

UPDATE: A HuffPost blogger takes this logic to its political terminus (emphasis original):

The Democrats, if they truly constituted an opposition party, which they prove every day they do not, could demand that if monies are going to go to bail out Wall Street, at least an equal amount would go to bail out average Americans in the way of health care, full funding for social security and medicare, mortgage and rent protection, infrastructure repair, decent public transportation, investment in green jobs and technology, etc.

One great virtue of the market is that over time it tends to punish bad players. Those who engage in unsustainable business practices will eventually get what’s coming to them. Debt catches up with you and you go bankrupt (unless in an election year cowardly politicians aren’t willing to let companies pay the due penalty for their error).

There’s been some talk about the moral hazards associated with the bailout. One moral hazard is that bad business practices aren’t going to be appropriately punished, and so such short-sighted and unsustainable behavior will be incentivized by reduction or elimination of risk. There’s now going to be an implicit government guarantee of corporations that are “too big” or too important to fail. The cost of this bailout may be $700 billion, but it sets a precedent for future bailouts whose costs are inestimable.

But enough hasn’t been said on another moral hazard that has to do with the good players, people who didn’t take out gimmicky mortgages to finance half-million dollar homes or rush into home ownership when they should have been renting. That’s the flip-side of bailing out bad players...good players get punished and are less likely to continue responsible behavior. And in the face of a government and businesses that are telling us to spend all we can, why should we be financially responsible?

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Business and Society at 11:01 | Comments (6) | Trackback

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bailout, bankruptcy, bono, homeownership, iraq, mortgage, ownership society, poverty, responsibility

The 'New' Ownership Society

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

I don’t think government ownership is what President Bush had in mind when he talked about his vision for an “ownership society,” which had ostensibly included a plank focused on “expanding homeownership.” But it looks like that’s where we’re headed in an era of government takeovers and bailouts.

For some background on how we go to this place, check out this 1999 piece from the New York Times (HT): “In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.”

All this seems like case of good intentions (increasing private ownership, extending capital access to the poor and oppressed) executed by means of bad policy (lowering credit standards for loans, bailing out failed corporations) resulting in negative (albeit unintended) consequences (foreclosures and bankruptcies).

Oh, and are you one of the people who didn’t borrow beyond your means? Guess what? You got pwned. As one blogger wonders, “Am I just a sucker or something to play by the rules? Are all of us who paid taxes suckers?” Think of that as the “pwnership” society.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Business and Society at 10:44 | Comment (1) | Trackback

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bailout, credit crisis, fannie mae, foreclosure, homeownership, mortgage, ownership society, pwned

Circus Bailouts vs. Market Correction

Monday, September 17, 2007

In college I wrote a paper for a Latin American Politics class titled, Barnum & Bailey Circus bailouts. The paper took the position that another financial bailout of Mexico would be a huge mistake and would not be money well spent. The paper was probably a little flippant because I interwove within the framework of the paper some characters with top hats, traveling bands of political circuses, and other outlandish theatrical symbolism. I was trying to make light of what I thought was a circus-like proposal, as well as rely on smoke and mirrors to downplay my lack of reading for the course.

There is nothing funny, however, about mortgage bailout proposals. Hillsdale professor Gary Wolfram has an excellent article in Human Events, titled “Econ 101: The Problem with Bailouts.” Wolfram shows how markets correct themselves, and even discusses the upsides to a now more affordable market:

As Sherlock Holmes told Dr. Watson in “Scandal in Bohemia,” one problem is that we see but do not observe. For every homeowner who loses his home and moves into a smaller home or a rental, there is another homeowner who moves into that home and out of a smaller home or rental.

It would be interesting if the media began doing stories on how much more affordable it is for people to move from rented apartments into owner-occupied homes. The house that used to cost $280,000 and was out of the reach of the young family is now $220,000 and becomes affordable.

If the federal government, including the Federal Reserve, bails out the mortgage industry in some fashion, the market will quickly learn that taxpayers will bear some of the risk of the investments of homeowners, lenders, hedge funds and other market participants. This will result in their taking more risk than is economically justified, encouraging the very activity that led to the situation of declining housing prices and foreclosures in the first place.

But if politicians keep rattling off vague proposals of bailout proposals in the belief it will raise their polls, they may have to think again. In an Associated Press article, J.W. Elphinstone, cites a newly popular online petition, Tax Payers Against a Wall Street and Mortgage Bailout. Furthermore, Peter Viles in the Los Angeles Times, references a Fox News Poll that shows 70% of the public against a taxpayer bailout.

Many of those people have been priced out of the market and understandably they don’t want to support people who cannot afford their homes, many of whom made really bad financial choices. The people against this bailout simply want back in the market, and they understand now the market is correcting itself.

Posted by Ray Nothstine in Business and Society at 14:37 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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bailout, business and society, loans, market correction, mortgage