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Does anyone wonder how $800 billion of bad debt in U.S. mortgages demands $3.2 trillion of U.S. loan guarantees to European banks? Why should the default of 5% of the home mortgages in the U.S. in any way compromise international banking? And how on earth does that lead to the failure of the world’s largest insurance company?
I read that roughly 50% of U.S. citizens are homeowners today (Clinton and Bush both take credit for that.) Roughly 50% of those do not have a mortgage at all. Of the 25% of our population with a mortgage, 95% are paying on time and are not in arrears. That leaves some 1.25% of our population threatening the solvency of the free world. How do you make that compute?
The official explanation is that there is a domino effect flowing from the restrained lending capacity of affected banks. There is less evidence of that than there was for the presence of WMDs in Iraq. GM and Ford were not compromised by the lack of funding for new car orders. They were compromised six months back by a lack of new car orders.
Understanding the problem demands the discovery of the connections. If there is a connector that links all these dots, we can perhaps understand.
The connector exists. It is another of these U.N. based treaties signed by our chief executive but not forwarded to the senate for ratification. This started with the U.N. International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. It was signed by Jimmy Carter (Nobel Prize winner) in October of 1977. It was not presented to the Senate for ratification. Rather, Carter presented the Senate with a Community Reinvestment Act which was adopted. The connector between the two appears in Article 11(1) of the signed but unratified treaty. That is the provision that there is a universal right to housing.
The CRA makes provision for a minimum percentage of mortgage loans to unqualified buyers. The CRA also makes provision for legal standing for Non Government Organizations to sue and complain under the act. Surprise, the U.N. Convention also provides for NGOs to have standing to appeal to the U.N. (ACORN is such an NGO, authorized and conceived under the CRA.) The bottom line of both the treaty and the CRA is that the government must provide a demonstrable level of “affordable housing” for those who cannot afford it. A socialistic something for nothing.
Implementation in the U.S. was undertaken through mandates (the CRA and oversight groups) requiring banks to take on a high percentage of bad risks (sub-prime). The pattern was followed in Europe. When a bank’s book of loans begins to develop too great a percentage of high risk investments, other banks and other investors hesitate to offer up their money. (Enter the credit squeeze.) This happened across Europe.
Troubled banks sought to insure their bad loans. (Enter AIG.) In the U.S., given the rising market in housing, it was not possible to lose money on a bad mortgage. AIG insured billions of dollars of bad debt for European banks, thinking it a good deal.
Then the housing bubble burst, and not just in the U.S. Foreclosures were suddenly a loss, not a profit. AIG could not take the hit and the feds had to step in, insuring the payment to European banks of their bad debts. (If AIG could not make good on the losses suffered, European banks would fold. — The level of bad debt investment in Europe was that high.)
The bottom line is that we are looking at yet another failed attempt at international socialism. The objective was to provide a basic right of housing (presumed under the U.N. Treaty) regardless of the capacity of the individual to earn it. (Economic rights don’t have to be earned. They are inherent.)
McBama have it all wrong. Greed on Wall Street did not cause this failure. The broker’s golden parachute did not cause the immigrant in Germany to default on his home loan. He defaulted because he couldn’t make the payment which was a foregone conclusion when the loan was made.
Milton Friedman once said, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” He obviously had a better handle on the situation than the U.N., the European Union, the U.S. Senate, or Jimmy Carter.
The question for us now is do we solve this failure of socialism with simply more money invested in socialism? BHO wants to raise taxes, extend unemployment benefits, provide more food stamps, and guarantee that all these credit criminals do not lose their something for nothing. This will make us healthy?
Can we solve our internal problem of $800 billion in bad debt by transfer? The credit criminals’ debt became the banks’ bad debt. By way of the bailout, we have made the banks’ bad debt the debt of future taxpayers. How does this solve anything?
Government is Not Your Daddy 