Don't Worry About Paying Your Mortgage

Remember Minta Garcia, the school bus driver with the $800,000 home?  Garcia once begged Obama on CNN, "Stop the foreclosures."  From her mouth to Chairman Obama's ears.  The Washington Post  reports the Obama administration will require lenders to slash or eliminate mortgage payments of the unemployed for up to six months though the administration may allow lenders to permit borrowers to skip payments altogether.

Oh, but there is more:

The administration's new push also seeks to more aggressively help borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth, offering financial incentives for the first time to lenders to cut the loan balances of such distressed homeowners. Those who are still current on their mortgages could get the chance to refinance on better terms into loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration.

The problem of "underwater" borrowers has bedeviled earlier administration efforts to address the mortgage crisis as home prices plunged.

Officials said the new initiatives will take effect over the next six months and be funded out of $50 billion previously allocated for foreclosure relief in the emergency bailout program for the financial system. No new taxpayer funds will be needed, the officials said.

So, no new taxpayer dollars are required, just the old taxpayer dollars they had laying around.  I feel better already.  Let me say I have sympathy for anyone unemployed during this awful economy particularly under the leadership - for lack of a better term - of this president.  Perhaps if the administration had targeted their efforts on  "J O B S" everyone, including the President, would be far better off.

Nevertheless, there does come a point where people are taught through such intervention, there is no need to plan for a rainy day.   Robin Koerner at "The Moderate Voice," is asking himself why he bothered:

A few months ago, the principal on my mortgage was comfortably more than the place was worth, and my low income was in decline. So I did the responsible thing, cut my expenses back to the bone, and raised and moved whatever money I could to cover it, and to try to pay it down. I wanted to deal with the fact that I was upside down on the mortgage and dangerously exposed to future rate increases; most of all, I wanted simply to reduce my monthly payments.
Why did I bother?

If I had not been so responsible, Obama’s plan (I still cannot quite believe it) would have given me (via my bank) YOUR money, humble tax-payer, as a gift to reduce my mortgage, and I would have gained to the tune of many thousands of dollars.

The President is quite generous in this election year with OUR money as he uses it to toss to the plebes in hopes of assuaging residual anger they were last to get a bailout.  The Loney Conservative notes the bad optics in an election year:

Well, he can’t have any more Obamavilles pop up, or foreclosure related suicides, now can he? Of course not. That would create an image of a failed presidency. It’s the same thinking that was behind food stamps. Politicians don’t want images of millions of people standing in line for bread and cheese.

There is always that potential, isn't there, it's really all about him.  It's as though he suddenly realizes people are struggling because Axelrod suggested the visuals weren't working or something.   I am sure there will be a whole new array of victims trotted out for stump speeches so Obama can claim to have saved them from being tossed in the streets by evil bankers and their Republican allies.  Lest we forget, the Wall Street crew financed Obama's campaign, now they will be ordered about to save the Democratic majority.   Guess when this is all set to be put in effect?   September, timing is everything when you're putting on a show.

More on this at Memeorandum