OMG Housing Prices are still dropping the government has to do something !

Mortgage Plan Gives Homeowners Bulk of the Benefits

And now for something completely slanted.

And you thought communism was bad.

After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation’s biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement that could provide relief to nearly two million current and former American homeowners harmed by the bursting of the housing bubble, state and federal officials said in Washington on Thursday.

Ok. Nice and neutril. Very diplomatic. Doesn't say anything about the famous dishonest tactics of salesmen selling homes to people they know can't afford it and knowing the government will pick up the bill.

It is part of a broad national settlement aimed at halting the housing market’s downward slide and holding the banks accountable for foreclosure abuses.

Housing markets downward slide. and the banks own most of those houses that were foreclosed on. I can just see the american bankers "OMG the prices are still dropping we're gonna be taken to the cleaners you have to do something !!!!"

Umm... yeah. Ok. You already sold those houses, you already got paid for them from the government in this Freddy Mac Fannie Mae business when they underwrote the mortgage. And now you're going for the extra of now getting paid twice for those houses.

Capitalism at it's finest. Switch a few words around , a quick re-write here and there, and it all sounds like the banks and even the public are being bailed out of some kind of natural disaster. Instead of the real situation of the banks being handed even more money on the american tax payers dime.

UPDATE : Here in Ottawa , an hour or so after I wrote this blog entry , I got onto the bus for an appointment. And there in the newspaper the pretty girl next to me was reading was this big huge advertisement , a call to investors to invest in California Mortgages ...

Yeah , invest in a house in another country that was abandoned several years ago. If anyone's actually living in it , it's squatters. And they probably trashed the place. How much does it cost to personally inspect a house in a forien country that gives people a serious hassel if they try and cross the border these days ? Gonna rely on pics only and the word of a real estate agent that only gets paid if they make a sale ?

Can I sell you this lovely bridge , here in Brooklyn ?