McCain On The Mortgage Crisis

~ Er, Doesn't have a Lot of Hope to Offer ~


Via Gail Collins, your Demon's fave new snarky NYT editorialist:

.."Fortunately for the quivering Democrats, McCain has also felt compelled to speak about the mortgage crisis. His economic thinking — which is, in any form, a brand-new phenomenon — harks back to the time when Republicans all seemed to be elderly rich guys who muttered a lot about bonded indebtedness. The public’s deep lack of enthusiasm for this worldview was what encouraged Reagan to change the subject to optimism and abortion.

"The theme for his mortgage speech this week was basically McCain to Homeowners: Drop Dead. It was, he said sternly, 'not the duty of the government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly.' The good news, he noted, was that out of 80 million American homeowners, only 4 million are in the tank, while everybody else is 'working a second job, skipping a vacation and managing their budgets' the way Countrywide Financial intended them to.

"He did, however, leave the door open for some vague, amorphous, undefined aid to good homeowners, as opposed to irresponsible ones who ... did something irresponsible. Like taking that vacation.

"McCain then suggested that the federal government ought to do something about getting regulations off the back of the financial markets and concluded with a call to reduce the corporate tax rate. It was not exactly a rallying cry for the masses."

"Not the responsibility of government to bail out those who act irresponsibly?"

Well, except for Bear Stearns, commercial banks and certain mortgage brokers! What John means, we think, is "irresponsible" individuals, who, after all, deserve to be punished, driven out of their homes and get foreclosed on.

Not the commercial operations who lured buyers into "irresponsibility" ~ they've been punished enough. See Bear Stearns investors and employees complaining about its stock price below. How are they going to make the payments on their exotic homes and cars? You're not thinking of their plight, are you, America ~ poor downtrodden free marketeers!

More here from Gail on Democrats as well: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/opinion/29collins.html