Oh, sweet irony. The day Bush and Paulson announce Mortgage Fraudster Bailout plan, DC FBI announces new mortgage fraud task force

Hint to the new FBI task force - review the records of anyone who calls in asking for relief under the Bush/Paulson Mortgage Fraudster / Housing Gambler Bailout plan. Then simply follow the commissions all the way to the top of the food chain (Paulson? Mozilo?).

I bet there's more than a few mortgage fraudsters, realtors, mortgage brokers, appraisers and lenders researching flights to Mexico today...

FBI to Focus On Area Mortgage Loan Fraud - Agency to Host Investigators, Law Enforcement Officials

The FBI today will launch a mortgage fraud task force in its Washington field office, joining a widening net of state and local investigators digging into the market crisis.

Investigators are seeking to uncover evidence of overvalued home appraisals, shoddy lending practices and alleged irregularities in the packaging and sale of groups of loans that were marketed to ordinary investors, state investment funds and big Wall Street banks

FLASH: Bush and Paulson to announce new comedy routine tomorrow - first joke is to pretend that housing gamblers get a 5-year freeze on toxic loans

Don't believe it.

Just like the "Super SIV", "Mission Accomplished" and Bush's "Social Security Reform", this bank-failure-avoidance-scheme is going to be just another epic failure of this incompetent and corrupt administration.

There will be lawsuits filed as early as tomorrow against such a stupid plan (just think if you took a toxic loan out the day before the window started, or a bondholder who expected contracts to be worth something), and some hilarious unintended consequences - namely EVERY SINGLE HOMEDEBTOR WITH AN ARM SHOULD STOP MAKING PAYMENTS TODAY.

Plus many of these homedebtors so graciously "helped" are going to walk away anyway - because the value of their home is plummeting so hard and so fast it's better to turn in the keys and tell the bank to F off.

Bush to outline 5-year rate freeze plan: sources

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush is expected to outline on Thursday a plan to freeze mortgage rates for five years for many U.S. homeowners facing sharp increases in their monthly payments, industry sources said on Wednesday.

Final details of the plan are still being worked out after a trade group that represents large mortgage investors presented its framework for implementing a broad rate freeze to the Treasury Department late on Tuesday, the sources said.

The sources, who are familiar with details of the trade group's pitch, said the plan envisions covering subprime loans taken out between January 1, 2005, through the end of this past July, with rates that are due to reset over the coming 2-1/2 years.

An estimated 1.8 million U.S. homeowners who took out loans with low teaser rates face pricey loan resets next year alone, the Federal Reserve has said. Officials fear half a million borrowers risk losing their homes.

FLASH: Nah, there was no housing bubble. Yeah, HP'ers are Chicken Littles. Oh, crap, what did Treasury Secretary Paulson just say?

It's now officially HousingPANIC Time (HPT), as the US Treasury Secretary admits that a significant real estate crash is underway and will not be going away soon.

But if one f*cking taxpayer dollar is spent bailing out housing gamblers and failed flippers, or the reckless lenders who made the stupid loans, then the government of the United States will no longer have the moral authority to govern.

Here's Paulson's housing mea culpa today, with some confused language regarding a bailout. "We should help" combined with "I have no interest in bailing out lenders or property speculators".

Walter - you can't have it both ways. Pull your head out of your ass and stay away from this mess.

Paulson: Aggressive Action Needed for Housing Crisis, Which Is 'Significant Risk' to Economy

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson called Tuesday for an aggressive response to deal with an unfolding housing crisis that he said presents a significant risk to the economy.

In the administration's most detailed reaction to the steepest housing slump in 16 years, Paulson said that government and the financial industry should provide immediate help for homeowners trying to refinance current mortgages before they reset at much higher rates.

"Let me be clear, despite strong economic fundamentals, the housing decline is still unfolding and I view it as the most significant current risk to our economy," Paulson said in a speech delivered at Georgetown University's law school. "The longer housing prices remain stagnant or fall, the greater the penalty to our future economic growth."

"We must help as many able homeowners as possible stay in their homes," Paulson said. "Foreclosures are costly and painful for homeowners."

But Paulson also stated, "When investors are relieved of the cost of bad decisions, they are more likely to repeat their mistakes. I have no interest in bailing out lenders or property speculators."

FLASH: Now even the FDIC is run by ignorant clueless monkeys who have no idea how the world works

They say that life's losers end up in government bureaucrat jobs, since they couldn't cut it in business.

Well, FDIC Chairman Shelia Bair has now proven that point.

Her brilliant idea espoused this week is for mortgage lenders to violate the terms of the contracts they signed with homedebtors and FREEZE THE TEASER RATES they offered on their toxic loans, for the life of the loan.

Scenario A: Smart person plays by the rules, takes out a 30-year fixed mortgage at 6% for a house they can afford

Scenario B: Dumb person or housing gambler takes out a 1-year ARM 3% teaser rate mortgage for a house they can't afford (or one they can and wouldn't it be great if that rate doesn't reset!)

So now FDIC Head Monkey Bair wants the mortgage lender to freeze the 3% rate on the dumb homedebtor. Uh, I don't think so! Ever hear of a contract? Ever hear of moral hazard?

I don't even know where to start with this stupid idea, except to note how dangerous it is to have Heckuva Job Brownie II running the FDIC right now. But I leave you with this point, shouted for full effect:

PEOPLE WHO MAKE $50,000 A YEAR SHOULD NOT "OWN" $1,000,000 HOUSES. GOVERNMENT SHOULDN'T WANT THEM TO, LENDERS SHOULDN'T ALLOW THEM TO, AND SOCIETY SHOULDN'T BAT AN EYE WHEN THEY LOSE THEIR HOMES AND MOVE INTO SOMETHING THEY CAN TRULY AFFORD.

FDIC to mortgage servicers: Freeze ARM rates
Top bank regulator suggests industry cuts losses now to prevent foreclosures.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The heat on U.S. mortgage lenders and servicers was turned up a few degrees this week when the country's chief bank regulator publicly proposed that they permanently freeze interest rates on subprime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) for many homeowners.

"Keep it at the starter rate. Convert it into a fixed rate. Make it permanent. And get on with it," Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said in prepared remarks at an investor's conference.

Oh dear god - the braindead Democrats now want Bush to name a "mortgage advisor" and throw more taxpayer money at housing gamblers and failed flippers

It's now official - the United States is run by monkeys.

HP message to the Democrats and any other government official who thinks it's a good idea to spend hard-working taxpayer money bailing out housing gamblers:

GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS.

Now if the Democrats would like to be useful, start by cracking down on the out-of-control and unregulated REIC. And send the SEC after Angelo Mozilo.

Monkeys I tell ya. Monkeys.

Democrats to Unveil Foreclosure Plan - Democratic Lawmakers to Call on White House to Create Special Mortgage Market Adviser

Top congressional Democrats will call Wednesday for the Bush Administration to appoint an adviser to coordinate the federal government's response to mounting foreclosures around the country.

The effort by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others is an attempt by Democrats to step up pressure on the White House to respond to the troubles in the housing market.

Democrats have been critical of the Bush administration's response to the mortgage market problems, which started among loans made to borrowers with weak credit and has spread to other loans.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto rejected the concept of a special adviser, saying the government's housing secretary, Alphonso Jackson, is already attuned to the issue.

"If you want to talk about inaction, you need to look no further than Congress," Fratto said, citing a lack of progress on legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and overhaul the Federal Housing Administration, which guarantees mortgages for low-income borrowers.

Ain't gonna be a housing gambler bailout. Why? Because politicians like to get re-elected and the bubble blogs made them listen

It's funny, a lot of 'em thought giving away free taxpayer money (like New Orleans) to failed housing gamblers would've been politically popular. So the wildly-unpopular and politically tone-deaf Bush and the Democratic Congress got together on the bailout idea, thinking it'd help both their anemic ratings.

Not.

Americans aren't quite as dumb as Dodd, Clinton, Obama, Schumer and Bush thought they were. And tax paying Americans who live within their means, read the fine print of contracts and have a sense of personal responsibility are OUTRAGED that our corrupt and incompetent leaders were thinking of bailing out failed flippers.

Ain't gonna happen. Mark my words. And it's because of you HP'ers, and the bubble blog community. Nice work everyone. We're ahead of this story, and we're driving opinion via the copy/pasters at the MSM now.

Is America really pro-bailout? - Politicians are sorely misreading public opinion of imperiled homeowners who bought into the bubble.

Here's one tale of sub-prime woe you may not have heard. Casey Serin, a twentysomething real estate investor in Sacramento, bought eight houses in four states with little or no money down, couldn't sell them and couldn't pay the mortgages, and so naturally began losing them to foreclosure. He then began keeping a self-pitying online diary he called Iamfacingforeclosure.com.

Serin hasn't drawn much notice from politicians or the media, but real estate bloggers have so vilified him that CNet's news.com granted him the title "world's most hated blogger." And cases like his help explain the disconnect between public opinion and bailout-happy politicians and the elite media: According to a recent Fox News poll conducted by Opinion Dynamics, there's 70% opposition to a taxpayer sub-prime bailout.

"It is amazing all the sympathy we are seeing from politicians for people who knowingly took out loans they couldn't afford, often lying on their applications to do so," commenter "srl" posted at the LA Land blog I write for the Los Angeles Times. "Usually," added "Brian," "when the facts are examined closely, we find people who . . . took a chance that house prices would keep rising, that they could remodel the kitchen, buy the truck and the motorcycle, put it on the credit card and pile that debt into the next refinance. ."

You can find thousands of similar comments on scores of "housing bubble" blogs. I asked Patrick Killelea, whose blog (patrick.net) has long predicted the current housing crisis, to quantify his readers' feelings about a bailout. "It is easy to quantify," he replied. "100% against."

HousingPANIC Stupid Question of the Day

What's going to end up costing the US taxpayer more in the end

A) The Iraq Debacle

B) The Great Housing Crash