This is your government punishing the victim instead of the criminals. Banks and lending institutions are chartered and licensed and not one home mortgage was ever given to the public that was not approved of by the lender. The lender then takes these loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and says, please give us face value for these loans.

::::::::

"Just a minute... just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. You're right when you say my father was no businessman. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I'll never know. But neither you nor anyone else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was... why, in the 25 years since he and his brother, Uncle Billy, started this thing, he never once thought of himself. Isn't that right, Uncle Billy? He didn't save enough money to send Harry away to college, let alone me. But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter, and what's wrong with that? Why... here, you're all businessmen here. Doesn't it make them better citizens? Doesn't it make them better customers? You... you said... what'd you say a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home. Wait? Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they're so old and broken down that they... Do you know how long it takes a working man to save $5,000? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about... they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle." George Bailey "It's a Wonderful Life"

Bloomberg- "U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner will present Congress with three options for reducing the government's role in the nation's housing finance system and shrinking the footprint of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to two people familiar with the plan."

The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) Fannie Mae was set up as part of the New Deal. Originally, it was a freestanding publicly traded company it was changed in 1968 to a government sponsored enterprise. The purpose of Fannie Mae was to allow banks to issue mortgage loans, then the lending institution could sell that mortgage to Fannie Mae and receive new capital to make more loans.

The purpose, was to help increase the level of home ownership for America's middle class. Before the New Deal most home mortgages were only fifteen years with a large down payment and a large payment at the end of the note. By assisting American's to buy a home, it does make them better citizens. It makes them taxpayers. It creates jobs, renters don't spend the money that homeowners will spend on shrubs, blinds, wallpaper or any of a thousand other sundry items. This is important to take note of, the Democratic administration of Barack Obama is actively participating in the dismantling of government assistance for home mortgage loans.

This is a Republican wet dream, Federal Reserve toady Tim Geithner can barely hide his erection. Under the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul enacted in July, the administration was required to submit to lawmakers a plan for ending taxpayer support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Geithner will propose the administrations plan in the near future, three options are seen. The first option, discontinuing government support all together. Second, to phase out government support  of mortgage backed securities making the government the lender of last resort. The third option is raising fees, to guarantee repayment by forcing home-buyer to pay an insurance premiums for lenders.

This is your government punishing the victim instead of the criminals. Banks and lending institutions are chartered and licensed and not one home mortgage was ever given to the public that was not approved of by the lender. The lender then takes these loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and says, please give us face value for these loans.

The administration is privatizing the mortgage market. Now after your jobs are gone and industries have gone overseas, after they've privatized your health care they are going to make home ownership so expensive that most working people will never be able to afford their own a home. Couple this with the assault on Social Security and Medicaid and you have the greatest abuse of a Democratic populace in American history.

The mortgage crisis has rewarded the criminals at the expense of the victims. Under the terms of the TARP agreement, banks can present the deed for a foreclosed property and the Federal Reserve will issue credit in the amount of the loan loss. The FDIC then auctions off these properties to lenders and investors for as little as twenty two cents on the dollar. No money down, with zero percent interest. A $200,000 home for $44,000 no money down! "Can't you see? Potter's not selling Potter's buying!"

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, your only friends in the finance industry, are about to be done away with. You will then pay the mortgage rates and fees that the banks feel like charging and where are you going to go? What option will be left for you when private industry makes all the decisions.

Renters are less likely to vote than property owners. Landlords don't pay property taxes tenants do! Rents are based on a thirteen month year to allow for one month's vacancy. So renters will pay more for the same than home than property owners. I've lived in a mid sized town and I've seen the affect two or three large property owners can have on the Real Estate market. Once Uncle Sam is out of the picture the mortgage banks and REIT (Real Estate Investment Trusts) will own it, lock, stock and barrel.

The government didn't get into the mortgage business because the banks were doing such a great job of it. The government got into the mortgage business because the banks had made it nearly impossible for working people to get a mortgage. Imagine, 20 percent down and then fifteen years to pay the loan off. A $200,000 loan would mean $40,000 down plus escrow with payments of around $1,200.00 per month. Now most responsible lenders would want to keep that mortgage payment at around 25 percent of your income so you would need to earn nearly $60,000 per year just to qualify for the loan.

Now consider that the average American family income is around $47,000 and that most Americans have zero savings. Unless you were a veteran you would have nowhere to turn, those are the terms take it or leave it. Home ownership like health care will pass away, priced right out of the average families reach. Why the FDIC commercial investor buying that home for $44,000 could afford to rent it to you for around $800 per month. That will give him room for a sinking fund for upkeep and a fifteen percent profit amortized over ten years after which time, it's all gravy.

Keep in mind that the mortgage market is f*cked right now anyway. Even if we had a good economy there are years of housing and commercial building oversupply. That is why there is so little fighting over this, whose going to fight for you? The only friend you have in the mortgage industry is the government and under the corporate fascist regime of Barack Obama, that means that you have no friends.

"The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles. With either of those parties in power one thing is always certain and that is that the capitalist class is in the saddle and the working class under the saddle.

Under the administration of both these parties the means of production are private property, production is carried forward for capitalist profit purely, markets are glutted and industry paralyzed, workingmen become tramps and criminals while injunctions, soldiers and riot guns are brought into action to preserve "law and order" in the chaotic carnival of capitalistic anarchy."
Eugene V. Debs  1904!

What Debs was saying over one hundred years ago has never been more true than today.

 Bloomberg- "Federal Reserve Chairman  Ben S. Bernanke said yesterday the  unemployment rate is likely to remain high "for some time," even as a report today may show claims for unemployment insurance decreased.

Bernanke told the House Budget Committee yesterday that while the declines in the jobless rate in December and January "do provide some grounds for optimism," it will be several years before the unemployment rate has returned to "a more normal level."
 
Ben Bernanke is not a government employee, he was not elected by the people of the United States to do anything about unemployment. He is the chairman of the Federal Reserve, which acts as America's central bank. His job is to regulate banks and to deal with currency issues. Somehow in this corporate fascist regime domestic policy has been turned over to a cadre of private bankers. The defense department has been turned over to the CIA and the White House has been turned over to America's Fortune 500.

The President and titular head of the Democratic Party speaks for an hour to the American public and mentions reducing corporate taxes and reducing corporate regulation but says nothing about chronic unemployment for the American worker or  millions of struggling American families. He says nothing about the continuing foreclosure crisis. This administration buries it's head in the sand and pretends that if they don't mention it, then perhaps it will go away.

(Reuters) Feb 10, 2011 - "U.S. home foreclosures jumped 12 percent last month, but the sharp divide between states suggests the industry remains backlogged by investigations into the foreclosure process."

More than one quarter of all mortgages in America have negative equity. Two years into Barack Obama's HAMP mortgage program 436,000 homeowners have dropped out of the program while 340,000 have received a permanent loan modification. The problem is simple, the HAMP Program pays the bank to rescue mortgages. The administration so quick to lop off federal assistance for housing offers up $75 billion to the banks to cherry pick which loans they would choose to rescue.

Contrast this with  FDR's Home Owners Loan Corporation which rescued over one million home mortgages. It did it without computers and it did it without the Internet, it did it in less time than Obama's loan program and it did it without spending one dime of government money. The Home Owners Loan Corporation rescued over one million homes by government refinancing of mortgages and by buying the loans from the banks. When the Home Owners Loan Corporation went out of business it returned a surplus to the treasury.

Let's review, Obama's program, $75 billion paid to banks, 340,000 mortgages rescued.
FDR's program, $2 billion spent, one million mortgages rescued with $2 billion plus interest  returned to the treasury.

Why didn't Obama try a program like this? Because in FDR's program the benefit went to the homeowners and in Obama's program the benefits go to the bank.

A chaotic carnival of capitalistic anarchy indeed, where the people are exploited until they are depleted of assets and then pitch out like an empty beer bottle. Justice for a price, health care for a price, a decent home for a price, no retirement but a 401K. A land where you are merely an economic unit to be exploited like a cow or a pig, a land where you are no better than cattle.

A turning back of the clock for the approaching dark age, where ignorance hits its apogee and society begins it's inevitable slow rolling boil. The ignorant, the mentally euthanized, the propagandized and the mesmerized call a corporate fascist President a liberal and a socialist and cheer on those who would sow the seeds of their own destruction.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Bob Dylan

Peace and prosperity for the American people or anarchy for its government.

Authors Bio:

I who am I? Born at the pinnacle of American prosperity to parents raised during the last great depression. I was the youngest child of the youngest children born almost between the generations and that in fact clouds and obscures who it is that I am really.

Given a front row seat for the generation of the 1960's I lived in Chicago in 1960. My father was a Democratic precinct captain, my mother an election judge. His father had been a Union organizer and had been beaten and jailed for his efforts. His first time in jail was for punching a Ku Klux Klansman during a parade in the 1930's. I never felt as if I was raised in a family of activists but seeing it print makes me think, yes. That is a part of who I am.

We find ourselves today living in a world treed by the hounds of madness, a complicit media covering contrite parties. Multilevel media, giving more access to communication yet stunting actual communication. More noise, less voice, more sound less music, more law less justice, more medicine less life.