McCain Home Loan

His plan shocked everyone tonight but Carly Fiorina was on Greta and said he'd mentioned it before at Carnegie Mellon University, and she was right:



This was April 15, 2008, so let it be said McCain was thinking about this issue before tonight, although it's not clear here how he would pull it off. Hopefully we'll see a detailed plan soon.

One point of hypocrisy--McCain bashed Obama for having a government solution to every problem, yet he seems to have a government solution to every problem, too. The difference is McCain has a record to no earmarks and voting against most wasteful spending and Obama does not.

MORE 10/08/08

More on McCain Home Loan:



That's the problem with such stuff.

MORE 10/08/08

Here's the plan, called the "American Homeownership Resurgence Plan" (McCain Resurgence Plan).

The new mortgage would be an FHA-guaranteed fixed-rate mortgage at terms manageable for the homeowner. The direct cost of this plan would be roughly $300 billion because the purchase of mortgages would relieve homeowners of “negative equity” in some homes. Funds provided by Congress in recent financial market stabilization bill can be used for this purpose; indeed by stabilizing mortgages it will likely be possible to avoid some purposes previously assumed needed in that bill.

The plan could be implemented quickly as a result of the authorities provided in the stabilization bill, the recent housing bill, and the U.S. government's conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It may be necessary for Congress to raise the overall borrowing limit.

Sounds like an avalanche of bureaucratic red tape and a mountain of potential fraud not to mention an inequality generator, but it'll play a little better to the Main Street crowd than a bailout of Wall Street fat cats. I give it as much chance of occurring as Obama's tax cut. Both are probably designed for the same purpose.