Home Cookin'

I'm pissed. NO WAY should the government, Fanny, Freddie, or anyone modify existing mortgage terms or use tax dollars to subsidize mortgages for those idiots who bought well beyond their means, who then took out home loans for vacations/boats/etc. and now are having problems making their payments on time. McCain would have had my vote if (1) he voted against the bailout of the greedy banks, and (b) dropped Hockey Mom as the VP candidate. Republicans take note: stick to your conservative values regarding monetary policy and stop listening to the religious wing of the party that has polluted and alienated the party from us independents.

If the homeowners get bailed out and rewarded for their financial mistakes, I want my cut too. Want to do something with the bailout money that would make sense? Then give me, a responsible homeowner, $200K and give the others who made the mistakes $100K to get them going. Extra credit: eliminate the capital gains tax for a year or two to spur investment. Then I'll shut up.

Jim Cramer has the right idea, although it will never happen. Instead of giving the money-addicted bank managers more tax dollars to fund their golden parachutes, he suggests using the bailout money to buy the vacant houses to get them off the bank's balance sheets, and then start a federal arson program to burn them down. The excess inventory would be removed from the housing sector, causing the remaining houses like mine to increase in value. This is actually the only plan I've heard so far that would come close to solving the crisis we're in at the moment. When I'm gone and someone finds this blog in Google's archive 100 years from now, we'll know what happened.