Editor’s Note
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Archive for December 8th, 2008

Yes to jobs; maybe to foreclosure freeze

1 comment December 8th, 2008

If you put aside greedy flippers who got in over their heads and probably deserve the foreclosures they face, two things are almost guaranteed to lead to losing your house: (1) you lose your job; or (2) you face a catastrophic expense, like a whopping medical bill.

So, it stands to reason that if one can keep a decent job with medical benefits, one might be able to keep paying the mortgage — even if it’s an expensive or weird one. That’s probably pretty simplistic thinking, but I have to believe it makes sense for government to create jobs itself and to create the climate in which private industry can create jobs — rather than spend a ton of time and resources modifying current mortgages.

This Associated Press story out of Washington today adds credence to the “create jobs” idea: “More than half of all homeowners who had their loans modified to make the payments more affordable in the first half of the year are already in default again, banking regulators said Monday.The new data raise questions about whether government money may be better spent on creating jobs, rather than averting foreclosures, said John Reich, director of the federal Office of Thrift Supervision office at a housing industry forum sponsored by his agency.”

I suspect we also need some modifications in the mix, too, but creating and stabilizing jobs has got to be, well, as Ford used to say “Job One.”