By Moe Bedard
Goodbye cramdown bill, hello reality! It seems like the cramdown bill might get shot down soon. The most depressing aspect of this isn’t that the cramdown bill will potentially be shot down, or at best, passed with multiple restrictions protecting Wall Street, but that our representatives are all but laying down to the power of lobbyists from the mortgage and securities industries.
From The Washington Post:
“I hope we can muster the courage and find the votes, although I know it will be hard,” Durbin said on the Senate floor yesterday. Durbin has been pushing the measure for more than two years. “It’s hard to imagine that today the mortgage bankers would have clout in this chamber, but they do.”
Durbin had hoped to secure the support of the major lenders, which industry officials said is increasingly unlikely.
Come on Mr. Durbin! You hope you can muster the courage? If Dick Durbin’s statements are representative of the senate, I think there’s little hope left. Mr. Durbin’s statement seems more like a prelude to defeat than hopeful optimism. And even with recent amendments to the bill that benefits lenders, lobbyists are still unhappy.
American citizens should feel understandably outraged that our representatives don’t have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to lobbyists. This cramdown bill and what has been transpiring around it should indicate to the American public that our representatives pay the citizens platitudes while bending over backwards to serve the “greater” interests of Wall Street.
I sincerely hope that the cramdown bill gains enough traction to pass, even in a modified form. If it doesn’t pass, I would ask all of my readers to think critically about who they vote for when senate seats open up again…did your senator vote in favor or against a bill that would dramatically help Main Street get back on its feet or did your senator vote in favor of Wall Street and sign off on trillions of dollars in aid to banks, insurance companies and their ilk?
There are problems with a cramdown bill. Mortgages are contracts and investors make these loans to get a return on their money. If the government steps in and tells the lenders they can’t get repaid who will ever invest in a mortgage again?
If people won’t invest in mortgages the good borrowers and hardworking people who played by the rules will be hurt. Interest rates will be higher if there is credit available at all
dirtbags