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Speaking of foreclosures, it seems Congress has passed a bill to assist people facing the loss of their homes. The NY Times described one such beneficiary of the "program".

An example of the spreading credit crisis is seen in Don Doyle, a computer engineer at Lockheed Martin who makes a six-figure income and had a stellar credit score in 2004, when he refinanced his home in Northern California to take cash out to pay for his daughter’s college tuition.

Mr. Doyle, 52, is now worried that he will have to file for bankruptcy, because he cannot afford to make the higher variable payments on his mortgage, and he cannot sell his home for more than his $740,000 mortgage.

“The whole plan was to get out” before his rate reset, he said. “Now I am caught. I can’t sell my house. I’m having a hard time refinancing. I’ve avoided bankruptcy for months trying to pull this out of my savings.”

There are people who were scammed into a bad loan.. or maybe "scammed" isn't the right word. They weren't attentive enough to know they were being taken advantage of. Then there are people that were trying to cash in on the market boon, and simply had bad timing.

Why the fuck is the government assisting those people? Why would the government even help people that were too dumb to get a proper loan? You don't "bail out" stupidity.

It remains to be seen what this program is going to do, if anything. It's not like people can just not pay their mortgage and expect to keep the house.

Still, economists say the rate cuts and the $168 billion fiscal stimulus package are unlikely to make a significant dent in the large debts weighing on many Americans, because banks have tightened lending standards and expected rebates from the government will not cover most house payments.

It probably won't amount to much at all.. but again, I feel bad for people that lose their houses (assuming they weren't like the jackass above who was trying to turn a profit).. but then.. you know.. John specializes in selling bank foreclosures, and business appears to be good. He has something like 70 or so houses on the market, and he got a 2 million dollar house last week. The guy who owned it bought it as a bank foreclosure, dumped a lot of money into it in rehab, and then couldn't sell it. It'll probably sell for 1.5 million.. The commission for selling it will be about $35,000.. 35 thousand dollars.. one house.. maybe 10 hours of work or so. Un-fucking-believable..

The hard part isn't in selling a million dollar home. The hard part is getting the bank to give you the house to sell in the first place. So, you can imagine that I get nervous when the government proposes to stop the foreclosures... I want a fucking super-car already.. heh