Not Much Will Change

I'm going to write up something longer later today.. but in the meantime, this bit;

[Negative equity homeowners] are precisely the sort who seem as if they have done nothing wrong. They seem like innocent victims of the housing crash. The new plan will help some of them refinance their mortgage at a lower rate. But only loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — not many of the subprime loans at the heart of the foreclosure problem — will be eligible. And the loan cannot exceed 105 percent of the current value of the property. Since prices have fallen almost 50 percent in some areas, like Phoenix, Las Vegas and parts of Florida, the cap will exclude many homeowners.

I think I've mentioned before that John's business has a lot to do with this issue.. and the vast majority of the business is not Fannie or Freddie. Not much is going to change.

I'm hearing now that there won't be any new legislation required for Obama to put this new program into effect. He's going to use some of the already-approved TARP money. I'm not familiar enough with the way those things work, but it seems odd to me that the President can simply order the way already approved monies are spent, when they were not allocated that way in the first place.

I haven't been able to find an article that's clear on how the process works. What if Obama directed money be spent on something really off the wall? Could he do that?

...

I'd also point out.. that if you were a responsible home buyer, and you put a lot of money down on the purchase, you may not have "negative equity", and would not be "under water", and would not qualify for the government assistance. You only qualify if you didn't put much down, got a bad loan where you owe more than it's worth, and can't afford to make the payments.

Makes sense?

/update

Uh oh.. I'm hearing on the teevee that GM is cancelling production on a number of car models (Durango, PT Cruiser). They are eliminating "performance" models as well. They mentioned the CTS-V, which is the higher powered Cadillac sedan, as one of the models. I've driven a CTS-V. It's really something.

They did not mention anything about the Corvette. I simply cannot imagine that they would stop making an American icon, particularly now when the high-end version is a world class super car at an amazing price.