Bernanke Urges More Action to Stem Home Foreclosure Crisis
May 6th, 2008Via: AP:
A rising tide of late mortgage payments and home foreclosures poses considerable dangers to the national economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned anew as he urged Congress to take additional steps to alleviate the problems.
“High rates of delinquency and foreclosure can have substantial spillover effects on the housing market, the financial markets and the broader economy,” Bernanke said Monday in a dinner speech to Columbia Business School in New York. “Therefore, doing what we can to avoid preventable foreclosures is not just in the interest of lenders and borrowers. It’s in everybody’s interest,” he said.
Some 1.5 million U.S. homes entered into the foreclosure process last year, up 53 percent from 2006, Bernanke said. The rate of new foreclosures looks likely to be even higher this year, he said.
To provide more relief, Bernanke again called on Congress to give the Federal Housing Administration, which insures mortgages, more flexibility to help distressed borrowers at risk of losing their homes. He also again urged lawmakers to move ahead on legislation revamping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which finance mortgages. And, he called on the two mortgage giants to quickly raise new capital.
House leaders plan action on those and other housing measures this week.
“Conditions in mortgage markets remain quite difficult,” the Fed chief said. A copy of the speech was made available in Washington.
Planet Earth to Ben,
How touching. How late. How stupid to now express your concern when the horse left the barn several years ago. And you know want the horse back? Do you even know how to build a fence?
Raise capital? From what, dust?
I don’t believe for a minute that Bernanke is just now “getting” that there are Spillover effects to the broader economy from the housing market? This has to be a broad disclaimer on his part.
Ben, why don’t you give the world economy some relief by cutting off speculation into housing (that would be too little too late); cut investment banks and other gamblers off at the tit of your printing press and loan shark operation; run the Federal Reserve as a responsible going concern – do not lend more than you have to lend, and do not let others borrow what they cannot repay. But that would be too rich. Ben, you cannot serve your Masters on the one hand, and then lament that the consequences of serving them are all of a sudden such a disaster. Your legacy at the Fed, like the presidency of George W. Bush, will be remembered in history for its common denominator: STUPIDITY.