Bush to Little Red Hen: "Pay up."

Here's the only thing you need to know in order to understand President Bush's plan to help "homeowners in need":

Five years.

The president wants to freeze the low, teaser interest rates on adjustable-rate loans for another five years.

That would move the unpleasantness past the re-election of Rudy Giuliani, or if we're lucky, Ron Paul.

Did you take out a fixed-rate mortgage a few years ago? Did you pay higher fees and make higher payments than you would have if you'd signed up for one of the heavily promoted adjustable rate loans? Did you say to yourself or your spouse, "This is the smart move because in three years, those teaser rates expire and you get hit with much higher payments"?

Did you throw out the daily mailings from the Hipsy Pipsy Loan Company, the ones that offered to cut your payments in half and give you a great big check that you could use to remodel your kitchen?

Well, sucker, President Bush has a message for you.

It's not printable here, but he has a message for you.

Are you a first-time home buyer? Have you spent the last three years watching the prices of ordinary tract houses skyrocket while people in line at the supermarket chatted about last night's episode of "Flip This House" on the Home and Garden Television network?

Maybe you thought the market would come back to earth when the interest rates went up and all those homes with new Viking ranges and granite showers went into foreclosure.

Well, sucker, President Bush has a message for you, too.

Maybe you bought a house you couldn't afford a few years ago, signing up for a loan with a giant balloon payment or interest rate hike waiting three years down the road. Maybe you opened all those letters from the Hipsy Pipsy Loan Company and sucked the equity out of the property as fast as you could get the papers signed. Maybe, while other people wondered how you were paying for a new car or an expensive vacation, you wrote checks on your home equity line of credit and made your artificially low monthly mortgage payments while the clock ticked toward the day the piper would demand to be paid.

President Bush has a message for you, too: Congratulations, you're our winner!

If he's a Republican, I am a green tree frog.


Copyright 2007

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