The total amount of money at risk from “toxic” mortgages assuming the
prices are inflated as much as 50% is considerably less than $500
billion. The govt could buy a share in these mortgages and get rid of
the mortgage insurance set the interest at 4.5% thus lowering the
payments radically and assume a part ownership in the property so that
if sold they get a percentage.
Zero down mortgages are STIL BEING PUSHED. Stop this nonsense that
caused the problem.
Give a $30,000 tax credit/employee to any company that hires a new
employee in 2009 and keeps him for a year with either an additional
smaller tax credit in subsequent years of they pay back the tax credit
if they lay him off. For a million new employees, this would cost the
govt only $30 billion dollars. For a whole years worth of the sort of
lay-offs we saw this past month it would only take $180 billion. THIS
WOULD DEFINITELY PRODUCE NEW JOBS.
Instead, we have a trillion dollar lard bucket with only 90 billion in
infrastructure. The rest is pure pork lard.