Bent Corner

My favorite supermarket tabloid The Wall Street Journal thinks that something needs to be done by the federal government to stop home values from dropping.

Housing starts are at their lowest level since the early 1980s, while there are more vacant houses than at any time since the Census Bureau started keeping such data in 1960. Millions of homeowners owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth. Foreclosures are accelerating. House prices continue to fall, weakening household balance sheets and the balance sheets of financial institutions.

But this can stop. The price of a home is partially dependent on the mortgage rate — a lower mortgage rate raises house prices.

We propose that the Bush administration and Congress allow all residential mortgages on primary residences to be refinanced into 30-year fixed-rate mortgages at 5.25% (matching the lowest mortgage rate in the past 30 years), and place those mortgages with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Investors and speculators should not be allowed to qualify.

As the great philosopher Sammy Davis Jr. once said, “What goes up, most go down“.  If millions of homeowners owe more on their mortgage than their house is actually worth, they have nobody to blame but themselves. Not everyone looked at the housing market and the inflated prices people were paying and decided it was a good time to buy. Some thought those that were entering into adjustable rate mortgages for overpriced homes were smoking crack.  Some thought they were being financially irresponsible.

What’s next?  Should we bail out Hummer owners?

Homes are still overpriced. The housing market wont stabilize until prices return to their natural levels without government intervention.  The fact that Andrea Mitchell’s husband kept interest rates artificially low is one of the reasons for the housing bubble in the first place.

Coming up with government gimmicks to keep that bubble inflated wont fix anything.  People shouldn’t be rewarded for doing stupid things.  Giving adjustable rate mortgage schmucks a 30-year fixed loan with a low interest rate would be doing just that.

Stupidity should never be rewarded.

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ABC has a TV showed called Extreme Makeover where they take the home of a supposed deserving family and remodel it.  By that I mean that they totally demolish the old house and build something totally new.  They do this with the aid of thousands of volunteers and they do it in only a week.  No expense is spared.  No corner is cut.  Nothing is too lavish when it comes to the remodeled home.

It appears that simple greed got to one of the beneficiaries of these extremely made over homes.  From the AP (via Yahoo!):

After the Harper family used the two-story home as collateral for a $450,000 loan, it’s set to go to auction on the steps of the Clayton County Courthouse Aug. 5. The couple did not return phone calls Monday, but told WSB-TV they received the loan for a construction business that failed.

I wonder how the Harper family qualified for the makeover. They normally select families with extreme sob stories. Families where mom is dying of cancer and the six kids all have allergies to plastic.  I also wonder how long it took them to turn around and take out a loan against the home.

I guess I should feel sorry for these people, but I simply don’t.  Not even a little bit.  I do feel sorry for the thousands of volunteers that put in the hours of hard work building these people a mini-mansion.

I bet that wont happen again.

To celebrate the release of The Walking Dead #50, a man had his entire body inked to look like he is a zombie.  OK, it has nothing to to with The Walking Dead, but would it be any less retarded if it did?  I don’t think so.

Follow the link and see a lot more photos.  Sadly, missing from the images is a photo of his parents with the look of pride on their faces.  I’d like to see that.

Zombie Boy (Bizarre)