The FHA's success provides strong evidence that government can and should play a role in the nation's mortgage finance system. It also demonstrates that although government intervention in the economy during the Great Recession was messy things would have been a lot messier without it.
Canadians know that the promise of a recession didn't happen because of anything we did here. If you look at all the causes of the recession problems in mortgage markets the problems in the banking sector the problems in government finance in countries like Greece none of those problems were in present Canada.
The dirty little secret is that the pool man who's making $30 000 a year is subsidizing the million-dollar mortgage for the family whose pool he cleans. No wonder people want to get rid of tax breaks for corporate jets.
I've become a professional failure - in order to pay the mortgage I have to remain unemployed. Luckily a disaster always seems to befall me at exactly the right moment.
You can design a mortgage system that is different without a Fannie and Freddie but there are principles you have to have to have a good system.
Imagine if the pension funds and endowments that own much of the equity in our financial services companies demanded that those companies revisit the way mortgages were marketed to those without adequate skills to understand the products they were being sold. Management would have to change the way things were done.
People find themselves in ruts all the time. You're in a complacent lifestyle where you work 9 to 5 and then you add a mortgage and kids. You feel trapped but guess what brother? You constructed that life. If you're OK with it there's nothing wrong with that. But if you've got unease then you've got to make a change.
Obama won the presidency on the strength of his message and the skills of the messenger. Now the talk of hope and change feels out of tune when so many Americans are out of work over-mortgaged and worried that life will be even tougher for their children.
I think we've been dulled by capitalism. We're just blobs now - we're so worried about how we can keep paying the lease on the car the mortgage the lease on the toaster and all that. You can't really think about much else. If you lose that you lose the whole lot.
The most important loan to pay is your student loan. It's more important than your mortgage car and credit card payments. You cannot discharge student loan debt in the majority of cases.