Who Ya Gonna Call?

First, Bush's Katrina hotline is disconnected. Now, for his new mortgage hotline, he gives out the wrong number.

Pathetic, but appropriate, as his mortgage rate freeze plan is so severely limited, it won't reach those who need help anyway.

The pure conservative ideology is all about not having our government help Americans in times of crisis. Got screwed? That's the "free" market. You exercised your choice to get screwed, so deal with it.

But conservatives in power know they can't keep power by communicating that belief. They need to go through the motions. They need to offer a scrap, to be able to say, "we're doing something."

Conservative worship of deregulation is behind the crisis. Many people didn't choose to get screwed. They fell prey to unscrupulous mortgage lenders and brokers, exacerbated by financial institutions looking to line
their pockets by blowing up the housing bubble.

From ACORN's Financial Justice Center:

Subprime lending, virtually unrestricted over the past decade by local, state or federal regulation, has trapped millions of unsuspecting homeowners who sought either to purchase a larger home or to consolidate debt.

Subprime loans were initially created for borrowers with low incomes or poor credit histories who were unable to obtain prime loans at a standard bank rate. Many borrowers who would have been able to qualify for credit on better terms, however, were targeted for these higher-interest loans...

...Some lenders and brokers write loans they know the borrowers cannot afford just to collect the fees and commissions. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac estimate that between 30-50 percent of all borrowers with subprime loans could have qualified for more affordable mortgages...

...Wall Street banks and investors identified an opportunity to make large profits from subprime and predatory lending, which changed the nature of the mortgage business. Lenders who make loans routinely now sell them to Wall Street firms such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, which repackage the loans as securities to be sold to investors.

What's need is broad relief and reform to restore rules of the road. (RainbowPUSH is holding a Save Our Homes rally at Wall Street on Dec. 10.) Bush's band-aid is just more evidence of conservative failure.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future