There's an episode of Family Guy where Lois runs for Mayor of Quahog and tries to have an intelligent debate with Adam West. Instead she quickly realizes that making blanket statements that 'feel good' makes voters happy. This is perhaps a bit glib but then it is a comedy show. All the same this kind of tactic works pretty well for politicians. So I wasn't shocked, per se, when I heard that Hillary Clinton thinks we should freeze interest rates for five years and have a moratorium on home foreclosures for some period of time. I mean, it's a shockingly stupid idea, but I was not shocked to hear it. People in a tough spot love to hear that somebody's coming to rescue them.
I actually did a quick search to find some good articles on this topic (search here) which was neat. Everything I saw was either a press release or an article detailing why this is such a terrible idea. I feel better, natch. This is a pretty representative article on what's going on here, although kind of short.
The bottom line is that lots of people made lots of mistakes. Helping people who were really duped is definitely a good thing to do here, but I don't think they're actually the majority case. I think a lot of people went in to some mortgages saying "ooh neat I can buy this house and deal with the payment reset in five years." Well, five years later, yeah, you got screwed. But that isn't my fault or the government's fault. It's your fault for not planning.
