Anyone in a mortgage bind because they got in over their financial heads and knew it will be glad Hillary Clinton escaped sniper fire in Bosnia twelve years ago. Anyone who believes Clinton was in harms way in Bosnia and in mortgage difficulties please contact me as I have some fine swampland for sale in Southern Arizona.

During the housing boom of the last five years, people with bad credit histories, many of whom lied about their income and nature of employment, got mortgage loans they weren’t qualified for to buy houses they couldn’t afford. Now that house prices have stopped rising, and the house can’t be refinanced or sold at a profit, Hillary Clinton wants the taxpayer to subsidize the mortgages so these folks can remain in their unaffordable houses.

Not only the individual homeowner is at fault; it takes two to tango and the mortgage lenders who provided the loans should have the free markets solve their problems not the U.S. Congress or taxpayers. Hillary Clinton has called for a ‘foreclosure time out’ and for raising FHA loan limits to help more low-income homebuyers.

I had a rich uncle who made it very big in real estate who loved to say, “someone’s misfortune will become my fortune.” My uncle was a sleaze but free markets worked for him and he bought hundreds of parcels at tax sales.

Hillary Clinton’s version of “It’s A Wonderful Life” doesn’t star Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed and Congress shouldn’t be running around taking up collections to save the day at the expense of innocent bystanders.

Clinton is proposing a welfare system of $1 Billion to “assist” homeowners in making arrangements with lending companies to stay in their home. She also discussed the lack of affordable housing, an issue that is particularly a problem in New England. To promote more affordable housing construction, Clinton proposed another $1 billion fund which would be distributed to state, county and local affordable housing programs.

Mrs. Clinton is blaming Wall Street and  “predatory” lenders but failed to demonstrate that responsible people don’t get into business transactions they can’t complete and must take responsibility for their actions. “No Down Payment” mortgages immediately signals that if it looks too good to be true it more than likely is. The lure of rising house prices and a free loan proves the adage “what goes up, must come down” and when the bubble burst we call it a “correction.”

John McCain suggested he would invoke a “tough love” message that it doesn’t treat all borrowers as victims, and instead assumes that everyone shares some responsibility for getting wrapped up in the housing mania. The Arizona Senator framed his policy response around personal accountability for bad choices.

Mrs. Clinton has called for “immediate, bold” action “to unfreeze our mortgage markets.” She would immediately freeze our mortgage markets. She wants a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures coupled with a five-year rate freeze on adjustable-rate mortgages. This is what we call “price controls.”

Thomas Sowell writes:

I first became aware of the law of gravity as a small child when I pedaled by tricycle off the porch and crashed into the yard. Gravity was of course operating all along, whether I was aware of it or not.

Economics is a lot like that. Many people who are completely unaware of economics sometimes discover it the same way I discovered gravity, through some personal or national crash.

Liberals especially tend to think up all sorts of good things we want — a “living wage,” “affordable housing,” “universal health care,” and an ever-expanding wish-list of things that everyone should receive as “rights” — with little or no awareness of the economic repercussions of turning that wish list into laws.

Our solution to the housing gravity problem is much like the suggestion by Michelle Malkin:

Indeed!