Government reneged on mortgage relief for homeowners

Out this week: The Obama administration spent just $710 million of the $50 billion promised two years ago to help U.S. homeowners caught in the real estate bubble. The Federal Reserve reimbursed foreign banks $600 billion for the lousy Wall Street mortgage-backed securities. It's taken two years to learn where the $3.3 trillion in emergency bailouts went. We learn (also a little late) that Obama is a self-described Blue Dog Democrat. But on the bright side, sort of, NASA scientists are staying focused on discovery. They found here on earth a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to any known thing.

Decline and Fall (Maybe)... A purely subjective look at our chances to survive those who rule us

Michael Collins

How numb are we? This was a remarkable week for a special genre of political scandal - betrayal of the people.   These aren't normal scandals or the expected outrageous behavior by scandalous figures like Sarah Palin.  Betrayal of the people requires a long term deception by a public figure or in terms of an intended policy.  When uncovered, the betrayal indicates that the politician or the policy was something other than as advertised, usually the exact opposite.   What will the public response be to these massive betrayals?

No room at the inn. When the original $700 billion bailout was originally proposed in September of 2008, it failed.  Congressional staffers reported more calls than they'd ever received on an issue with 20 to 31 in favor of denying the bailout. The House turned it down. Shortly thereafter, both presidential candidates came to Washington in one of those bipartisan moments (where we really get nailed) and the bill passed.

Foreclosure sign courtesy TheTruthAbout/flickr

As a sign that Congress wasn't completely biased toward Wall Street, a mortgage relief fund was included in the bailout. It ended up being about $50 billion. HuffingtonPost reported that over two years into the program, the Obama administration "will spend $12 billion" on mortgage relief.  But if you read the fine print of the Congressional Budget Office, you find that we've only spent $710 million so far. If you look a little further, the steadfast special inspector general for the bailout program, Neal Barofsky, said just last month that mortgage relief funding was being provided at an anemic pace. There's no reason to think that the remainder of the $12 billion for mortgage relief will ever get spent.

Now that's a serious betrayal of the people who got the bailout crammed down their throats -- $50 billion is promised for mortgage relief but $710 million is delivered. Mission accomplished!  No room at the inn for us.

Foreign banks get rich on the Wall Street bailout. In addition to the big banks and Wall Street firms, foreign banks were major beneficiaries of the bailout, we're just finding out. The Federal Reserve bought back lousy mortgage backed securities purchased by Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse, to the tune of $600 billion. This means that the Wall Street banks that sold them sold a defective product. Has anybody bought back and made right the investment you made in your mortgage based on a deliberately contrived real estate bubble? Senator Bernie Sanders probed Fed Chairman Ben Barnanke about foreign beneficiaries 18 months ago and never got an answer. It's easy to see why the Fed waited until the absolute legal deadline to release this information.

Obama's Defining Moment. Editor Sean Paul Kelley at The Agonist noted this from recent gossip in the New York Times:

"Privately, Mr. Obama has described himself, at times, as essentially a Blue Dog Democrat, referring to the shrinking caucus of fiscally conservative members of the party."

Of course, Obama's campaign portrayed him as the candidate of "hope" who would get things done for the people.  Blue Dog Democrats are mean-spirited breeds of conservative Republicans who adopt the Democratic label to get elected when it's convenient for their district. They oppose just about everything other than lower taxes and less regulation for big business. If this was who Obama really was in the primaries, and that's what the Times article indicates, then he pulled off one of the greatest deceptions and public betrayals of all times.

NASA keeps working. Despite major cuts and new missions every year or so, the scientists at NASA keep their focus. The Astrobiology division has been conducting tests at California's Mono Lake (a strange lake with lots of arsenic).  The bacteria discovered consist of arsenic and upends our current conceptions of life. NASA said: "The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth." (Mono Lake, California)

Michael Collins is a Washington, DC, area writer who reports on the various corruptions of the new millennium aimed at the vast majority, for the benefit of the very few. His articles can be seen at his web site, The Money Party and sites around the internet.

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