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December 5, 2007
Notes from Ferdy - A Really Good Idea About Mortgage Relief
Hillary Clinton is talking about mortgage relief, and so is George W. Bush. Hillary's plan involves a combination of mortgage relief for borrowers in trouble, plus a mandated freeze on the rates of certain sub-prime loans. This is very different from Bush's plan, which involves a combination of mortgage relief for borrowers in trouble, plus a mandated freeze on the rates of certain sub-prime loans.
Both plans address a general problem of people using adjustable-rate mortgages to obtain a low monthly payment in the hope that they'll be able to pay more when the rate expires. Adjustable-rate mortgage loans have been around for a long time. If the adjustment rate is limited, and tied to some external formula (such as the prime rate or T-bill rates), then they are not necessarily a bad thing; it is possible, however, to get yourself a really cheap rate by giving the loan company permissions to screw you with a very high rate after a certain number of years.
It bothers me a little that Bush and Clinton are trying to protect people from their own stupidity, because stupidity should be strongly discouraged. I understand, however, that we are a humane nation, so I can't really blame them. It bothers me a bit more that the people who took the time to avoid stupidity will pay for this. These points will be hashed out in the coming months, once we learn the details of the various plans.
There is, however, one point so important that we need to start agitating for it immediately. See, a lot of us get hundreds of EMAILs daily-- many of them about low-interest adjustable rate mortgages-- and those EMAILs are only profitable because stupid people fall for them. I want a list made of the stupid people, and I want all our spam EMAIL sent to them. If I'm going to pay to bail these people out, then it's only fair we use this opportunity to benefit the rest of us as well. I would rather shoot myself in the foot than buy drugs or negotiate a loan over the web, so those EMAILs aren't doing a damn thing but wasting my time. We have, however, a new government program specifically designed to identify people who will fall for really bad ideas. If the spam were only sent to those people, it would save time and bandwidth for the rest of us. Normally, when we come up with a way to reduce spam, the spammers find a way around it after only a few months. In this case, however, we're not looking for a way to eliminate spam, we're coming up with a way to make it more effective. The spammers have no reason to come up with a way around this.
I don't see a downside here.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Wed 6:10 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (0) | More Notes from Ferdy | Tags: anti-spam campaign 2008 conservative George W. Bush Hillary Clinton humor mortgage relief satire spam stupidity
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