Bush signed the law, but it was carried out by the Obama admin, most specifically Obama-appointed Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner. Despite around four million people being originally estimated as eligible for the program, under Geithner’s administration the program helped less than a million of them, and a third of those it helped ended up re-defaulting on their mortgages anyway because they weren’t helped enough. Geithner was quoted as saying that he viewed the goal of the program not as keeping people in their homes, but as slowing down the foreclosures so that they didn’t overwhelm the banks.
Well, in the long run it did “work”. But it was a shitty liberal solution by a liberal president, not sure why anyone is surprised.
That said, he became president as the entire world economy was imploding. I would wager that anyone in the position would have presided over the drop in home ownership you referred to. It’s not really fair to put any kind of blame on him.
Except maybe Bernie, or another actual socialist that would have just paid off people’s shitty mortgages rather than bail out banks. But shit, we can’t even get student loans forgiven, people in this country would have revolted if they saw black people being “given free homes,” while they still have to pay their mortgage. Literally revolted.
And his response to that recession was to give money to banks and ask them politely not to foreclose on people. We see how well that worked.
Actually Bush signed that before Obama was president. It was 2008.
Bush signed the law, but it was carried out by the Obama admin, most specifically Obama-appointed Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner. Despite around four million people being originally estimated as eligible for the program, under Geithner’s administration the program helped less than a million of them, and a third of those it helped ended up re-defaulting on their mortgages anyway because they weren’t helped enough. Geithner was quoted as saying that he viewed the goal of the program not as keeping people in their homes, but as slowing down the foreclosures so that they didn’t overwhelm the banks.
Well, in the long run it did “work”. But it was a shitty liberal solution by a liberal president, not sure why anyone is surprised.
That said, he became president as the entire world economy was imploding. I would wager that anyone in the position would have presided over the drop in home ownership you referred to. It’s not really fair to put any kind of blame on him.
Except maybe Bernie, or another actual socialist that would have just paid off people’s shitty mortgages rather than bail out banks. But shit, we can’t even get student loans forgiven, people in this country would have revolted if they saw black people being “given free homes,” while they still have to pay their mortgage. Literally revolted.