McCain the Idiot

Over the past eight years, I have watched Sen. McCain turn into a complete disappointment. He has compromised his positions in order to pander to the neo-conservative right, he has gone from being a "maverick" to the worst sort of pandering politician, and it's hard to trust anything that he or his campaign says these days. But last night was the nail in the coffin, where he demonstrated his complete lack of fiscal prudence in a time when the economy is tearing itself to shreds. He said:

I would order the secretary of the Treasure to immediately buy up the bad home-loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes, at the diminished value of those homes.

In other words, if a borrower purchased more of a house than he or she could afford, and is now in financial trouble, the US government would purchase the original loan from the bank, and then refinance the individual using the current value of the house. So if someone bought the house at $400K, and the house is now worth $300K, the purchaser effectively gets the house at a $100K savings, minus what little principal they have in the house. They get rewarded handsomely by the government for buying a home that they couldn't afford. Sen. McCain calls his plan the "HOME Plan".

Those of us who purchased homes we could actually afford, with significant down payments, and whose homes have lost value due to the stupidity of the mortgage market, are in the position where we now get to subsidize subprime borrowers, and watch them walk away with huge windfalls. And based on some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, this could leave the United States taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars.

With politicians like this in Washington, it is no wonder that the economy is in such dire straits.