By Simon Black
Say hello to the next financial crisis, brought to you courtesy of the dumbest new bill of the week: H.R. 5148: Access to Affordable Mortgages Act.
Ordinarily whenever an individual wants to borrow money for a mortgage, the bank conducts due diligence… both on the borrower as well as the property.
It’s in the banks’ interest (as well as the banks’ depositors) to ensure that the property is at least worth as much as the amount being borrowed. Duh.
Congress doesn’t agree. Apparently when banks conduct property appraisals, that seems to unfairly discriminate against some segment of the population trying to buy crap properties.
And we certainly can’t have that going on in the Land of the Free.
So with HR 5148, Congress aims to exempt certain ‘higher-risk mortgages’ from
property appraisal requirements.
Curiously, this legislation reverses several provisions in the 1968 ‘Truth in Lending Act’.
It’s as if Congress is now anti- Truth in Lending and pro- whatever the hell gets the money on the street.
And of course, all of this comes at a time when mortgage rates are still near their all-time lows.
You can borrow money to buy a home today at just 4%. That’s less than half the long-term average of 8.5%, and a fraction of the 16%+ people were stuck paying 30 years ago.
Isn’t paying 4% affordable enough? Nope. Not according to Congress.
So now they’re trying to engineer yet another financial crisis by encouraging banks and other lenders to exercise minimal due diligence on their mortgage portfolio.
This comes at a pivotal time. US banks are only now just barely starting to recapitalize after the early days of the financial crisis.
They’ve unloaded their toxic assets to the US government and Federal Reserve.
They’ve borrowed money at essentially 0% from the Fed and loaned it to the Treasury Department at interest (the mother of all scams).
After six years of these freebies and taxpayer-funded bailouts, bank balance sheets are only now starting to clear up.
So what does Congress do? They propose a new law to screw up bank balance sheets all over again.
It’s idiocy on an epic scale… and it makes one wonder what team of monkeys is coming up with these ideas.
These people are so completely out of touch. They understand nothing… and with nearly every action, every bill, every proposal, they make things worse.
“Voting the bums out” does nothing. All you get is a new batch of people who think they’re doing the right thing… but end up even more destructive.
Think about it. Every single election cycle people go to the voting booths for ‘change’. It’s such a farce.
They think, “Things are messed up. But if we can just get the right guy in office, things will change.”
Then the ‘right guy’ gets in office. And a few years later, true to form, things have changed. But for the worse.
People keep making this mistake over and over again. They keep deluding themselves into buying the promises of political candidates. They keep believing that things will improve.
They can improve. And they will. But not because of some politician.
The real answers are within us. The individual. You.
If you understand the premise that we routinely discuss at Sovereign Man, then you understand your money and livelihood is at risk.
Debt, money printing, excessive regulation, war, etc. are never good for prosperity.
I think most people intuitively understand this. But they feel trapped, that there’s nothing they can do about it.
But did you know you could quickly and easily take a portion of your savings and move it overseas?
You can save money overseas, out of your home government’s control, in a strong, stable currency in a foreign banking system that has never failed, backed by a government with zero debt.
You can also have a backup plan for your entire family. You can obtain residency or second citizenship overseas at minimal cost, providing a lifetime of benefits, including the ultimate ‘get out of jail free card’.
Simon Black is Senior Editor at SovereignMan.com
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