Unintended Consequences (Part 1 of 3.5 trillion)

From Reuters, more proof that it's amateur hour in Washington D.C.:

More U.S. consumers are falling behind on their mortgages, an indication that the housing market has yet to hit bottom, a top credit bureau executive told Reuters.

Dann Adams, president of U.S. Information Systems for Equifax Inc, reported that 7 percent of homeowners with mortgages were at least 30 days late on their loans in February, an increase of more than 50 percent from a year earlier.

He also said 39.8 percent of subprime borrowers were at least 30 days behind on their home mortgage loans, up 23.7 percent from last year.

"I'm trying to find optimism in these numbers, but I'm pretty hard pressed to do that," Adams said, despite a recent burst of relatively positive news that has fueled hope that the U.S. housing market has turned a corner.

You know why the numbers continue to get worse? Because the Democrats announced they were going to help those in trouble. So if you were in trouble on the verge of foreclosure, wouldn't you stop paying to qualify for assistance and spend your money on other things - either loan repayment or purchases it doesn't matter.

Unintended consequences. The Community Reinvestment Act all over again. I've become convinced that liberal dogma is the equivalent of insanity in the sense that they try the same action again and again and expect different results. That's insanity. What they end up with is yet another tangled mess that won't get solved until the Republicans are re-elected and forced to look like the bad guys for cleaning up the liberal mess.