RUSH: Obama was in Falls Church today — in his speech today President Obama says the government’s gonna spend at least $10 billion refinancing everybody’s mortgage without doing any credit checks. Nobody’s gotta prove anything to anybody. He also said — I’ve got the sound bites coming up — he also said banks and lenders must be held accountable for ending the practices that helped cause this crisis in the first place. So it’s like we’re back in 2009, and Obama has never been in office, and we’re back now to the subprime mortgage being the fault of the banks. Predatory lending tricked people into taking out loans that they couldn’t pay back. The banks did that, don’t you know. These banks, they targeted these poor people and they targeted these minorities.
How smart is that? If you run a bank, and you want to trick people into borrowing money, you go trick people that can’t pay you back. How smart is that when that’s one of your primary income streams. Then you say, “Yeah, well, we’re gonna trick these people into taking out these loans. Then what we’re gonna do, is we’re gonna package these loans into some new product called a mortgage-backed security, and then we’re gonna sell these things to whatever saps we can find.” Why would they do that if they weren’t told to do it? (interruption) No, the number is 1.2 million lost jobs from year to year, that’s the year-ago report, they added 1.2 million jobs lost, the AP story one year ago. So one year ago would have been January 2011. It would have been the report for 2010 and what they were telling us was that 1.2 million jobs more were lost in 2010 than were reported during the year. That’s how dishonest all this is, and it’s hidden up in the birth/death guesstimates, as it’s called. We’ll just see. We’ll just see what they do, given it’s an election year.
So what is Obama gonna do now, go trick these same people into refinancing their loans? So first people were tricked by the banks into taking out loans they couldn’t afford. Now Obama’s gonna go trick ’em into refinancing these loans? Is that what we’re being asked to believe here? That’s exactly what we’re being asked to believe. When everybody who’s paid a dime’s worth of attention to this knows that the banks only did what they were told to do by the federal government. The Community Redevelopment Act, reinvestment act, whatever it’s called, Janet Reno threatening these banks back in the nineties that if they didn’t make these loans, that she would investigate them.
The banks were forced. I’m not saying the banks are innocent. But what happened was they were forced to make loans to people who couldn’t pay ’em back and then they had to find a way to make the loans worth something. So they concocted a new product called a mortgage-backed security, they pooled all these worthless mortgages together, look at this income stream. We did a great analogy. Let me paraphrase this. A guy has a bar, and his customers are 25 alcoholics who are unemployed. They come every day and they buy booze, except they can’t pay for it. And a point comes where the bartender doesn’t have any money to restock his bar, so he goes to some investors. He says, “Look at what I’m owed here. Look at what these people are gonna pay me down the road. This is a hell of an investment.” So a bunch of idiots give the bartender a bunch of money to reload his bar, and the same thing happens. The alcoholics keep coming in, they don’t have a job, they keep buying booze, but nobody ever gets paid.
Finally the bartender can’t keep up, he can’t get any more money. That bar is sold on the basis, “Look at all the income that’s gonna come in here for you. Look at all the money this guy’s owed.” It’s worthless. But they found somebody to invest in the bar, then they found somebody to buy the bar. Then the guy who bought the bar final realizes, “No income, these people are unemployed. They’re alcoholics. All they do is drink and they don’t have any money. I gotta worthless investment here. So okay, how can I convince somebody else to buy this piece of crap?” And that’s what happened until there weren’t any more people to fool. And these are the best and brightest, these are the smartest. This is exactly what happened, and Obama wants to tell us that the guilty party is the bartender who was selling predatory booze to people who couldn’t afford it and making them buy it. I’ll have the Obama sound bites from this speech, ’cause it’ll tick you off. It’s campaign season, this illustrates it and shows why, again, this guy has got to be the focus of the GOP campaign.
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RUSH: Here’s Obama, Falls Church, Virginia, at the James Lee Community Center. Obama is speaking about the economy and about helping responsible homeowners.
OBAMA: Millions of families who did the right and the responsible thing, folks who shopped for a home that they could afford, secured a mortgage, made their payments each month, they were hurt badly by the irresponsible actions of other people who weren’t playing by the same rules, weren’t taking the same care, weren’t acting as responsible.
RUSH: Stop tape, stop tape, stop tape, stop tape. Now, you think Obama’s talking about people took out loans who couldn’t pay ’em. He’s comparing, okay, here we got the people played by the rules. These are people who went out and they shopped for a home that they could afford and they secured a mortgage and they made their payments and they were hurt badly by the irresponsible actions of other people who weren’t playing by the same rules. So you’re left to assume he’s talking about people that went out and made irresponsible loans and didn’t pay the mortgage. That’s not who he’s talking about, folks. No. He’s talking about the banks. He’s talking about the lenders who sold the loans to people who knew they couldn’t pay it back. Listen to this lie.
OBAMA: — by lenders who sold loans to people who they knew couldn’t afford the mortgages and buyers who bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford and banks that packaged those mortgages up and traded them to reap phantom profits, knowing that they were building a house of cards. It was wrong.
RUSH: Yeah. He’s got it mostly right except for the fact that these lenders were under federal orders to do this. And as much as he wants to try to pretend that people don’t know that, he’s my guest, he can go right ahead. The fact is with the passage of each day, more and more Americans understand and will understand that these lenders had a gun to their heads. These banks had a gun to their heads. I want to stress again, I am not suggesting they’re totally innocent, but they were at a crossroads. They were forced with the point of a gun at their heads to make loans to people who would never pay ’em back, all for social do-gooders reasons. “It’s not fair that some people don’t have a house. We gotta make sure that everybody has a house, with the magic of affordable housing,” as Barney Frank would call it.
So they had this worthless paper. They had to do something with it to try to recoup the value. And they were forced to do without. So that’s when they packaged the stuff up. And, by the way, that’s where Fannie and Freddie come in because Fannie and Freddie bankrolled all this worthless stuff and that’s why they’re still being bailed out. Fannie and Freddie are Obama’s buddies, so you never hear him put them in this equation. It’s just those evil banks. And I’ll tell you what this sets up. Who in this analogy is the evil lender who sold loans to people who knew they couldn’t afford the mortgages? Mitt Romney. Before long and before all is said and done, Mitt Romney’s name is going to be in this speech in place of lenders. Mitt Romney and vulture capitalists like him, Bain Capital, blah, blah, even though this is not what they did, Romney’s name will get tossed in here along with all the other guilty capitalists.
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RUSH: Yeah, we had a caller last month, Snerdley, if you remember, a mortgage broker who told us how Fannie and Freddy cheated and how they’d show up at these trade schools and advise people how to set up no-credit-necessary mortgages. It was such a scam, and here comes Obama to bring this back to life as it was in 2008 during the crisis. “It’s the bank’s fault!” That’s what’s happening here with the banks here, in the election here.BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Don, Phoenix, Arizona. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Let me just say, I’m a little bit offended by the fact that you equated the H-RAP to ACORN because, you know, I was able to take advantage of H-RAP here just recently and it turned out pretty good for me.
RUSH: Ummm…
CALLER: I consider it kind of a personal attack.
RUSH: You thought I was personally attacking you?
CALLER: Well, I took it that way, so…
RUSH: Because?
CALLER: Well, H-RAP, they — they — they — My bank kept calling me over and over again to take advantage of it. And I was on a 30-year loan with 28 years left at 5.125%, and they were able to get me in at the current rate of 3.125% at 15 years with no down payment, no closing costs, and the mortgage only cost me a couple extra dollars a month.
RUSH: Well, hallelujah. I mean, then all of us should sign up for this program and let the government pay for all of our mortgages.
CALLER: No. Well, what’s really interesting about it is that, you know, my mortgage wasn’t behind it all or my house was kind of a lot more — worth a lot more —
RUSH: But they tracked you down anyway, sort of like soliciting food stamps. Did they offer to set you up on food stamps, too?
CALLER: They don’t need to. I — I — I do pretty well.
RUSH: All right. Well, doesn’t matter. They’ll try to register anybody for food stamps. They need to get the numbers up. Okay. I’ve offended the guy. (interruption) I know, I know, I know he was just kidding. But this program, this HARP thing could end up forgiving mortgages. That’s where it’s headed. That’s what Obama wants to do in the Election Year. Forgive ’em, just wipe the debt off, and then somehow make people think that banks are paying for it. “We’re gonna really get even with them,” and wait ’til you see what your ATM fees end up being. But that’s what ACORN wants, is for all of them to be forgiven.
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One more sound bite and maybe two. I’m gonna get to the phones here el quicko. This is more of Obama in Falls Church, Virginia. He’s what he’s gonna do now about these predatory lenders who forced people to take out loans they couldn’t pay back.
OBAMA: I am sending Congress a plan that will give every responsible homeowner in America the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low rates. No more red tape! No more runaround from the banks! And a small fee on the largest financial institutions will make sure it doesn’t add to our deficit. You’ll be able to refinance at a lower rate. You’ll be able to save hundreds of dollars a month that you can put back in your pocket. Or you can choose those savings to rebuild equity in your homes, which will help most underwater homeowners come back up for air more — more quickly.
RUSH: “[C]ome back up for air more — more quickly. … I am sending Congress a plan that will give every responsible homeowner in America the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low rates.” Thank you, Federal Reserve. “No more red tape! No more runaround from the banks! And a small fee on the largest financial institutions will make sure it doesn’t add to our deficit.” (laughing) We’re talking chump change here just like raising taxes. Won’t add to the deficit? Okay, so it’s all the banks’ fault. You’re gonna be able to refinance with no proof.
No credit here proof, no nothing. “No more red tape!” Now, this has been tried. This is HARP 3. (I don’t know what HARP stands for, but that’s the acronym.) The two previous mortgage assistance programs have failed. Despite how easy Obama makes it sound, it ended up being a nightmare once people got into the labyrinth of a bureaucracy that’s been set up. That’s what’s happened to the two previous plans. People found out what it took, how complicated it was, and they said, “To hell with it!” So these new fees. “A small fee on the largest financial institutions to make sure it doesn’t…”?
Say hello, folks, to an increase in your ATM fee. The banks are gonna get it back. If Obama slaps a tax on ’em, they’re gonna pass it on to you somewhere. It’s gonna cost more to use your ATM. There’s gonna be higher interest rate on your credit. Something’s gonna happen. This what Obama and the boys never understand. It’s not a static economy. One more bite. This is what happens if you’re a bank and you don’t follow orders…
OBAMA: I asked my attorney general to establish — to investigate — the kind of activity banks took when they packaged and sold risky mortgages. And that task force is ramping up its work as we speak. We’re gonna keep at it and hold people who broke the law accountable and help restore confidence in the market. We’re gonna speed assistance to homeowners, and we’re gonna turn the page on an era of restlessness that hurt so many hardworkin’ Americans.
RUSH: Okay. So we’re going to investigate the banks now. “We forced them to do it. We made ’em do it. We forced them to make these loans, and now we’re going to investigate what they did when they packaged these worthless loans. We’re gonna find out what they did to make an obscene profit. We’re gonna find out, because we want ’em to sit there and eat the excrement sandwich. They were supposed to eat the loss! That was their civic duty, and they found a way to make money on this, and that ticks us off. So I’m sending Holder out there with some guns left over from Fast and Furious and we’re gonna find out what happened.” So the banks now are under the threat of investigation all over again. That’s what it is: The Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). HARP: The Home Affordable Refinance Program, and this is HARP 3.
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RUSH: This is Don, Phoenix, Arizona. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Let me just say, I’m a little bit offended by the fact that you equated the H-RAP to ACORN because, you know, I was able to take advantage of H-RAP here just recently and it turned out pretty good for me.
RUSH: Ummm…
CALLER: I consider it kind of a personal attack.
RUSH: You thought I was personally attacking you?
CALLER: Well, I took it that way, so…
RUSH: Because?
CALLER: Well, H-RAP, they — they — they — My bank kept calling me over and over again to take advantage of it. And I was on a 30-year loan with 28 years left at 5.125%, and they were able to get me in at the current rate of 3.125% at 15 years with no down payment, no closing costs, and the mortgage only cost me a couple extra dollars a month.
RUSH: Well, hallelujah. I mean, then all of us should sign up for this program and let the government pay for all of our mortgages.
CALLER: No. Well, what’s really interesting about it is that, you know, my mortgage wasn’t behind it all or my house was kind of a lot more — worth a lot more —
RUSH: But they tracked you down anyway, sort of like soliciting food stamps. Did they offer to set you up on food stamps, too?
CALLER: They don’t need to. I — I — I do pretty well.
RUSH: All right. Well, doesn’t matter. They’ll try to register anybody for food stamps. They need to get the numbers up. Okay. I’ve offended the guy. (interruption) I know, I know, I know he was just kidding. But this program, this HARP thing could end up forgiving mortgages. That’s where it’s headed. That’s what Obama wants to do in the Election Year. Forgive ’em, just wipe the debt off, and then somehow make people think that banks are paying for it. “We’re gonna really get even with them,” and wait ’til you see what your ATM fees end up being. But that’s what ACORN wants, is for all of them to be forgiven.