More Bailouts for Speculators and Delinquent Mortgage Borrowers from Obama Administration; More Taxpayer Money for Certain Banks

In his State of the Union address, President Obama, a consistent supporter of bailouts and crony capitalism, hypocritically railed against them, proclaiming, “no bailouts, no handouts, and no cop-outs.” Just a couple days later, though, his administration is rolling out a massive multibillion dollar bailout that will enrich speculators. Bloomberg News reports that the Obama Administration is vastly expanding aid for certain “delinquent homeowners,” paying banks up to 63 cents for every dollar in principal they write off for such homeowners, a tripling of what banks can currently get under the HAMP bailout program. Speculators will benefit, too: they don’t even have to live in a house to get its mortgage principal reduced: “Investors who rent out their properties would be eligible to refinance under the new rules.” In the coming weeks, the Obama administration is expected to roll out an ill-conceived mass mortgage  refinancing program that could shrink your 401(k) and increase the cost of mortgage financing for future borrowers.

We previously wrote about the voodoo economics behind the Obama administration’s mortgage bailout ideas, which will cost taxpayers countless billions.

Obama’s State of the Union address also contained false claims about outsourcing and corporate taxes. The Obama administration has used green-jobs money from the stimulus package to enrich foreign green-energy firms and outsource American jobs to countries like China: “79 percent” of all green-jobs funding “went to companies based overseas,” and “the largest grant” it made “went to Babcock & Brown,” a “bankrupt Australian company,” noted the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University. This just one of the ways the Obama administration used taxpayer money to outsource American jobs to foreign countries.