President Obama rolled out his mortgage rescue plan Wednesday, said Michael McAuliff in the New York Daily News, and “it ain’t gonna be easy” to qualify. To become one of the lucky 9 million struggling homeowners to have their mortgage refinanced at a lower rate, you need to reside in the at-risk house, be current on your payments, and have a loan held or backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
That’s great for those 9 million homeowners, said Joshua Zumbrun and Maurna Desmond in Forbes.com, but “what about the other 103 million” U.S. households “footing the bill”? Jumbo-mortgage holders, speculators, and people who took out “liar loans” are out of luck, but so are the 37 million households that rent—they “can’t be too happy about subsidizing belly-up borrowers,” or about paying to stop home prices from falling to “affordable levels.”
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