Chicago Sun Times: “Obama offers no housing fix, little hope”
The nearly $800 billion stimulus bill will be signed, sealed and delivered in a day or so. Even those of us with doubts about its priorities, its big spending and its non-stimulus agenda of liberal goals hope it will deliver a much-needed jolt to our staggering economy. We’re all in this leaky boat together.
Still, doubts about the bill’s effectiveness are compounded by the slowness of the Obama administration, like the Bush White House before it, to address the source of this economic calamity, the housing collapse. Will homeowners who know their house is worth less today than yesterday, and even less tomorrow, loosen their purse strings to restart the powerful engine of consumer spending just because Congress has passed a stimulus package?
The final version of the bill watered down its housing component, a tax credit to boost home buying. So homeowners nervously eyeing their falling net worth don’t see Congress offering much in the way of immediate help.
President Obama gave a big buildup to Tuesday’s unveiling of a banking-housing rescue plan by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. But the announcement from Geithner, the man deemed so indispensible to economic recovery that his embarrassing tax avoidance had to be ignored, landed with a resounding dud. The stock market plummeted nearly 5 percent and members of Congress expressed dismay about what they saw, or rather didn’t see — details about how programs putting taxpayers on the hook for up to $2.5 trillion would work.
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