This Is What ‘Hope and Change’ Is All About

Coddling failure and promoting irresponsibility.  Not to mention an effective acknowledgement that the $700 billion bailout monster has utterly failed.  The line between “stimulus” and “bailout” is blurring more with each passing day.

As per Reuters, Citigroup has cut a deal with Democrats in the Senate:

Financial giant Citigroup Inc will support a proposal in Congress to rewrite U.S. bankruptcy law to help troubled mortgage borrowers avoid foreclosure, Chief Executive Vikram Pandit said on Thursday.

Citi had previously opposed changing the law to let bankruptcy court judges, in some circumstances, cut mortgage debts to help bankrupt homeowners. Its backing comes amid a recession and a mounting housing market crisis.

 If enacted, this legislation would represent an important step forward,” Pandit wrote in a letter to lawmakers who midwifed the plan including Senators Charles Schumer and Richard Durbin.

The letter called the proposal “an additional tool” to help prevent foreclosure.

 A “tool to help prevent foreclosures”?  Isn’t that what the Feds have been trying to do all along?  Trying to negotiate with irresponsible home-owners?  Is it too much for anyone to realize that negotiating with deadbeats is always a losing battle? 

Reuters cites the recession and a “mounting” housing crisis as the reasons for Citi’s turnaround in supporting the plan.  Really? I thought it would have something to do with the $250 billion in a taxpayer-funded down payment the government put into Citi’s coffers back in November.  But I could be wrong. 

And to top it all off, the Irresponsible Home Buyers Amendment will be tacked on to the economic “stimulus” package to get the economy “moving” again. 

Unfortunately, the more liberals try to interfere, the more government demands its presence in the free markets, the longer this financial mess will linger.  The only good news is that Democrats have their fingerprints all over this.  As if the Republicans need any more incentive to stop the stimulus/bailout package headed for President-elect Obama’s desk.