Real Estate Market and the Lethargic American Government

I remember about a year and a half ago when I was telling real estate investors that the market would start bouncing back as soon as the government gets their act together and passes some legislation that would give mortgage investors confidence again.

Of course, my projection was that the legislation would come about in about six months. A year and a half ago it was obvious what had happened to bring the market to its knees and that it would hit rock bottom before getting better. Everyone knew it, so since everyone was in agreement, and the ramifications were obvious (they even knew how many foreclosures we would have month by month up to now), you would think that the bill on the president's desk now would have easilly been do-able a full year ago. When I was saying six months, that was 18 months ago, and anybody would have made the same guess.

So the logical timeframe for me and everyone I was talking to was that because the government was so big and slow, it would take them six months to get something done. ADD A YEAR TO THAT!

Whats funny to me is that when Bear Stearns and other big companies are going down, the Fed Chairman, upon finding out, has immediate midnight meetings and a full bailout in order the next morning. Of course, the first bailout plans for Bear Stearns had to be reworked, so maybe he should have taken the weekend on the Bear Stearns deal. Anyway, when its not a big company that needs something- when its the people, instead of taking one all-nighter, they take a year and a half! Here's a link to the bill, by the way. http://thomas.loc.gov/ You have to enter "hr-3221" into the bill search field.

An individual can only vote, but one big company can provide a ton of campaign finance and probably already has, so their stuff gets handled overnight.

Our government is too large to handle any crisis in a timely manner! How pathetic is it that a few home mortgage underwriting rules could have prevented a national recession which of course affects the global economy as well. There's no way we should be in a recession right now, but we are because of the real estate market. Once we do get going in the right direction, look for that secular bull market to progress for years.