Fed's Rate Cuts - No Effect on Homeowner's in Foreclosure

The move by the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates for banks will help a lot of people in banks and investment houses. It will have no, and that is ZERO, impact on the home owner who is looking at foreclosure.

"Why?" you ask? Because the rates lowered are only for short term borrowing, literally overnight borrowing between banks and the Federal Reserve. Banks don't lend that money to you, or me, only to large financial powerhouses like Merrill Lynch and corporations needing very short term funding.

And for you and me? A very half-hearted measure by President George W. Bush, who got mortgage lenders to agree to do a voluntary program. A program with no details, no carrot or stick, no regulation or oversight. It's not so much a program, except one of propaganda.

The Federal Reserve could have prevented this, despite the blatherings of former Fed chief Alan Greenspan who said the free market would handle it. The free market is handling it, all right, by punishing home owners and lending a hand to the people who landed them in hot water in the first place.

The Federal Reserve has the authority to stop lending practices that will harm the financial strength of us, the mere working stiffs, as well as the millionaires who make their living shuffling money from place to place. But the Fed governors have chosen not to do so. Yes, they are investigating the practices of some lending institutions who were committing outright fraud, but they are doing nothing to rein in the unscrupulous lending practices that led the average person down the primrose path to ruin.

Somewhere between 1 million and 5 million households are expected to receive foreclosure notices during 2008. That's 2.5 to 15 million people being put out on the street. That's more people than were made homeless during the Great Depression and the government isn't putting the brakes on it. The rich and powerful aren't going to be put on the street we are.

And not a single politician sitting in Washington today is doing a thing anything to stop this. Not even the four Senators running for president of this country expecting your vote and support are doing anything within their power to stop this. Not one of them has put a measure on the floor to slam the door shut on this impending crisis, while they continue on their message in an attempt to acquire personal power and further enhance the lives of their network of already-powerful friends and associates.

Not one.