Fun With Numbers and Hillary's Mortgage Proposal

Let's look at three numbers and analyze them in the context of the mortgage crisis and Hillary's solutions to them. The first number is 30 billion. That is how much Hillary Clinton has pledged to help struggling families during the credit crunch.

That’s why I’m calling for the creation of a one-time emergency $30 billion fund that would go directly to cities and states to address the housing crisis.

That also just happens to be the same number that the Fed pledged to guarantee in order to facilitate the Bear Stearns buyout by JP Morgan.

The Fed extended a $30 billion lifeline to prevent Bear Stearns from imploding and took unprecedented action to provide tens of billions of dollars in credit for other struggling investment banks as well

Now, clearly Clinton is trying to make a point with this thirty billion dollar number. If you we examine some other numbers. Let's look at 521 billion. That is how many ARM's will be adjusting just in the first half of this year

January 2008 $80 billion

February 2008 $88 billion

March 2008 $110 billion

April 2008 $92 billion

May 2008 $76 billion

June 2008 $75 billion

July 2008 $50 billion

August 2008 $35 billion

September 2008 $26 billion

October 2008 $20 billion

November 2008 $15 billion

December 2008 $17 billion

This is how many ARM's will expire just in the first half of this year. Now, Hillary has promised to freeze all rates, but that is only if and when she becomes President. That means everyone in one of these ARM's will be hit up to 30% increases in their mortgage payments. That $30 billion doesn't seem that large when you consider it won't help most of these folks. Of course, that is up from her previous proposal.

Hillary Clinton today is rolling out a series of housing proposals, including a crackdown on unscrupulous mortgage brokers and a $1 billion fund to help homeowners avoid foreclosure

Hillary was proposing only setting up a one billion dollar fund and then bumped that up to $30 billion once she heard about the Bear Stearns/JP Morgan. Meanwhile $500 billion dollars of ARM's will expire and adjust up just in the first half of the year and she isn't proposing any relief for those folks.



Finally, there is this number 1.5 trillion dollars. That is how about how much we still expect ARM's to expire in the future. Over the next couple years. (This is an estimate but either way the number is in the trillions)

That is how many ARM's will be eligible for having their rates frozen. Hillary, like most politicians, has been very vague as to exactly which folks will have their ARM's expire. Someone within the government will have to determine that. That to me sounds like an awfully large bureaucracy necessary to facilitate that plan. This to me sounds like a plan to increase the size of our government exponentially.


So, if you examine the numbers, you have a plan with an element of political calculation, that totally ignores the magnitude of the crisis, and plans on expanding the size of government exponentially.