What's the Deal With the So-Called Mortgage Bailout

To paraphrase Atrios:

To qualify:

• have an income and live in their homes
• are currently making their payments on time
• would default if their interest went up
• ARM mortgage has to have been taken between 1/05 and 7/7
• Has a rate reset between 1/8-1/10

The following rules you out:

• have missed payment
• can afford mortgage rate increase
• don't have an income
• own homes which are worth less than their mortgage

So, if you are poor, you are more likely to have missed a payment, and more likely not to have put anything down, and so be under water. As Duncan Black puts it:

I became increasingly skeptical that such a broad-based bailout would be workable for various reasons, but as is usually the case with anything the Bush administration gets involved in, they aren't even really trying.

As Kevin Drum puts it:

The lower your income, the more likely you are to have missed a payment already, and the lower your income the more likely you are to have been sold a no-down loan that's already left you underwater due to falling housing prices. Net result: no help for low-income folks.

Like Atrios, I've become increasingly unsure that any kind of broad-based bailout plan can work — or work well, in any case — but if you're going to do it everyone ought to have a shot at getting help. Bush's plan, conversely, pretty transparently doesn't care about anyone with a modest income. Not part of his base, I guess.

My assesment is less charitable. He does not want to do anything but score political points.