COMMENTARY | Defenders of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his member bankers claim the Fed's most fervent desire is to help homeowners. Business Insider described Bernanke's latest suggestion as a "call to action."
But we're desperate, begging. Please, please, no more help.
We will soon be trying to sell our house, but every move by the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration seems designed to hurt us financially.
Government housing initiatives have put more inventory on the market or left buyers uncertain about where house prices actually are. Resident home sellers are at the mercy of nervous appraising banks who depend on the kindness of government regulators.
As with other homeowners, we've had to accept the plunge in housing prices that began five years ago. You'd think by now we'd have hit the bottom.
Without market interference, we'd know where we stand, how many thousands we will lose. But the Obama administration, through interventions motivated only by political ambitions, has intervened by applying a series of false bottoms, resulting in delay rather than resolution.
There is a long list of administration failures:
* The Fed's incremental lowering of interest rates didn't revive housing.
* The White House ordered injunction against "robo-signed" foreclosures didn't revive housing.
* The government bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and purchase of troubled subprime loans didn't revive housing.
* Now the Federal Reserve Bank wants to double down on previous taxpayer losses of $142 billion with its new plan. A Wall Street Journal editorial challenges the unsolicited 26 page "paper" sent to Capitol Hill as an ill-timed "intrusion."
The Financial Post further outlines the new housing proposals, reporting that federal bankers want to offer bridge loans to jobless borrowers, principal reductions for underwater borrowers, and push the GSEs into the rental business.
Meanwhile, there are millions of people like us who put a minimum 20 percent down and bought homes we could afford. We don't expect help, but we don't want to be punished for being responsible either.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama updated his Home Affordable Refinancing Program last year to provide even more help to underwater homeowners, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
We don't know who it is that the Fed is trying to help but it's definitely not the people paying the bills for these failures.
Anthony Ventre is a freelance writer who has written for weekly and daily newspapers and several online publications. He is a frequent Yahoo contributor, concentrating in news and financial writing.
