The Biggest Lies

A false sense of prosperity was created and fed by government programs, government-sponsored entities including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Sallie Mae. These organizations with the ready assistance, indeed complicity of loan officers, mortgage brokers, and realtors generated loans that saddled some students with backbreaking debt, sold the hapless homes that they could not afford (sometimes even committing fraud by telling them to overstate their actual income levels to make the numbers work so the home loans could be generated), encouraging both education and mortgage debt that could only be justified by the whim of government and manipulation of the Federal Tax Code. The arbitrary decision of government to make home ownership a virtue now has millions foreclosed on, facing foreclosure, or upside down in their homes (they now owe more on the house than it is worth). Government manipulation fed this predicament and there was never any virtue in ownership per se as leasing a home or renting an apartment was certainly never a vice. People changed their behavior often deliberately earning less than they could have so they would not find themselves facing bracket-creep, mandatory alternative minimum Federal income tax, or would not forfeit their eligibility for student loans or other government programs by earning too much. This is a perverse disincentive to force people at government caprice that may be amended at any time to have to structure their lives to limit their own success so that their mother may enter a nursing home or their daughter attend a college. Under Obama's planned economy, the public can only anticipate more such life-shaping exploitation by those claiming to be trying to help.