In October, Mitt Romney basically said let them forclose, the public be damned. Yes, he wanted vulture capitalism to work. Let homes be foreclosed and investors can buy them up cheap and then rent them back to people who used to own them, making boatloads of money in the process. The Bain Way.
As for what to do for the housing industry specifically, and are there things that you can do to encourage housing? One is don’t try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up. The Obama administration has slow-walked the foreclosure processes that have long existed and as a result we still have a foreclosure overhang.
I think the idea of helping people refinance homes to stay in them is one that’s worth further consideration, but I’m not signing on until I find out who’s going to pay and who’s going to get bailed out and that’s not something which we know all the answers to yet.
Think Progress, Oct 18, 2011, Romney Tells State With Country’s Highest Foreclosure Rate ‘Don’t Try And Stop The Foreclosure Process’
Today, the marketing project that masquarades as a candiate is flip/flopping away, apparently secure in the belief that Floridians are to dumb to look at what he said before:
We’re just so overleveraged, so much debt in our society, and some of the institutions that hold it aren’t willing to write it off and say they made a mistake, they loaned too much, we’re overextended and write those down and start over. They keep on trying to harangue and pretend that what they have on their books is still what it’s worth…It’s helpful if you get an institution that’s willing to work with you, but if you don’t, you have very little option. [...]
The idea that somehow this is going to cure itself all by itself is probably not real. There’s going to have to be a much more concerted effort to work with the lending institutions and help them take action which is in their best interest and the best interest of the homeowners.
Think Progress, Romney Seems To Reverse Housing Policy, Calls For Action To Limit Foreclosures
He's a "candidate" for gosh sakes. Now that marketing reasearch shows that you can't sell the product by letting them foreclose, he's trying another commercial: make the banks pay.
Yes, Mitt Romney is morphing into Occupy Wall Street, make the banks pay.
Does this mean he is envious of himself? Will he occupy himself?
Florida and Nevada (coming up in early February) are states that have been hit very hard by the deflation of the bubble. Lots of foreclosures. Like the video of him washing his own clothes, Mitt's trying to promote faux populism.
The King of Bain cares, so long as it helps get votes.