Matthew Larkby
The US Government’s Foreclosure and Eviction Moratorium Was A Good Call
The pandemic caused the population at large to instantly suffer a massive economic loss. There wasn’t a government agency with the mandate or manpower to effectively deal with them all simultaneously so the government instead implemented the blanket foreclosure/eviction moratorium, shifted the financial loss to the lenders and landlords (a much smaller population than the population at large), and prepared a bailout package for them instead.
It was a hard blow to the ivory tower libertarians who constantly preach of the primacy of free markets and the evil of government intervention. The government absolutely picked winners and losers. There was no creative destruction and no liquidation. Defaulted tenants and borrowers got to stay in their homes — which may have insulted the memory of Ayn Rand but it also prevented a revolution and allowed the government to stay in place.
Lenders and corporate landlords were made whole via a bailout from the federal government. There was no cascade of defaults. The servicing revenue shortfall did not destroy any shareholder wealth. Yields on mortgage backed securities hardly moved. Just like with every other American economic crisis, profits were privatized and losses were socialized.
The AOC-loving MSM had spent the last four years alternating between keeping Americans ignorant & distracted on the one hand and engineering a revolution of the proletariat on the other. At no time did any of them ever express any sympathy for the only people who actually suffered an unreimbursed loss – the mom-and-pop landlords who owned their rental units outright (i.e. kulaks).
Bailouts and stimulus combined with declining tax revenues necessarily means a bigger annual budget deficit for the government and a larger national debt for the country. There is no such thing as a free lunch: taxpayers now owe more. However, in another move meant to ensure their continued control over a country that has two guns for every adult, the government found a way to make foreigners pay America’s national debt. The government massively expanded the money supply, made concerted moves to increase the cost of energy, and engineered inflation. Foreign governments that bought treasury bonds with their surplus USD (from their trade surplus with the US in goods and petroleum) essentially financed our debt and now due to inflation they will be paid back with pennies on the dollar. Which is fine because they would just use the money to finance terrorism and communism.
The founding fathers told us an American government that is not of the people, by the people, and for the people should be overthrown, preferably through the ballot box although they made sure to give the people other options, too. We got a glimpse of what revolution looks like during the prelude to the 2020 presidential election. Surely the government crafted the foreclosure/eviction moratorium with that in mind.
For all its faults, our Federal government bought peace and stability for American citizens and got communists, terrorists, and dictators to foot the bill. I approve.
