Bankers must make things right on bad mortgages
To the editor:
We should not bail out these bankers. This is all their fault.
They are the ones who charge an extra 2 percent for the honor of giving you a loan. They stick on private mortgage insurance, "just in case you can't make payments." They add closing fees and whatever other fees they can dream up. They slip in floating interest rates. They invented the balloon payment. They jack up the numbers behind the decimal points. They charge you extra if you're late with a payment. They wink at the rules about borrower's incomes. They smiled and said borrowers shouldn't worry about the wife's income not quite being large enough.
They worked with real estate brokers who enlarged their own commissions by pushing clients into houses they couldn't afford. They ignored the rule of thumb about the percentage of income that should go to house payments. They jack up their own commissions and offer commissions to others who bring in business or purchase these bad loans. Bad loans are knowingly repackaged and resold. The lenders were complicit in all of this, and they made big money.
Now the bankers want their very customers, who themselves are struggling, to bail them out? It's socialism, and I say no. The bankers are hurting from their own bad business practices, and they can't possibly foreclose on all their bad loans. What will they do with all those houses?
Leave it to the marketplace. It's up to the lenders to bite the bullet and take the business losses like they took the business gains. They should go hat in hand to many of their borrowers and lower interest rates, remove balloon payments, renegotiate loans for longer periods and fixed rates. The lenders should take the cut in profits and eat some losses, not keep their profits by getting it from the taxpayer.
Jerry Sturdivant
LAS VEGAS
Selling out the future
To the editor:
It's absolutely amazing that many of the most vocal critics of government intervention and advocates of the globalist "free market" (where companies can have a greater GDP than nations) are the same "elites" who are destroying this country with the belief that the U.S. treasury is their personal piggy bank, there to bail them out when times get tough. Perhaps if the money these people gambled away on easy loans for illogical, unrealistic and stratospheric home prices were actually their own, they might have exercised more caution in giving it away. Now comes the time to pay the piper, as the pyramid scheme has collapsed.
Time is indeed critical for resolving this crisis, but yet another bailout (Does anyone remember the savings and loan crisis a couple of decades ago?) will merely be a temporary "quick fix" that will not resolve the fundamental root issues here: Our leaders keep borrowing against tomorrow's future with no concern for the long-term consequences to our devastated economy.
We need to develop a culture of more rational spending within our means and discourage "keeping up with the Joneses." In this crisis, it would be better to let these massive companies collapse and rebuild them from the ashes with fresh, more modest and less greedy leaders who will not repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.
Michael Pravica
HENDERSON
Why not bankruptcy?
To the editor:
Why aren't we hearing about bankruptcy instead of bailouts for financial firms? Maybe that's not the perfect solution, but at least it is a thoroughly vetted process that is clearly understood. And it places responsibility where it belongs: on the companies and boards of directors.
The bailout would burden each American family with an estimated $10,000 of additional national debt and task the next administration with fixing more of the current administration's blunders.
Bankruptcy filings would allow the companies to continue to operate, under judicial review, while eventually solving the asset/debt problems without using more of the public's money.
Glen Boyd
LAS VEGAS
On 'Obsession'
To the editor:
There is a very fine distinction between fact and fiction. While most can tell the difference, the producers of the anti-Muslim propaganda film "Obsession" fail miserably. Over the past two weeks, a shadowy organization called the Clarion Fund has paid 70 newspapers across the country -- including the Review-Journal -- to insert 28 million DVD copies of the film inside Sunday editions.
The film interviews a cabal of self-styled experts (such as Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson and Walid Shoebat) who, coincidently, have based their careers on bashing everything Muslim. Interspersed between the "expert" interviews are scenes of carnage, death and crowds of angry Muslims. The film's music is scary and ominous, more fitting for a horror film than a documentary. In the end, these elements intertwine to produce a single message: Muslims want to conquer you!
"Obsession" tries to pass itself off as a balanced documentary seeking to warn and educate Americans about the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism, but instead the film demonizes all Muslims as bloodthirsty orcs hell-bent on annihilating Western civilization. Accordingly, "Obsession" deserves a spot alongside other historical products of hate such as the pro-Ku Klux Klan film "Birth of a Nation" and the anti-Semitic text "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
While there can be no doubt the world faces a dangerous threat from terrorism, the film grossly exaggerates the issue by blanketing all Muslims as radicals and extremists. The problem of terrorism will not be solved by confusing the topic nor by alienating 1 billion Muslims. The key to eradicating terrorism is through tackling its root causes -- and not viewing politically driven pieces of propaganda like "Obsession."
Yasser Moten
LAS VEGAS
THE WRITER IS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS NEVADA.
Up in smoke
To the editor:
According to the Monday Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial "Smoking bans and casinos," we are supposed to believe that the financial woes of some casinos nationally have little to do with the collapse of our nation's banking system, the dying real estate market, the alarming rise of gasoline prices or the aftermath of years of outsourcing quality American jobs to India and China. Instead, the Review-Journal makes the non-empirical deduction that smoking bans are destroying our casinos' profit margins.
Excuse me? Does the Review-Journal think that we were born yesterday? Most of my relatives, friends and colleagues who are gamblers have had to cut back on rolling the dice because of this economy, not because they are forced to step outside in Atlantic City to have a quick ciggie break.
And to add insult to injury, while the Review-Journal seems to be very concerned with the profitability of casinos, its editorial board also fails to mention the cost of thousands of lives that are lost each year to secondhand smoke. Think of the economic, emotional and physical costs each year to treat people who are continually exposed to secondhand smoke. Anyone who has ever lost someone they love to emphysema, heart attack or cancer knows just what I'm talking about.
As a Review-Journal subscriber, I think that Las Vegans deserve better than sensationalist, doomsday journalism that isn't predicated on fact.
To put it in a perspective that everyone can understand: It's the economy, stupid.
Amanda Roller
LAS VEGAS
