it seems Mr Teague has forgotten Whom is really to blame for the housing meltdown.

The blame rests squarely on fannie and freddie the quasi-governmental corporations that pushed billions of dollars of bad loans through the system under the guise of helping the POOR to buy homes with programs that financed 125% of the value of homes to folks who just were not able to pay for them.

Who ran these outfits?? Congress did. Under the leadership of Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd and other liberals ( who told us that fannie and freddie we in no danger of financial woes) Laws were passed removing the requirement of having a 20% down payment to buy a house and allowing federally backed loans to be made for up to 125% of the value of the home.

These loans to people who based on income to debt ratios could not get loans elsewhere were and still are the real problem. Billions of taxpayer dollars will still be needed to bail out Freddie and Fannie over the next 1-3 years until all the sub-prime and interest only loans mature into unaffordable high payments to those least able to pay them.

The vast number of foreclosed homes that will soon flood the market with many more houses than there are buyers in most regions of the country will result in average house prices falling even further than current levels. This will result in many more people owing more than their homes are worth leading to more loans going bad. Locally we have seen our appraisals continue to rise ( based on values pulled out of thin air ) by double digit percentages as high as 50% of assessed values from the previous year. These enormous hikes were justified by the appraisal district claims of under-valued assessments that were being adjusted to true market values.

As one involved in the foreclosure process I have seen houses that were appraised for 140,000 and for sale for that price sit on the market for almost a year before the price was lowered first to 117,000 then to 110,000 then to the sale price of 70-90,000 or roughly 29%-50% below assessed market value. while others are still for sale 2 and 3 years after foreclosure at prices way below appraised values. many banks used appraisers who submitted glamorized and inflated appraisals to allow loans to be made that would be bundled with other mortgages and then sold to investors as so called safe investments.

We've only delayed the great economic disaster. The problems are inherent in the system, and we've only treated the symptoms. The day of reckoning is still ahead of us. I don't blame any particular figurehead for this. I blame Congress, hence The People. The Tea Partiers have been duped into supporting & bolstering the party that is equally complicit in propping up the flawed system. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!

I guess anyone can write anything to the paper these days.

Everything in this letter is propaganda. This guy is way off base...

Here is my response...
http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/weblo...

Great fiction there. Also very post hoc ergo propter hoc too.

I might agree that the policies of Bush might have led to this, but it wasn't the tax cuts for the top 2% nor the war in Iraq that caused the economic meltdown, that's just complete absurdity. If you truly believe that those were the causes then you really do need to step away from the kool-aid.

Richard Teague.

You should have post this before the election.