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Developer Billion Dollar Bailout Hidden in Stimulus Bill
As a former "insider" in the home building lobby, I can certainly verify that developers, builders, and financiers generally have a rabid contempt for government ideologically, but especially when it comes to regulations on their business activities. They are however only too eager to work with government policies which fatten their wallets, and which they have steered with millions of dollars in lobbying and advertising money. This dynamic is true of American business in general, for sure, but the greed and the hypocrisy of it shine through so clearly with the building and finance industries because, as the author says, they are in the exact center of the economic crisis. I think it might very well be the case that homes DO have to lose a lot of their value, in order for sanity and balance to return to the system. Americans perhaps should have to take a big hit there. But it should be softened by new tax policies which wring as much money out of the wealthy or relatively wealthy - and this includes many developers and bankers - as possible - the top 10% or so of people who have been riding high for the last 30 years since St. Ronnie got all of this in high gear. Obama needs to be bold there. Homes not being sold? Then some builders and bankers need to find a new profession, like the rest of us. Their businesses need to fail. The public should not have to keep propping up industries with greed-soaked failed business models.— February 8, 2009 8:16 p.m.