Starts at the the minute 21:00 mark.
TRANSCRIPT
THE PRESIDENT: Appreciate you, sir. (Applause.) Young lady right back there with the glasses on. There she is.
Q Welcome, Mr. President, to Henry County. My name is Luanne Levine (ph), and I own a local real estate company here in Henry County, over in Geneseo. So you know we’re I’m headed: housing. Every week I sit around the kitchen table of families that are here today and I listen to the stories of a lost job, upside down in their house. And they ask, Luanne, how can you help? What programs are out there?
I have to say I saw a turnaround come May and June. My phone was ringing. I was busier than all get-out. I could see that the country — yes, we are in rehab. People have made adjustments and I saw progress.
Since the debt ceiling fiasco in Washington, the phones have stopped. We have no consumer confidence after what has just happened. Interest rates are a record low. I should be out working 14 hours a day, and I am not. What are your future plans in helping middle-class America — Generation X and Y and middle-class America will get the country out of where we are, and I want to know what are your contingent plans?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, you’re absolutely right that housing has been at the key — at the core of a lot of the hardships we’ve been going through over the last two and a half years. And that’s why we’ve made it such a priority to try to help families stay in their homes the last two and a half years. And that’s why we’ve made it such a priority to try to help families stay in their homes if they can still afford the home. There were some folks who couldn’t — who bought homes they couldn’t afford, but there were a lot of folks who just had a run of bad luck because somebody lost a job or lost a shift. And so what we’ve been trying to do is push the banks, push the servicers to do loan modifications that will allow people to stay in their homes and will try to buck up housing prices generally.
Q Can I — Can I please say —
THE PRESIDENT: Sure, go ahead.
Q — the loan modification system has been a nightmare. Short sales are a nightmare. And the lenders are so tight and you have to be so perfect, and it’s not a perfect world.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, what we’ve been trying to do is make sure that — we’ve probably had a couple of million loan modifications that have been taking place. The problem is, is that the housing market is so big. And so a lot of families have just had to work down their debts, and they’ve been successful — and as you said, we were starting to see things bottom out and confidence start picking up.
Now, I can’t excuse the self-inflicted wound that was that whole debt debate. It shouldn’t have happened the way it did. We shouldn’t have gotten that close to the brink. It was inexcusable. But moving forward, I think a lot of this has to do with confidence, as you said.
Q A hundred percent.
THE PRESIDENT: Companies have never been more profitable. They’re seeing record profits; it’s just they’re hoarding their cash, they’re not investing it. A lot of banks have now recovered, but they’re not lending the way they used to. Now, they need to have slightly tighter lending criteria than they used to have, obviously, because that was part of the reason that we had that housing bubble. But one of the things we’ve talked about is, can we encourage banks now to take a look at customers who are good credit risks, but are being unfairly punished as a consequence of what happened overall?
There are some other ideas that we’re looking at on the housing front. But I’ll be honest with you, when you’ve got many trillions of dollars’ worth of housing stock out there, the federal government is not going to be able to do this all by itself. It’s going to require consumers and banks and the private sector working alongside government to make sure that we can actually get the housing moving back again. And it will probably take this year and next year for us to see a slow appreciation again in the housing market.
What we can do is make sure we don’t do any damage. And that’s what happened in this last month. That’s why I was so frustrated by it, and I suspect that’s why you were so frustrated by it as well.
Q Very much.
THE PRESIDENT: The last thing I’ll say, though, is if we get the overall economy moving, if we pass this payroll tax cut, if we get some of these tax credits for businesses that we passed back in December extended into next year so that we’re giving incentives for folks to invest in plants and equipment now — if the overall economy is doing well, that means consumers are doing better; it also means that housing will start doing better as well.
All right? Thank you so much for your great question. (Applause.)
Q Thank you.
~
this whole topic continues to be sooooooooooooo stressful, no where to turn, no place to go, talked to a woman today, so stressed making herself sick, is thinking bankruptcy, that is if she can, even the people allowed to purchase nothing down, sometime ago walked away pretty easily, then there is the rest of us, who they look at as deadbeats,,,,,,,,,,,,like our credit will be restored, heh heh, they really think the average citizen is stupid! Think it might be a very ugly day when all of those well mannered stupid deadbeats get angry at the same time, not a pretty picture.
I don’t know about you…but I found that real estate broker and Obama very boring….anybody who believed any of that BS needs to have an MRI done on their brain. ….maybe I find asking Obama questions is the same as he campaigned…false lies….he is no different now….You know there are professional liars….
obama is dreaming there has been a little under 500,000 hamp loans. that was unfruitful. like what he said about buying houses we couldnt afford???
A Bankster President and a Realtor………………BULLSHIT !
That was painfull. Just listening to his crap made me sick. Millions of modifications…, who does he think he’s fooling… not me, not anyone who has been lost in this system.
Modifications….what a joke….the banks did not lend any money….they do not own the mortgages…never have. The banks have no right to modifiy….they are not the owners..nothing invested….period. That scam of modification was to get the people with false hope…sign new papers releasing the bank from fraud on the original loan…to pay partial payments for months only to go into foreclosure cause they only paid partial payments…AND the bank knew they could make more money foreclosing….in other words…the bank just went through the motion of pretending to own the mortgages…knowing the courts were in their same ball field………the corrupt courts were under the same corrupted umbrella as the banks….kinda like in the crime together…..that is why the courts shut blind eyes and plugged their ears….see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil……
A bought and paid POTUS. For the Bankster Elite, by the Bankster Elite
Mr. President for the Bankster, Housing collapse cause by toxic loan, titles, etc But despite the mounting evidence you still bail them out. No prosecution whatsoever. You still defended then as we moves on. Just like Rick Perry said it is treasonous to lie the American people
It is TREASON….and it is treason to side with the enemy…….how close to home can it get? Google…treason…….it involves more than a lie.
More Hogwash and poppycock! He cannot fool all of the people, all of the time!
or apparently even some of the people some of the time!
Wow, I’d like to ask why she let this failure of President interrupt so much? Soon as I got the mike I would have been screaming at him about why he eliminated cramdown, why he’s attacking Schniedermann, and so on.
Finally, I would have asked for his resignation.
Jeff….Let’s put it htis way…Do you think Obama would resign? Do you think ‘ something ‘ would prevent him from resigning? Think deep…who is he working for? Is he really our President? Is the government really OUR government ?
I too, used the word resign as other’s have…but in the reality of what we now know…he should be impeached…..TREASON …….right along with others in the administration…..now and in the past governments…..