Declaring the Mortgage Meltdown a National Disaster?

Ralph Roberts wrote an interesting article in which he boldly declares the mortgage meltdown in America to be a national disaster, on par with Hurricane Katrina and the Southern California wildfires.

At one point he claims, “More than 1 million families are going to lose their homes to foreclosure, yet I haven’t seen a single governor declare a state emergency.”

To this I ask, would declaring a state of emergency really help at all? It didn’t seem to significantly help the millions affected by Katrina, only partially because of the federal government’s Johnny-come-lately approach to the situation. What would declaring the mortgage crisis an emergency really constitute? Would the feds provide FEMA trailers for the estimated one million people that will be homeless this year? Will they hire private security contractors at $1,000-per-person, per day (whose firm shall remain nameless) to preserve the peace and security in areas most affected by the mortgage crisis? Doubtful. It seems at first glance that declaring this crisis a “national emergency” would effectively be the equivalent of our congress declaring Turkey’s slaughter of 1 million Armenians nearly a century ago a “genocide” — an historically noteworthy title, but of little effect, and too little, too late.

Roberts elaborates on his viewpoint:

“When we see the images of Southern California burning and the floodwaters from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we don’t hesitate as a nation to send rescue personnel and resources to those areas. We should take the same approach with the current mortgage meltdown and foreclosure epidemic … We shouldn’t make matters worse by bailing out the culprits, but we do need to tend to the victims.”

This clarifies his intentions a little bit. But how? How do we decide as a nation who deserves help from the government the most? How do we separate the dead beats whose own choices led to their homelessness, from the legitimate consumers who were duped by unethical lending practices, etc.? At least with Hurricane Katrina, it was painfully obvious that none of the victims were to blame, yet we still couldn’t, and can’t, help them all.

Roberts suggests:

“If the government is worried about the money, perhaps it can force the lenders who created this mess to clean it up, or lenders can voluntarily step up to the plate. “

Good luck with that. We all know how fond people in our country are of the government forcing businesses to do anything, let alone bale out the homeless. And as for the lenders voluntarily giving up millions of dollars? Ha!

Officially, we take no opinion on Roberts’ viewpoints; this article is simply to stimulate conversation and debate on an important issue.