HEY, USA

Foreclosures Rise But White House Mortgage Remains Current

As foreclosures continued to mount, fretting Americans took heart in the thought that at least the White House is current on its mortgage payments.

“I can tell you right now,” the President assured the nation, “the payments on the White House mortgage are up to date and will continue to be as long as a Democrat is not elected President.”

But what about the rest of the houses? Are any safe?

The word from borrowers in default is not as reassuring to mortgage bankers and trembling investors as they would like it to be.

For instance, an irresponsible defaulter explained, “Look, when I bought this shed, the price was up to over a million bucks. Now, it’s worth squat. So why should I continue to pay off the jumbo loan?”

A more responsible owner in foreclosure, a strapped union worker, who also puts in the usual eight hours as a salesclerk at Wal-Mart, commented, “I’m sorry but the price of everything is so sky high I can’t even send my wife to the supermarket anymore, let alone make the payments on a house for her to bring the food home to.”

Meanwhile, Wall Street, alarmed by weakness in the subprime lending market and the increasing number of foreclosures in the prime market, experienced a shocking two-day dip.

As one analyst put it, “Making those mortgage payments is a problem for a lot of people. But I’d like to assure investors that, along with the White House, my home will not go into foreclosure. And there’s a solid reason. I bought it with my Christmas bonus, so there’s no mortgage on it.”

Meanwhile, the chairman of the FED, Dr. Ben Bernanke, was evasive on the entire crash. He refused to admit that the principal policy tool of the FED, which is to lower interest rates when the economy falters, thereby spurring a home-buying frenzy to stimulate it, and then raising rates once the economy shows signs of recovering, thereby crashing the home-buying market, has anything whatever to do with the current debacle.

He also refused to speculate on the likelihood of the FED figuring out a more dexterous way to superintend the nation’s economy.

He did, however, shore up confidence that the White House would remain immune from foreclosure. He checked personally and learned that the mortgage was paid off a long time ago.

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