America, meet your friendly new banker: Prince Alwaleed.
 
The San Joaquin Valley has been particularly hard-hit by subprime loan foreclosures and the downturn in home sales – and home equity. Earlier this year, Stockton was ranked No. 1 nationally in per-capita defaults – the first step toward foreclosure – while Sacramento was fifth, according to RealtyTrac, an Irvine-based company that tracks foreclosures in a Sacramento Bee article posted earlier today.  But should we trade our national sovereignty in for what twenty years from now will look like a middling market correction?
 
President Bush is poised to impose a price fixing scheme on a scale not seen since President Nixon imposed price controls on the domestic oil industry – and we all remember how successful that was!  The primary beneficiaries won’t be homeowners at risk of foreclosure but big banks like Citicorp who just sold a big chunk of equity to “the Arabian Warren Buffett” who, according to Forbes Magazine, also happens to be the world’s wealthiest Muslim businessman.

The Bee article does tell part of the story.  “Just which borrowers receive help from the Bush administration's plan could become a sticking point. As talk of a rate freeze gathered traction in recent weeks, some critics complained that lenders would be bailing out people who knowingly took out bigger loans than they could afford in hopes of reaping windfall profits as home values soared, while other people stayed out of the subprime mortgage mess. As a result, an analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said Bush's plan is bad policy. "In some ways it's worse than a taxpayer bailout," said John Berlau, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the institute.”

Berlau: "It pressures an industry to essentially alter the terms of millions of contracts, and it's going to make investors think twice about investing in America again."…except those “value” shoppers like Prince Alwaleed from the Middle East.