Stop complaining about that housing bailout

Ever since Congress finally moved to provide financial assistance to homeowners struggling to pay their monthly mortgages, I’ve heard nothing but whining, mostly from folks who aren’t having any troubles making their own housing payments.

“Why should I have to pay to help someone who was too irresponsible to actually buy a house they could afford?” That’s the complaint I hear all the time.

There are some problems with that statement. First of all, many of the people facing foreclosure aren’t in their perilous financial situation because they were greedy. Some were misled into terrible adjustable-rate mortgages by greedy loan officers. Others lost their jobs. Some got injured. Some divorced. There are a host of reasons why your financial situation can suddenly take a turn for the worse.

Secondly, how much money do you think you personally are going to be shelling out for the housing assistance act? Come on, it’s not like the government is taking thousands of dollars away from you for this one particular bill.

But the best reason to stop whining about the bailout? It just might save our economy.

Quoted in a BusinessWeek story written by Chris Farrell Zvi Bodie, a financial professor at Boston University, says that while it might not be fair for fiscally responsible homeowners to help pay for the bailout of those facing foreclosures, it’d be even worse to let the country’s housing situation degenerate further. You can read her comments, and Farrell’s intriguing story, here.

Bodie’s main point: Is it wise to put the economy into a deep recession or depression? The answer, of course, is “no.”

So next time you feel like complaining about the housing assistance bailout, remember, for the government to not have done anything would have been the worst decision of all.