What is Mitt Romney's solution to the continued decline of the housing market and the foreclosure epidemic?
“As to what to do for the housing industry specifically — and are there things that you can do to encourage housing? One is, don’t try and stop the foreclosure process,” said Romney. “Let it run its course, and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy up homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up, and let it turn around and come back up.
Why do I consider this to be a glaring moment of derp? Because Mitt Romney made these comments in Las Vegas, the virtual epicenter of the foreclosure crisis.
No other city has experienced as large of a drop in property value nor as great a number of foreclosures in the wake of the collapse of the fraudulent mortgage industry in 2008.
Romney also went on to criticize the Obama Administration's plans for fixing the housing market by comparing them to the "failed" Cash-for-Clunkers program. And the problem is, Cash-for-Clunkers was a huge success. Detroit is back.
How out of touch can you get?
At least Romney's notion that everyone should rent rather than buy can serve as a final repudiation of the George Bush "Ownership Society" that spawned the housing bubble in the first place.
The consequences of that bubble are still with us, but more foreclosures isn't going to make things better.