There Are No More Mortgages

[berni_mccoy]

I've been monitoring the mortgages available on bankrate.com. Two weeks ago, if you searched for a 30-year mortgage, there were pages upon pages of mortgages available.

Now, with the credit crunch, there are only a handful, mainly supported by Bank of America and Quicken Loans. And the interest rates on these mortgages are about 1.5-2 points higher than they were even though interest rates haven't gone up.

This is because there is not competition for these mortgages. While the demand has gone down on new mortgages, the supply has all but dried up.

Even if there were buyers in the market, they are going to be extremely limited in what they can get and they better have the downpayment to afford the mortgages that are available. While this may be a "correction", it's going to not only slow the economy, but prevent it from restarting. In other words, even a defribulator won't get it going.

This is why Congress needed to act now and why the bill must pass to inject new capital into the financial institutions. Without it, we are truly headed toward a Great Depression.