Housing Rescue Plan

The housing rescue plan put forward by the Obama administration confuses me to no end. A recent article published in USA Today tried to highlight some of the areas to be addressed by the plans. Their analysis, however, was vague at best though through little fault of their own. The administration is also being decidedly vague on any particular parts of the plan. Sure, they lay out basics to help some 9 million homeowners who are deemed to be in trouble. They even plan to throw $75 billion directly at the problem and almost $200 billion more toward Fannie and Freddie. How these plans will ultimately play out, however, is not addressed (let alone how they will eventually be paid for). Besides the issue of whether or not it's too little too late I'm concerned with just how fair a plan like this can possibly be. It doesn't address anyone who followed sensible rules and decided to avoid living so far beyond their means. Instead, people who took on too much debt probably thinking it would somehow magically go away are getting that wish fulfilled. Too much debt was a big part of the problem leading up to this economic meltdown, and now it seems we're OK with handing out "get out of jail free" cards to anyone who made irresponsible choices. This package may help a few people out in the short term, but it will keep mortgage rates too low and the cycles of shouldering too much debt will be allowed to continue.   

Super Bowl Ads

Just finished watching the Super Bowl. While I really didn't care who won it turned out to be a pretty decent game. Unfortunately, the business-minded part of me was disappointed in the ads. I'm almost not looking forward to my marketing class tomorrow because it will mean revisiting these 30 second slices of mediocrity. The vast majority of them were uninspired and did not make me want to put money into whatever product or service they happened to be peddling. My favorite ad was actually the one second Miller High Life commercial. They only aired one out of the series they had done, but it was still really effective. 

I thought the ad mix was interesting in that it really reflected the difficult economic time we're currently going through. Beer ads were prevalent as usually, but so were a lot of commercials for services to help bolster a resume or burnish your image. The ranks of escapist ads were also bolstered by several movie trailers, Priceline.com spots, and other vacation ideas. Durable goods commercials were non-existent, the only cars being advertised were foreign makes, and GE is left banking on their ability to get big infrastructure projects.