Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke can’t get a re-fi

Ben BernankeAnd likely you can’t either.

As a reminder, Ben Bernanke is a former two-term Chairman of the Federal Reserve.  He, like many others today, made an astounding discovery:

He couldn’t qualify for a mortgage re-fi.

From TheHill.com:

Why you and Ben Bernanke can’t get a mortgage

by Andre F. Shashaty

If you are one of the millions of Americans with a good household income and reasonably good credit who cannot get a mortgage to buy a home, I have bad news:  The lawyers, lobbyists and politicians in Washington, DC have no intention of making a mortgage loan available to you or even Ben Bernanke anytime soon. The former Fed Chair recently said he got turned down in an attempt to refinance his mortgage.

Don’t blame the bankers, though.  It is your government and your elected officials who stand between you and your dream house.

Revisit that: it is your government and your elected officials who stand between you and your dream house.

It’s been exactly six years since former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan described the housing crisis and the collapse of the mortgage finance systems as a “once in a century credit tsunami.”

While the storm may have passed, the damage remains.

After being taken over by the federal government, the American mortgage finance system still hasn’t been fixed, and it may not be for several more years.    

No one argues that mortgage lenders should be left to their own devices. But respected leaders are now saying that Washington has swung from reckless disregard of what lenders were doing to extreme micromanagement of the lending process. 

Micromanagement.  Yeah.  That always works.

Note to Ben Bernanke: boo-fucking-hoo, asshole.

Get in line.

BZ