From The Daily Express:
BORROWERS could be protected from losing their home if they fall behind on credit card or loan payments, under new proposals from the Ministry of Justice.
It suggested setting a minimum level of debt before a court can order the sale of a home. Under the current system, property owners unable to pay unsecured debts such as credit or store cards can have a “charging order” placed against their property to secure the debts. In a small number of cases a judge can decide the property must be sold to settle the debt.
Justice Minister Bridget Prentice said: “We know only a small proportion of charging orders results in the property being sold, so it’s rare for a debtor to lose their home because of things such as unpaid credit cards. But it’s important that the Government considers whether there is a risk that the numbers will increase due to the current economic situation. We’re asking for views on whether a minimum threshold should be introduced in law, to prevent this from occurring.”
There's been a two month gap since part 30 of this series, which looks at the measure that our government is taking to prop up the house price bubble (rather too successfully for my liking, but hey),, but that story is a corker.
It also illustrates yet again the Home-Owner-Ist* approach to classifying debt: mortgage debt is responsible and credit card debt is irresponsible; but a homeowner with unpayable credit card debt still ranks well above a non-homeowner with similar debts. And who's paying for all this? The owners of the nationalised banks, maybe?
PS, not all homeowners are Home-Owner-Ists.
Story via HPWatcher at HPC.
Idiocy
36 minutes ago
7 comments:
OT, but I thought, as an artist yourself, that you might get a kick out of this:
http://captainranty.blogspot.com/2010/02/sunday-funny-sunday.html
CR.
Do you mean reckless throw of the die or were there two of them?
CR, brilliant.
JH, there were two or more of them.
D, I think a "No" would have sufficed.
Why can't the government just award us all a nice house by the beach (but with a reasonable comute) and thus solve the problem. If it costs alot of money, just do more of that QE / money printing thing.
Win-win. Surely.
K, they could do that at negative cost to the taxpayer by simply liberalising planning laws (not just for houses, for ports and railway lines and power stations and factories as well, of course)
Well not exactly. The whole point about positional goods is that you can't simply produce more. There is only so much shoreline within reach of cities and population density / traffic density can only be pushed so far before you get strongly negative returns and defensive consumption.
Hence I was joking.
But as to the general point that current planning laws swing too far in the other direction, yes I agree.
K, the UK has 11,000 miles of shoreline - how many people want to live on the shore? If we assume 5 yards of frontage per home, 11,000 miles is enough for 3.9 million homes.
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