Opinion: In today’s pages: Don’t forget foreclosures, think about unions
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In Monday’s pages the editorial board calls on the government not to forget, amid debate over stimulus plans, how we got into this fix: home loans people couldn’t repay, and banks that couldn’t collect on their losses.
What’s the best way to help borrowers? Many can be aided if the terms of renegotiated loans are right.
Lenders need to follow the lead of the FDIC, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase in setting affordability formulas that enable them to reevaluate borrowers and modify mortgages on a mass scale. As shown in a recent study by Alan M. White, a Valparaiso University law professor, the first round of modifications frequently failed because they didn’t reduce monthly payments and often provided only temporary help. The changes need to yield mortgages that buyers can afford over the long term, giving them more reason to keep paying.
The board also calls on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to end the spate of building owners and advertisers who collude to wrap office buildings -- windows and all -- with plastic or vinyl ‘supergraphics.’
Offices once bathed in sunshine or with beautiful vistas calculated into their lease rates are now shrouded in stretched vinyl advertising. Even leaving aside the ugliness, tenants would be unable to open a window in case of a fire. Firefighters would be unable to enter. Or they at least would be slowed by the layer of advertising.
On the right-hand page, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich argues in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act as a way to get unions, and thus the middle class, some of the power they have lost over the last 30 years. Former Times staff writer Myron Levin makes a case for banning all cellphone calls while driving, including the currently legal calls made with headsets and other hands-free devices. And columnist Gregory Rodriguez thinks about fortunes -- the ones found in that most Los Angeles of Los Angeles inventions, the Chinese fortune cookie.