What's worse -- the blatant bailout or the indirect kind?

Bill Gross, the bond market guru at Pimco (Pacific Investment Management Co.) in Newport Beach, is on the web with his April commentary.

Gross, 63, continues to assert that the federal government should be prepared to take bolder steps to stop the decline in home prices. This has been a Pimco theme for months now, and it grates on some people who believe the firm itself would be a beneficiary of a broader federal bailout.

The reason: Pimco's $750 billion in assets under management include tens of billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed bonds, albeit the higher-quality kind, not the worst of the sub-prime trash.

Gross points out that investors and savers already have begun to pay for a housing rescue as the Federal Reserve has slashed short-term interest rates to help ease the credit crunch.

He writes: "Politicians –- especially those on the Republican side of the aisle -– are adamant about not using taxpayers’ funds to bail out Wall Street or housing speculators, or whoever the current devil may be. The public seems to nod in agreement while at the same time not noticing that their watch is being lifted or their pocket being picked. Let’s see: Twelve months ago the yield on your money market fund was 5%+ but your next statement will probably feature something closer to 2%. Did your money market fund . . . experience any capital gains in the process? Absolutely not. So it looks like your, the taxpayer’s, contribution to the bailout of banks, or Florida condominium speculators can at least be quantified: 3% foregone interest per year on whatever you own."

Implied, it seems, is that you're already paying for a bailout, so you shouldn't care about paying some more if that's what it takes to stabilize home prices.

Read Gross' full commentary here.

Comments

[Irv]

Absolutely no kind of homeowner bailout is needed. The government just needs to compel lenders to extended the teaser rate monthly mortgage payments out about 5 years or so. By then the real estate market will have improved, and homeowners will have more options. This will also automatically weed out the flippers and the homeowners who could not afford to buy and live in those homes to begin with.

[JackS]

That's the whole point, Bill!!

Housing prices shouldn't be "stabilized" at their current inflated levels--Makes absolutely no sense-when they are completely disconnected from any known historical relationship to rents or wages!!!

We all know this is NOT at all about keeping people in their houses-- this is about keeping the banks from having to make more write downs, so people like you are willing to do anything to keep them from falling where they need to!!!

Americans are wising up--We arent helping anyone by forcing them to stay in these wildly-overvalued debt traps, and THAT is our problem. As Peter Schiff says--Let the housing chips fall where they may and lets get the pain out of the way!!

[tom]

We renters all watched in dispair as housing prices in Southern California left us in the dust thus dooming us to a nomadic lifestyle never able to grow roots. We cheered when the bubble began to pop. Now the people responsible for this injustice are wanting to prolong this abomination.