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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board decries the Biden administration’s unjust and hazardous policy of imposing fees on mortgage borrowers with good credit in order to subsidize mortgage borrowers with bad credit. Two slices:

Under the rule, which goes into effect May 1, home buyers with a good credit score over 680 will pay about $40 more each month on a $400,000 loan, and upward depending on the size of the loan. Those who make down payments of 20% on their homes will pay the highest fees. Those payments will then be used to subsidize higher-risk borrowers though lower fees.

Under the rule, which goes into effect May 1, home buyers with a good credit score over 680 will pay about $40 more each month on a $400,000 loan, and upward depending on the size of the loan. Those who make down payments of 20% on their homes will pay the highest fees. Those payments will then be used to subsidize higher-risk borrowers though lower fees.

Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director Sandra Thompson says the rule will “increase pricing support for purchase borrowers limited by income or by wealth.” The Biden Administration may want more homeownership, but selling people houses they can’t afford has never been a good idea. See the subprime loan collapse of 2008.

…..

The biggest problem here is fairness. Taxpayers already subsidize mortgages for low-income borrowers through the Federal Housing Administration. Now they want to punish those who have maintained good credit while rewarding those who haven’t. In the name of making housing more equal, they are pursuing an inequitable policy.

George Will writes with wisdom about the Fox News settlement. A slice:

First, pecuniary motives led Fox News to pander to Trump adorers who, furious that on election night the channel had correctly called Arizona for Joe Biden, were fleeing like lemmings to Newsmax, an unwavering defender of the indefensible. ([Tucker] Carlson to his producer: “We’re playing with fire, for real. With Trump behind it, an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”)

Second, when not toadying to Trump, some Fox News personnel were saying, in effect, that they wished that he, like the Wicked Witch of the West, would melt away. (Carlson: “I hate him passionately … He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”)

Fox News’s anticipated defense in a trial was to be: We were just neutrally reporting, not endorsing, newsworthy accusations of vast election fraud, accusations made by public figures. So, imagine the faces of the lawyers for Rupert Murdoch, chair of Fox Corp., when during a sworn deposition he said (as reported by the Wall Street Journal, a Murdoch property) that some of Fox News’s on-air personnel “endorsed” charges that the election had been stolen.

Fraser Myers reports on “the great blue-tick hissy fit.”

David Brooks applauds the robustness of American capitalism. A slice:

American companies continue to generate amazing value. If in 1990 you had invested $100 in the S&P 500, an index of American companies, you would have about $2,300 today, according to The Economist. If you had invested that $100 in an index of non-American rich-world stocks, you would have about $510 today.

Of course, China has risen to superpower status during these years. But that hasn’t eclipsed American prominence. In 1990, the U.S. economy accounted for about 25 percent of global G.D.P. In 2022 it still accounted for roughly 25 percent, The Economist found.

The mighty rolling river sweeps up new generations. The millennial and Gen Z generations are practically defined by a story of economic hardship. Many people believe that the coming generations will not enjoy the same living standards as their parents

It may have been possible to accurately tell that story in the wake of the financial crisis, but as Jean Twenge shows in a new piece for The Atlantic, it’s not possible to accurately tell that story today. She writes, “By 2019 households headed by millennials were making considerably more money than those headed by the Silent Generation, baby boomers and Generation X at the same age, after adjusting for inflation.”

Millennials, according to the Census Bureau, had household incomes $9,000 higher than Gen X households and $10,000 higher than boomer households at the same age, in 2019 dollars.

Here’s David Henderson on Hayek on “You didn’t build that.”

Reason recycles five decades of analyses of the environment and environmental fears.

Eric Boehm reports what shouldn’t be, but what to many people nevertheless is, surprising: “Biden’s student loan pause overwhelmingly benefited wealthier Americans.”