WASHINGTON PROBLEMS

Our leaders in Washington have for the past two weeks been primarily focused on the political upheaval in Egypt. Little attention has been focused by Obama and his cronies on the overwhelming difficulties that continue to burden and depress America. Although all of our citizens would like to see a government formed in Egypt that can honestly be "of, by and for the people", this is an internal Egyptian problem and the USA needs to remove itself from any role in this conflict. Multiple speeches from the White House on the situation are not only unnecessary but are inappropriate. As long as the Suez Canal remains open to all international shipping at a reasonable fee, we should stand back and merely observe the turmoil in Egypt.

While the White House has been focused on international matters, the economic problems in America remain unresolved and overly depressing. Most recently statistics were released on the status of the American housing market. The news was not only bad it was overwhelmingly bad.

At the end of 2010 some 27% of all financed homes in our nation had obligations in the form of mortgages that exceeded the fair market value of the property and its improvements. The total number of homes in the nation that had fallen into this terrible category was placed at 15,700,000. More troubling were the reports that 81.5% of all homes in Las Vegas were "under water" while in Orlando, Florida this bad news was impacting 61.7% of the homes.

Foreclosures will continue to negatively impact the economic recovery of our nation for at least the next several years with the ramifications being seen in America in the form of diminished employment of all construction related businesses and workers to the depletion of family retirement savings tied to home equity.

The last thing our nation needs is for Obama to try to cure this real estate problem with some government mandate that requires all mortgages to be reduced, at no penalty to the home owner, to the fair market value of the property. The amount of this forced reduction would be in some manner credited to the mortgage holders, most likely as a tax credit.

And our nation would slide even more into debt.