Current Event Commentary: The Beginning of a New Era

We are pleased to announce an addition to the line-up here are HomeOwnershipMatters.blogspot.com. Effective February 1st a new, regular component of the blog will be a “Current Event Commentary”.

This is a fairly significant change from most of the blog segments, which by and large have steered clear of any commentary on news stories and instead have focused on straight education with a minimum of opinions about the current news. It can be a little dicey when you start to mix commentary with facts, guidelines and personal experiences. Commentary is by definition—subjective, personal opinion.

Facts, rules, regulations, laws and personal experiences can all be documented, cross checked, verified.

They are SAFE. As long as you get the details accurate, who can challenge you? You simply tell them to go check the facts and get back to you. End of conversation.

Commentary—on the other hand—has no such shield to protect the author of the comment. It’s basically just YOU and YOUR opinion. For the “Current Event Commentary” blog entries I will need to be careful to clearly identify “I” to eliminate the possible misunderstanding that other team members here at HOM share MY opinion. They may; they may not.

I feel pretty alone. And yet I feel it is time to step away from the ‘safe’ teacher position, at least occasionally, and address how I feel about stories, changes and challenges facing many of today’s consumers. You may be personally facing some housing challenges and I want to take the opportunity to be candid about what I feel a particular new story or change in policy means for the average person.

I will address a current event when it relates to housing/mortgages/foreclosure in a way which I feel commands/demands my attention. You will already have heard the news so I won’t waste time re-reporting. Instead, I will provide you with an honest analysis, based on my experience in this field. I will cut it, slice and dice it and turn it sideways so I can help you figure out what was MEANT by what was stated (or left unstated). I have always believed, as Paul Harvey stated so forcefully “the REST of the story” was the telling part, the important part, the part lurking underneath the oft-quoted part.

You can bet there is more than meets the eye when a story is about banks or banking or any other aspect of our current housing crisis. Nothing is what it seems, promises are illusions and all the players seem to be clustered together.

I hope you’ll enjoy the “Current Event Commentary” beginning next week and encourage you to tell me what you think about it by emailing directly to: mildred_b_w@msn.com.