It is interesting that a GSE, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, put the breaks on a Boulder County government sponsored loan program, Climate Smart, putting a halt to a government driven agenda, green improvements to private property, in an era where the government is exerting its will over everything and everyone in the private sector. Apparently, various factions of the government, federal and local, will now have to fight it out over who gets to tell exactly whom what to do. Private property owners will have to sit tight for now.
Some have despaired over ClimateSmarts' premature death and wonder how the government is going to get people, homeowners specifically, to spend money on energy improvements that will help Boulder meet Kyoto and keep the planet from overheating. After all, some homeowners are not very bright and some arm of the government needs to show them the way. The fact that these loans were apparently issued to people regardless of any rigorous assessment of value added, an appraisal on the back end, seems to bother the advocates of these programs not at all. I suspect these same advocates were very unhappy with say, Citigroup’s, policies of encouraging over-leveraging. I imagine the reasoning in support of these loans is something along the lines of; costs be damned, any and all energy improvements are worth the price and increased market value will follow. And if it doesn’t, all costs on the path to greenhood are to be borne to save the planet even if the property is worth less than the total of all the liens against it.
Oh well. Maybe now Boulder County will have to wait for property owners to determine their own desires for energy savings and budgetary constraints, and generally speaking mind their own business and get out of the loan business. Perhaps they should concentrate their efforts in support of Obama’s energy initiatives which may, if the government continues with its skull cracking ham handedness, force energy upgrades on a seller before a home can be legally sold. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you; government mandated green jobs funded by marginalized taxpayers.
