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On NBC, Trish Regan, who is also from CNBC, promoted her cable colleague. She called his complaint "the populist shot heard round the world…Santelli's outrage reverberated across the country." Regan noted that fully 92% of mortgage holders are making their payments in timely fashion; though she did conclude with the warning that "a lot of these are adjustable rate mortgages. They will be resetting and the concern is people might not be able to pay in the future." John Berman addressed the economists' pitfall of moral hazard for ABC's A Closer Look. Berman singled out the provision in Obama's plan "that would pay homeowners who get government assistance an additional $1,000 a year if they keep current on their payments." Defenders of the scheme argue that preventing individual foreclosures supports house prices in an entire neighborhood: "That solution may not be 100% fair to everyone but, then again, who said recessions are always fair?"
CBS filed a contrasting pair of features on how foreclosure courts can handle cases. Michelle Miller showed us the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia where Judge Annette Rizzo encourages foreclosing borrowers and defaulting lenders to compromise. "You will not find her on the bench. She roams the room often nudging progress along." Of 3,600 potential evictions, 700 deals have been struck. Kelly Cobiella was in Lee County Fla where the courts take a Santelliesque approach. Dubbed the Rocket Docket, "a judge whips through hundreds of cases in a single morning." A typical eviction is ordered in just 18 seconds, with the homeowner given 60 days to pack up and leave. "Of the 450 cases heard this morning," Cobiella calculated, "only 47 homeowners showed."
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