CitiBankl has just posted losses of more than two billion dollars, which wasn't as bad as expected, while now expecting a housing slump of about two years duration.
In other words, collectively speaking, we might be lucky, if this is true. So, what happened?
A lot of people are trying to blame it on the feds for forcing lenders to loan money to minorities, which is a lot of crap. News flash-nobody is forcing anybody to loan outrageous sums of money to people that are credit risks based on race. The law is meant to insure nobody is turned down for a loan specifically due to their race. The idea that this is even part of the problem presupposes a lack of qualified loan recipients among the minority community, and is a canard at best to disguise shady business practices.
What happened was orchestrated by greedy lenders to create an artificial housing bubble. It was based on the supposition that they could grant sub-prime mortgages to folks of questionable financial stability at best, and when they failed to make their payments when the rates rose, they could foreclose and sell to somebody else at a profit. Then, they could say, oh well, we tried.
Unfortunately, a lot of problems coalesced to turn this little scheme into a debacle. The most obvious problem that no one stopped to consider was the sudden surge in energy prices-the latest manufactured crisis orchestrated by big business hoodlums and their political dingleberries.
Suddenly, there became an ever shrinking pool of potential middle-class buyers willing to pay for a house at quadruple the price that same house would have fetched twenty years ago. Times suddenly worsened for everybody, and the lenders were left holding their dicks. The rest of us were too busy worrying about how we would make ends meet in the face of rising prices for food and energy during a period of constant layoffs and the myriads of other problems and expenses of day to day living.
Suddenly, a Subaru looks a lot better than a Suburban, while a smaller and cheaper home, or the one you might already have, or the apartment you don't have to insure, looks a hell of a lot better than an over-sized MacMansion or any other home worth four times it's original value.
People never learn from such mistakes of the past like the nineties tech bubble, I guess, but damn, when are people going to stop falling for shit like this? I mean, really, how fucking stupid can you get?
6 comments:
I don't know how old you are, but my generation was always brought up to believe that homeownership was this pie in the sky thing and that nothing bad can ever come of it. In fact, when I was about 18, my father told me that it was impossible for someone to be upside down on their homes. He told me that that only happened with cars- houses always appreciated in value. I knew then that something wasn't right.
There's good and bad in everything. One thing in and of itself just always be all good and all wealth all the time.
As for rising food and fuel prices, I am sorry, but we as a nation can stand to eat less. Our Mom would also appreciate it if we drove less. I am sick of people insisting that something be "done" about it. They themselves need to make changes.
That's easy to say. What about the people that have to commute one hundred miles or more to work every day, and can only do so by driving? What if there is no one they can car pool with? See, it ain't all black and white. What if they don't want to move to some rotten ass city where they have to live like sardines in a can? Are they supposed to just suck it up and go along without making a fuss?
Solutions you see and hear put forward might not be appropriate for everybody.
As for the food thing, a large segment of people eat the cheapest foods they can find, because that's all they can afford. Guess who ends up suffering obesity? A clue-it isn't always from MacDonalds. Many times it comes from the necessity of eating high-starch, fatty foods because it's all you can afford.
Sorry, but there are no easy answers, and the politicians who push for these changes, while generally pandering for votes from certain segments of the population, need to be forced to have to walk the walk, as far as I'm concerned. Let's confiscate their wealth and see them have to make it on minimum wage, and let's see their brats have to go to the same crime-ridden public schools most other people's kids have to suffer through.
I'll bet you there'd be some god damn changes then.
As far as the house thing goes, I'm glad all this happened, to be frank. It was getting to the point that a lot of people would over time not even be able to afford a small four room house barely big enough for four people to even turn around in.
Would you pay one hundred thousand dollars for something like that? Well, you would in some places, and if this bubble continued like it was, soon that would be the situation everywhere you go. What would people do then?
Sorry, but if people are so stupid to take out mortgages for ridiculous amounts of money, what they are doing is contributing to the problem that everybody will have to suffer for. They deserve to lose their shirts. As for the people responsible for promoting these bubbles, which are actually legalized con games that adversely affect the national economy and everybody dependent on it, they are a different story. They should have to be some gang boss's prison bitch for the rest of their natural lives.
I have a long commute. It's 27 miles one way to get to work. I have put up with so many comments about why I still work there, with gas prices, if I live so far.
People everywhere, it seems, are beseeching me to quit.
I still work there, simply because the sucking up was worth it. "Paying more in gas to get to work than what you make" is a myth that people put out for sympathy.
If someone has that far of a commute, maybe they can get another job? I don't know, people tell me that all the time, and I am not even complaining.
As for food, we have a lot to learn about food, period. Our portions are outrageous. And to be honest, I haven't really noticed that much of a price increase in many thing. It's a few cents here and a few cents there. Yes, it adds up, but it's nothing catastrophic like people are making it out to be.
Yeah, I know a lot of people make it worse on themselves in some cases. A lot of people think they have to buy the name brand of everything when they could save an appreciable amount of money on generic items that are in most cases just as good, and on top of that have more per volume.
Some people could change to a car that gets better mileage, or could in many cases make arrangements to car pool, or take public transportation, and in the meantime cut down significantly if not eliminate unnecessary driving, which a lot of people are doing.
At the same time, some of these options, and in some cases all of them, are not available to a lot of people.
Even the changing cars is a tricky proposition. For example, say you are limited to a used auto. You know the one you have is a good one, even if you do need something that gets better mileage. You're in a quandary because, being limited to used autos, how do you know you are getting something that is as good as you know the one is you have already gotten? What if it falls apart on you in six months time?
In the meantime, you are constantly deluged by a steady stream of reports that make you wish you hadn't got out of bed in the morning. Sort of like the way I feel right now.
I know so many people now who are trying to sell their SUV's to no avail. Who's going to buy that now? Why do you feel down? Because of this issue? You can email me about it, I can be a good listening ear. Oh, and speaking of which, I haven't gotten to ask that woman her name. I think she went away. ;-)
No, I just get aggravated hearing the same old shit, and I especially get tired of hearing politicians pandering when they are the ones responsible for ninety percent of the problems to begin with. Sometimes I think I'd like to do something really outrageous at the polls, like write in Tom Cruise. Yeah, I know he's an idiot, but would he be any worse than anybody else? Plus, I like the idea of Katie as first lady.
I think that woman is somebody you saw in a picture somewhere, and you subconscious mind turned it into an instructional image. The ideas came from your own subconscious.
If you look through all your old family photos you might see her at some long-ago family gathering, red eyes and all.
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