Literally
Though not yet intractably.
At least you can be sure that a whole helluvalotta folks are hoping not.
Me? I don't know. Maybe it's time for that house-cleaning which Clinton's budgetary victories over the Rethug (and Dem-asses too) Congress managed to stave off via some balanced budgets. As I've said a lot, even more than usual, lately, we'll see...
Ack! What a frightening cartoon. It's a good thing I keep my money in copper. Pennies mostly, I keep them in an old sock.
ReplyDeleteI think the whole subprime lending thing is a terrible thing BUT...BUT... I think that people were also able to buy way beyond their means for a long time which inflated house prices and who benefitted? People who wold and made cash and traded up to even bigger mcmansions.
ReplyDeleteI feel sorry for people caught in the mortgage trap but I also know that people have this need to get the biggest damn vinyl box they can- even if it isn't needed.
COnsider how much goes to heat the houses created by the boom fed by the subprime market? Now I am not saying "poor people shouldn't have houses too."
What I AM saying is that mortgage standards were useful in that it took some financial discipline to save up that twenty percent. If you can get a zero down loan two months after a bankruptcy- well, why the hell BE frugal?
Shame on the mortgage industry, but shame also on our consumptive culture with eyes bigger than our pocketbooks.
True. My parents and grandparents had more common sense than to fall for something they knew they could not afford...this generation must still trust that the government wouldn't let anyone take advantage of them...HA!
ReplyDeleteCopper, eh Doc? Myself, I've got a wildly diverse portfolio of rabbits, weasels, wombats and cheese.
ReplyDeleteAll of which I, too, keep in socks.
Hey now, Lynn! You whacked the mole on the noggin on both counts! When an economy is sound and as-secure-as-is-possible, loosening the Credit purse's strings to give folk at the poorer end bigger opportunities is a commendable tack, IMO. What happened here, and has been building since the '50s, is an ever-widening gap between the fantasy that economic Growth can be unlimited and the hard and often cold reality that Wealth is NOT a right like Speech, and must be built out things more substantial than mere thoughts and desires. Those two are fuel but not the engine itself.
That is the problem at the heart of both this current economic crisis and, perhaps more importantly since this next allows such a crisis to ferment, the horrific state of this country's Political System.
Very cool, Maria! My first wife's parents were such folk as well. That's no small part of why I entered that marriage; I loved and admired her family greatly and was hoping to osmotically become like them in some ways.
{sigh} Live and (hopefully!) learn, eh.