Spending Bill (to be voted on by House of Reps on Wednesday) $600 BILLION
http://www.reuters.com/article/domestic
Is anyone out there angry? irritated? The American people need help but the Auto industry?!
At least it's a "loan" (supposedly)
I understand having to bail out Wall Street but I hate that WE have to pay for it. Meanwhile CEO'S, etc. still get their bullshit money...for doing what?! Screwing everyone. Excellent.
And now off-shore drilling...well, it's ok now.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co
And the housing crisis. I believe that some people were mislead but I also believe that a lot of people took advantage and were greedy and now they're screwed and rightly so! I have NO sympathy.
This is a little bright light...the FBI is investigating Four Firms
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1222211
not that anything will come of it and it'll probably take decades...
oh and lets not forget what the Iraq and Afganistan wars are costing...
- Mood:
angry
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Comments
Frankly, I'd much rather bail out the auto industry...where they produce a tangible product and provide living wage jobs...than bail out Wall Street where they play fucking blackjack with other people's money.
The housing crisis? That was predatory lending at its WORST. They sought out people in credit counseling...who were already over their heads in debt...convinced them that refinancing was the smart way to go, mislead people with false interest rates, bait and switch balloon loans...it was fucking criminal. And not because they thought the actual mortgage to real estate ratio was a good risk...but because they bundled and sold the debts to other banks and essentially gambled with it. Seriously....CRAZY shit.
Add to that, changing the bankruptcy laws, so people can't get out of minor debt, (much of it medical), and of COURSE people will have to default. Certainly there were people who may have gotten in over their heads because they just had some sense of entitlement to more than they could afford or something, but the bulk of these mortgages were taken out of desperation to simply be able to pay off debts that they owed or on the advice of people who had the gambler's markets' interests in mind...not the consumers'.
And because of that predatory lending, it created a false inflation of home prices, so even traditional mortgages for people who could afford them were on homes whose value was bound to fall. And the real estate becomes no longer a liquid asset. This was a systemic failure of deregulation of the lending industry and had very little to do with the greed of homeowners.
I can't even get started on offshore drilling. ;D Thanks for the outlet for getting my vent on, Jen!
You are right, greed, pure greed.
I was pissed off at the stimulus checks that were circutlated. Jesus H Christ. It's like a slap in the face. Hey prez you don't have that much money. You can't send it, you can't bail everyone out. YOU DON'T HAVE THE MONEY. I've never seen anyone get out of a freakin hole by digging it deeper...ummmmm you only get farther in the hole dumbass.
I've watched people refinance their homes and then they go ahead and include all of their credit cards in the refince only to fill the credit cards back up to the max. It's never ending.
I couldn't possibly write about this without getting political. Sorry.
I live a simple life. I'm ok too. I don't want to pay for others mistakes either. You know what programs will be cut. The disabled, the poor, the people who are unable. That really saddens me.
The thing that concerns me about this is that the blame will fall on the homeowners. True...the McMansions went up and the SUV's abound. But in general, those people are not foreclosing. They have the jobs and assets to refinance and get better more legitimate loans. They may have to give up the SUV and buy used. Or they may even have to take a loss on the home and get a more affordable one.
But the actual crisis was caused by foreclosures on moderate or low end homes bought by the working poor. And those homes were not bought out of greed, but because they were assured it was the smart thing to do. For tax purposes, for debt relief, for long term liquid investment. Homeownership was made a national priority....a Presidential priority...and we know now, it was because the markets needed it to expand and prolong the mad money from the tech boom.
Another factor is debt/income ratio. The rule of thumb....no more than 1/3 of your income should be toward debt...including housing, is fine when gas is $1.50 a gallon, when groceries and other goods have corresponding low prices and income is keeping up with inflation. But 1/3 going toward debt when energy and gas and food and health care are going up insanely, and wages are stagnant? Without even mentioning balloon rates etc....what started as affordable debt is no longer affordable. Lack of foresight, sure. But greed? Not really.
Of course wanting more, or even greed of working people played into this. But if the deregulation of banking and lending had not happened in the late 80's, it would not have come to this. And deregulation happened because of corporate greed. There was waaaaay too much money to be made by the debt speculators to go untapped.
i'm so damn angry and so frustrated (due to the fact that all we can do is bitch to our congresspeople/senators).
i don't even know what to write anymore LOL! i'm that ticked! it would be full of cussing lol
wait, let me pick myself up off the floor.
app yesterday. Husband and wife, combined income of 65K, 85K in debt, that doesn't include their home. JHC. Do you really need an RV? Did the bank loan them the money....no. 5 years ago they would have and they would have loaned with no money down + 12 years on 15K. I was one of those sales people saying don't do this. I would explain (without the knowlege of 4.00 per gallon gas coming) how much interest they were paying. How upside down they would be for a long time. Didn't matter at all to most people...gotta have it now.
I agree it's going to get worse. It's not going to be fun. We as a country live and die by a FICA score.
I do agree that low income, to poor will hurt the most. Jobs will not be there. Probably mine included.
What's the answer?
I sometimes wonder if people get to a certain level of comfort...where they can easily pay their bills with enough left over for fun, and somehow think that the sky is the limit now? That debt problems are only for people who are dumber than they are or something?
I don't know what the answer is for the short term. The basic soundness of the economy depends on the working class being able to afford to buy goods other than necessities. And that means higher wages, domestically producing tangible goods and enforcing international trade and labor law. They tried to skirt that by paying lower wages and encouraging consumption via debt and cheap imports....but that triply screws the people who support the economy in the long term.
A "New Deal" type of government investment in infrastructure and alternative energy would be a good start...creating good jobs and developing new, globally marketable technology. But no matter how it rolls out, WE pay for it. I'm just hoping that the decisions made about how to handle this are made with the good of the entire country in mind. Long term. So maybe my kids can go to college and be able to make at least a modest living. Not just what would get Wall Street back to gambling the quickest!
i saw oprah yesterday -i don't watch but when i saw a couple yesterday that said they were upside down on their home AND were $90,000 in credit card debt, i couldn't resist on watching these morons. sorry, they're morons. period. how the f*ck do you do that. even that suze orman (sp?) said they WEREN'T victims. they CREATED this, themselves.
the people i feel bad for are the medical bill - people. the ones that have insurance and get completely screwed. have you seen the latest commercial? the guy that got sick and went to the hopsital? he had to go the bankrupt route and he had insurance...saying having insurance is like getting a 5% off coupon. SO TRUE! that's how i feel with my med insurance.
How's that sound?
Is it too early for a margarita?
;-)
The sad thing is there are probably people that DO believe that!
I'm pretty upset about the off-shore drilling, as well. It's a panacea, a psychological band-aid, and it won't do a thing to help the price at the pump, ever.
Have you noticed prices at the pump, btw? They're going down. Strange, isn't it? Bear Stearns goes out of bidness, prices at the pump go down. Lehman Brothers has trouble, prices go down again.
Coincidence? Or ya think maybe these assholes were hoarding commodities?
Oil is back down around $100 a barrel. That's fine. We need higher gas prices to spur research and development of electric motors. We don't need artificially inflated prices because Wall Street brokers are hoarding futures contracts.
I don't think commodities should be traded on the open market. That's my big beef. The price of bread has increased about 500% over the last few years. We don't eat much meat, anymore.. it's gotten more precious than jewelry. You can't eat metal. Good food (unprocessed, natural) has gotten SO expensive that poor people can't afford it, unless they're poor enough to be on food stamps. All those fat and toothless low-income people are fat and toothless because they live off of processed corn and can't afford health care of any sort.
I'm with you, Jennifer. It looks really stupid to me... but there's a lot I don't know. Maybe it'll work.
i always wonder how people with children do it. seriously.
and you're right about the food stamps...re: being poor enough to be on food stamps.
sh*t - i'm so angry....
You know global warning has nothing to do with us. It's God's wrath for all of the "bad" things the human race does. We are just paying for our sins.
I know I'm going to hell, I just know it! Where's the little rolling eyes smiley when I need it!
;-D
where's the hammer so i can hit myself in the head ...a few times....