Okay first read this. Now I know folks who think everything is hunky dory won't want to have their faith questioned, but I'm feeling evil. When you're done with that now read this.
What am I thinking? The folks I want to read it, won't. I'm asking you to do so and that's like a double dog dare you. You suspect foul play!
As I've said many times, political belief is religious. You stick with your faith because questioning it causes you to question your own judgement and few people like to do that.
However I had hoped people would question the status quo but we have a group of candidates that seem to be retreads of the same old stuff. McCain wants to keep us in an illegal, immoral and ineffective war. Clinton wants to build a dynasty with the help of the Big Money Boys and Obama really doesn't want to talk much about specifics.
Yipes.
© 2008 by Gordon Michael Dobbs
4 comments:
I read it.
What's your point?
What is the presidential candidate supposed to do about this? What should their platform plank be on this subject?
I see two choices:
Govt steps in and bails everybody out. OR
Govt steps in and forces mortgage holders to - what? Not sure.
My understanding is this (correct me if I'm wrong):
Govt basically forced institutions to create ways for people to "buy a home" i.e. put a down payment on a home. Govt did NOT oversee the actual loan structure, and a lot of stupid people fell for "predatory" loans with exploding payments.
Payments are exploding and people can't afford the huge payments.
Is that much basically correct?
Now what is the presidential candidate supposed to propose?
I'm asking, not posing some sarcastic rhetorical question. What do you think can and should be done?
what gets me the most, is that people don't connect this stuff to voting, and to their decisions at the polls.
a lot of people could afford those exploding payments if they weren't paying 3 times for gas what they were paying eight years ago, and watching their grocery bills double every three months as the price of gas and, therefore, delivery keeps rising.
and now the most popular alternative fuel choice is going to be burning corn? an ethanol initiative might sound good at first, but when you figure that corn is a major crop used in everything from feed for meat to fertilizer for other vegetables to things that have no business having corn in them (like ice cream), food costs go way up and there's no money to pay for housing costs.
it's not just people being stupid taking terms they didn't understand and not being able to pay their mortgages, it's banks not understanding that not everyone has an MBA, not everyone has bought a house before, and not everyone can foresee struggling with artificially inflated grocery and fuel bills 15 years after they buy a house.
crap. now i'm angry and hungry.
So... uh...
Did I miss something?
I'm still not sure how to connect this to voting. Or what the pres candidates are supposed to propose re the housing pickle.
"it's not just people being stupid taking terms they didn't understand and not being able to pay their mortgages, it's banks not understanding that not everyone has an MBA, not everyone has bought a house before, and not everyone can foresee struggling with artificially inflated grocery and fuel bills 15 years after they buy a house."
An MBA? Neither of my parents had been to college when they bought their first house and raised me and my sister in the 60s and 70s, which saw rampant inflation and gas shortages.
But they knew what they could and couldn't afford. They knew that prices on all kinds of things can go up for various reasons. And they knew not to spend money they didn't have.
Post a Comment