主题：【原创】美国50年来最大的房市泡沫对经济的影响 -- 倥偬飞人

Our current era will be talked about for generations to come. Many will call what is happening to our elderly and poor a crime but few of the Bubble Heads and Marie Antoinettes today even notice. I guess if you travel by darkened windowed big black SUVs/limos or helicopters it is easy to miss all the beggars on the street corners and the homeless sleeping on the streets of our cities and towns. Maybe they are swept from the streets of Washington DC and New York where most of the movers and shakers (the Marie Antoinettes) reside and collaborate.

This is America the land of the free and home of the brave. More likely, a bunch of frogs in a kettle over a fire hooked on junk they don’t even have the time to use and enjoy but swimming around in circles all thinking that if they just swim faster they can get away from the heat. They all must think that Nirvana is just around the next corner and they swim faster eating junk food and buying more junk for a second of sweet rush.

It is said that when a crime has been committed it is often about passion or money. This one was about both. The passion for money and the money it takes to fund wars. Interspersed with hyper cronyism and ignorance of economics and we have an era that will go down in history as extremely notable.

Congress and the Administration needed economic growth to support wars (don’t ask which war because there are so many). Tax increases were out of the question (tax cuts had been promised and then delivered to the Faithful as part of the current contract). Bush encouraged people to shop and Greenspan encouraged people to get junk loans all while our manufacturing base was being off shored and our personal rights diminished. In their opinion it was in the best interests of the US. It was really their best interests and to hell with the middle class, the elderly and the poor. The Faithful believe they are blessed and of course that means the middle class and the poor aren’t. I believe history will not treat the Faithful kindly.

The Fed, Japan and China all went along with the necessary low interest rates to get everything cranking by supplying more than adequate liquidity. Each for their own self interest. Again, where was Congress or the President on any of this? Cheerleading us into a hole while funding the most egregious cronyism seen in my life time. All justified by some vague terror supported by marginal elections and a winner take all idealistic form of capitalism or maybe even fascisms. What a great era for the Faithful.

Bank regulators were either asleep at the wheel or told not to look. Only time will tell but more likely the latter. The how and why may never be known.

Because all these junk bonds needed a home and many institutional buyers (especially pension funds) could only buy top rated bonds, rating agencies rated much of this junk AAA. Who was/is there to keep the rating agencies honest? Answer = No One! Oh yea, the market! Haha! Funny!

The government didn’t care as long as the increased tax revenues came rolling in.

The loan packagers with no regulation in most cases were able to sell the loans to a big Wall Street firm with virtually no consequences for the quality. Certainly never a thought to the ramifications or consequences. Besides everyone was doing it and no one seemed concerned about the eventual down side. Maybe tomorrow would never come. The fed will keep the downside risk of affecting the Faithful anyway. So who cares?

The appraisers had to work for the packagers who only wanted quantity. The appraisers fault was not walking away because if they didn’t come up with the justifiable figures their careers were over. The packagers would only use ones that justified and everyone wanted the deals to go thru. At that point it was Nirvana and every body was on a junk high.

The real estate brokers loved the money. Of course they were caught between new buyers who had never before had been able to qualify for a loan (wasn’t that something, walk and chew gum and qualify for a loan. Whoopee! Kids in a candy store with no adults and a pocket full of money!!! ), speculators who for the first time could access easy money for purely speculative ventures and sellers who were hungry for bigger and better houses, to pay off other debts, buy that SUV or to just move. Sure blame the real estate agents. Why not? Some agents even fell for the idea that real estate only goes up and the good times would never end and bought up themselves. Some are now in the same boat with the other Alt-A borrowers with much less income than in 2005.

So the media’s consensus is that it is the poor devils who borrowed all that money to fund a dream sold to them by the highest levels and best psychoanalysts in our great nation are the ones to blame. Or maybe it was the real estate agent or the appraiser… Come on, this pyramid ponzi scheme came from the highest levels of our socio-economic-political system. Instead the media and some of you are loading up on those poor souls who were offered their own home. No more landlords hassling or complaining. People were coned by the highest level of enablers in the mortgage business who also were just doing a job, encouraged by the President and his Fed cronies and Madison Avenue and Wall Street.

None of this was possible before easy money with no oversight.

A lot of people profited.

Now we are into the consequences. You have to repay what you borrow, repudiate it or have it inflated away. For the federal government the only choice is inflation but what I think the Bubble Heads and Marie Antoinettes have forgotten is that 80% of our people are really not doing all that well and inflation is already killing them. It has been for a while now. That is why they are getting poorer in relationship to the wealthy. That is partly why they are starting to default along with other factors including resets and mistakes and accidents. And it will get worse with higher prices for gas, food and medicine. It is just simple math. Not hybrid derivatives or algorithms. Just simple household balance sheet math. Costs go up and wages stay stagnant or down and you go in the hole. Some can figure out how to reduce their overhead but most won’t be able to. There is a point when it all just crashes and for some people we have reached that point. Others are sure to follow. In our current state of affairs, inflation will destroy families and our economy. Will the real compassionate conservatives please stand up! No! It will cost them to much money? Oh! So much for morals and integrity! And should I say Christian Values!

Written by DougS on 2007-03-27 15:16:41

The Commerce Department revised down its figures for January, reporting a 9.3 percent decline in overall durable orders in January, first recorded as a 7.8 percent decrease.