Sunday, January 27, 2008

CBS 60 Minutes Special Report: "A House of Cards"


The American mainstream media finally gets a clue about what's happened in the American housing market and reports it to the nation.

Gee, thanks CBS - for pulling your head out of your ass long enough to actually report something! I think you guys actually broke a network world record here in terms of story timeliness.

I just loved the question from the clueless homedebtor: "If we can't fix it, what do we do?"

You freaking rent, assholes! Just like everybody else!

There is no guarantee that the value of a home will go up. It may go down. It's just an adobe.

"That's OK as long as the home value goes up!"

No one can guarantee that home prices will always appreciate. You signed a home mortgage, not a guarantee nor an entitlement to housing appreciation and an easy-out low-payment re-fi.

Where do these people come from? Did they graduate from high-school? Did they ever take a mathematics or personal finance class? Are these college grads? If yes, Jesus Christ, this country is completely screwed!

You can't "fix it" because you had no business going into debt for a 2 bedroom $350,000 house in the first place!

If you had the mental capacity to consider the upside scenario of low monthly payments and appreciating home value, then what possibly would have prevented you from imagining the reverse scenario of higher interest rates (adjusted higher monthly payments) and depreciating home value?

Nothing.

Caveat emptor, people. Caveat-freaking-emptor.

I'm sorry. I cannot be kind about this.

Everyone works hard in this country. Everyone sacrifices more of their time for work and making money than they really should just to provide for their future and for their families. Americans everywhere are working themselves to death. (Just ask any European.) Contrary to what realtors may tell you, home values can and will go down - sometimes when values detach from fundamentals (like the median incomes of potential buyers), home values fall dramatically.

Americans are either in a position to weather such storms financially or they are not. What is new about that?

The only difference I can see is that these foreclosing homedebtors appear to be "surprised" that this could happen to them, or feel that they were lied to by unscrupulous realtors or mortgage brokers. At the very least, these individuals should have shelled out $300.00 to hire a lawyer to review the mortgage before they signed it.

American taxpayers should be outraged at those in this country who think it's OK to be financially inept, it's OK to throw caution to the wind for free cash, it's OK to place their families into the the dire consequences of risky decisions (loss of home, foreclosure, homelessness, bankruptcy, poor credit rating, deeper debt).

Somebody explain to me why any of these people deserve a bailout by other taxpayers who used common sense and refused to buy into the realtor hype and Ponzi scheme?

I don't want people to suffer, but damn it somebody has to pay. Somebody has to learn a lesson, otherwise the stupidity carousel keeps going around and around and everyone is worse off.

Nancy Pelosi, Georgia Bush, Harry Reid all think it's OK to use government funds (i.e. your tax money, since the US government is bankrupt) to bail out the debts of people who have zero business owning such homes in the first place, or to bail out financial institutions who did not following basic financial lending guidelines and fundamental principles of finance.

This is wrong on so many levels.

But yeah, thanks CBS. You guys are real heroes with this one. It's better than nothing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am just smiling because it is all just monopoly money anyway. The real value of a home must be tied directly to the amount of money people are making or it's value is fabricated and based on something that can fail. They all knew this but ignored this fact. Why? It was simple greed and lust for power. You are very opinionated against the person who bought the home. It is not their fault this happened. It is the higher-ups fault. The higher-ups have to take the rap. They are the ones who made the faulty decision. It is only human nature to want the best for yourself and want a beautiful home. Those homes probably aren't even made well with high quality value. Maybe just cheapo ingredients and at a way too inflated price. Monopoly money and unreal value. Two things that got them into trouble. The homeowners were being positive minded as that is a way to really get somewhere in life. They banked their hopes for the future and the American dream on false promises of lying, greedy men. The truth is the realtors and lenders were greedy for the "now" dollars and chose to screw everyone else to live it up like they were dying tomorrow. So we now all must suffer the consequences as they resonate outwardly into the society.