I really wish that I didn't have to say anything, but then again you know that some of the time I just can't resist a good rant. So juicy is this topic that I'm interrupting what has otherwise been a peaceful vacation in order to pound some sense into a few heads via my computer keyboard.
Ready?
It takes just TWO WORDS this morning to trigger my every greying, ever balding head's instantaneous leap to orbital rotational velocity.
Those words?
MORTGAGE CRISIS.
I don't care what anyone says, there isn't any such thing as a "Mortgage Crisis", unless you're an
Got it?
Case in point, the recent failure of some bank on the US left coast called, of all things...IndyMAC.
July 12 (Bloomberg) -- IndyMac Bancorp Inc. became the second- biggest federally insured financial company to be seized by U.S. regulators after a run by depositors left the California mortgage lender short on cash.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will run a successor institution, IndyMac Federal Bank FSB, starting next week, the Office of Thrift Supervision said in an e-mail yesterday. The regulator blamed U.S. Senator Charles Schumer for creating a ``liquidity crisis'' after a letter on June 26, in which he expressed concern that the bank may fail.
Poor old Chucky Schumer.
He as usual has his dirty but well polished expensive Italian shoe in his mouth, and this time the pencil pushing sliderule toting government financial weasels are blaming dear Chucky for bringing down a MULTI BILLION DOLLAR FINANCIAL INSTITUTION at taxpayer expense.
I have to utter the word "b u l l c r a p" under my breath so as to offend as few people as possible here on a Pennsylvania Sunday morning.
Chucky Schumer didn't really cause the final cash run on the bank, putting it "under fire last month from Schumer, the Democrat from New York, who said lax lending standards and deposits purchased from third parties left it on the brink of failure. During the 11 business days after Schumer explained his concerns in a June 26 letter, depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion, the OTS said. "
Or did he?
Some out there believe that Democrats have been capable of doing things like this in the past, and by default further reinforcing their imaginary threat to your financial health and well being that they claim the Evil George Bush administration represents.
There really isn't any "mortgage crisis", unless you are the owner of a house which you couldn't really afford to buy/finance in the first place, or you're a shareholder in one of the companies propped up by the Imperial Federal Government of the United by God States of America for the purposes of assuring things like "affordable housing" and "diversity" in the ranks of homeowners.
I've got a little news for everyone out there.
Ready???
Government efforts be dammed, I determined through extensive personal observation and research that apparently there are people out there who are too STUPID or otherwise financially IRRESPONSIBLE in the way they conduct their lives to successfully be home owners.
They didn't just beam theirselves in here from Mars or land here from the Moon or
They were most likely BORN here, and they shop in the same malls, eat in the same restaurants, and worship in the same buildings as you do on Sunday.
It's just that simple.
We call them children for the first twelve years of their lives, before they become "dependents" or teenagers or whatever you call them for the next twelve years before you can kick their butts into line and out of your basement or spare bedroom(s).
Then if we're lucky they move on in life and become RENTERS or TENANTS, only moving out of the trailer park or apartment complex when they have amassed enough financial wherewithal to take a substantial equity stake in a property and make monthly payments for fifteen or thirty years on a place to live which THEY ACTUALLY HAVE BUSINESS PURCHASING AND further...
WHICH THEY CAN ACTUALLY AFFORD.
Unfortunately, to my way of thinking (the substance and truth of which is being played out on the evening news every night), this current "mortgage crisis" or "housing crisis" is the direct result of the government meddling in the free market.
You think only mean old rich "investors" are in the mortgage business?
If you really think that way, I've got a little tidbit that's gonna cause you to spill your coffee on your newspaper this morning.
YOU'RE in the mortgage business, ladies and gentlemen.
More importantly, your retirement money and your future income (along with that of your children and grandchildren) is held hostage in today's and last years mortgage business, and like everything else the elected and appointed government idiots get involved in, if it weren't for the access to a virtually unlimited source of funding gained under the point of a gun barrel and threat of imprisonment, the whole thing would have gone under in the late 1980's or early 1990's.
If things don't go the way they promised or like, or if the heat starts coming on a little too strong, unlike you and me, instead of cutting our losses and DOWNSIZING, the government pinheads run out and re-write the rules and miraculously "increase funding" and declare the crisis over with--omitting the fact that YOU'VE probably participated in some small way in the process without your knowledge or consultation.
For example, just like being in the flood insurance business has inflated resort property values, the government insidiously continues to exert undue influence on the housing markets in fancy overpriced places like Pasadena, California and New York, NY, as well as in mundane little places like Knoxville, TN and Ozark, AL.
The problem is that even with all of their cash they can't control the basic ingredient in the process.
People--and our tendency toward avarice, vanity, and greed.
If everyone knew that you had to pay cash for the ocean front or river front property you covet, and that you had to personally finance the bricks and mortar in which you park your SUV and your boat and bathing suit under, and that if when the nearby water jumped up and washed it all out to sea or into the river delta you had to again pay cash to rebuild your little water front empire, your little water front empire would possibly never be built in the first place else it would take a substantially different form in the weeks and months after
The same is true for "Mac Mansions" in Dunwoody, GA and Hometown, CT, or anywhere in downtown or suburban [name your city.]
The sad thing to me is that so many sincere, hard working people and families have to sit by and sacrifice, doing the right things--the things going down the true path of personal responsibility and success,--only to have our politicians slap them in the face as they rush in to the rescue to bail out the arrogant and the ignorant risk takers who/whom spend their lives gambling WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY and complaining on TV about their lack of self esteem.
If you're what I call a "responsible homeowner", you have my permission to reach behind yourself and give yourself a nice pat on the back.
If you're in the other category of "home squatter" I've addressed, you have my permission--no...I command you to either press you head further into the bodily orifice into which you have it embedded-- else reach behind your self and kick yourself in your own ass
(thereby limiting the amount of time you have to spend reaching into my wallet looking for funding to cover your own personal share of...
the so called "housing crisis.")
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