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That has the same effect of losing a pension or retirement accounts.
I am not saying Americans are not stupid for treating housing as an investment, but the economic sophistication being so abysmal as it is, they thought they were investing and saving. They can enjoy it all they like, but can't sell it off later for retirement.
In all reality , if ya didnt need somewhere to live , a home just may be the worst investment ya can make.
Yep. Just remember, it's NEVER the fault of we the people whom live wayyyy beyond our means buying crap we don't need and so on and so forth.
One gal in FL with a 150k mortgage kept refinancing over the years to pay off racking up her credit cards. She finally lost her house with a 350k mortgage to the evil banks because she was sunk with other debt and the market had stopped balooning so she could no longer refinance.
Yeah, 20+ years in a house and you wind up owing TWICE what it initially cost and that's the Banks fault. lmao.
What is needed is to curb undisclosed speculation on the financial markets and provide more transparency to commercial transactions. The problem with regulating banking and the stock market can be easily solved with a single piece of legislation. Congress should repeal the safe-harbor provisions of title 11 that exempt financial derivative contracts from bankruptcy. (Derivatives are really secret liens that conceal leveraged borrowing carried "off balance sheet" - this was the lesson learned from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, and why AIG was "too big to fail" necessitating the government "bail-out.") Without that exemption for "anonymous creditors" the market will be forced to regulate itself. It’s really that simple.
Do a search on this forum on "walking away from mortgage"...or use google.
Reasonable estimates have well over 1/2 the foreclosures being due to the house being "underwater".
That hole your head is in, is it deep enough? Absolutely amazing. Flipping houses is for chumps, mulit-trillion dollar extortion through-out the world is what is going on.
To the OP, I hate to say it, but I don't think we ever will. Big business, whether it's banking, pharmaceutical, automotive, has too much of a stranglehold. Big business is what's running this country, NOT the politicians. The politicians, all of them, got their pockets lined by business and special interest groups.
Of course the bail-outs were totally wrong, but hey "I scratch your back you scratch mine" right?
Mathguy you pointed out people walking from homes they were upside down in. There is no way many of these banks didn't know before the loans were signed that some of these people couldn't afford these homes! True the feds kept lowering interest rates, but there's an underlying reason credit became so easy in the late 90's and early 2000's. I know of a local car dealership that did this. People that were poor were getting financed for new Ford Explorers. Don't worry, most of them got re-possesed. Many in the finance industry saw big profits and nothing else.
Something else to consider is that debt, or keeping a person in it is a billion dollar industry. Why do you think the CC companies want to keep you in debt? I remember getting a letter from Chase that they were increasing my credit line by $7,000, and I didn't even ask. The more credit you use, the more your monthly payment, which if you're just making the monthly minimum it's mostly going towards interest. They like that. Then when the card is maxed out and you can no longer afford the monthly payment the CC sells the debt to a collection company for pennies on the dollar. Now, not only is the debt off their books, but they've also made a profit! See how nice that works! Now I agree people need to be fiscally responsible. I mean you shouldn't be out buying an iPhone when you can't pay your electric bill.
I don't believe our country was set-up to run this way. It wasn't founded on the Wal-Marts, Home Depots, Chases. It was founded on the principles that those willing to do an honest days work would recieve an honest days pay, that you could survive on. It was built upon the "mom-n-pop" small businesses. It was built upon the principle that those businesses could expand with hard work too. That the hamburger stand could become McDonald's, that the Walton's Five and Dime could become Wal-Mart. Sadly, the huge amount of greed has taken root. The CEO gets a two million dollar pay raise, while the company posts a yearly loss, jobs are sent to China and employee benefits are slashed. Big business controls the Senate and The House. It controls state and local governments as well. Wages stay stagnant while the cost of living goes up, and the middle class continues to get squeezed out of existance. See the ones at the very top, snorting the coke, dinning in the finest restaraunts, that's who's really pulling the strings. America being sucked dry is the furthest thing from their minds
I just finished "Greedy Bastards" and the detailed discriptions of the grandest theft of all time are amazing. On the international level Greg Palast has done the same in "Vulture's Picnic". I suggest everyone, right and left, read these books.
It's called Crony Capitalism and BIG GOVERNMENT. Government rewards the losers, both corporate and individual.
The only way to stop this is to downsize government. We should end ALL government bailouts and subsidies. If government cannot bail out the losers, corporations will have less leverage over government. There will be less money to fight over.
I disagree. The way to stop this is to separate the Government from corporate money. IMHO money is NOT free speech and never has been. We have to stop corporate political contributions, corporations providing jobs for ex-congress critters and supplying personnel to regulatory agencies or employing regulators after they leave the government. These are just a few of the necessary steps. The main thing we have to do is stop worshipping corporate greed.
We actually need much more government regulation and control of business to create and protect free open markets from domination by any single investor or group of investors. Without government control all markets are eventually controlled by crony capitalists and destroyed by unchecked speculation. Banks are very useful businesses. Banks operated by gangster criminals are not.
Lets not forget that Obama received 80% of the Wall st donations compared to McCain,but the left has memory lose about that.
Actually Wall st and most large finacial inst. donate far far more to Dems then Republicans.
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