Worst crisis since Great Depression?

re: Worst crisis since Great Depression?

Razor — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:49:54 GMT

I thought we elected presidents to boss our affairs and nation,Dud where you been for nearly 8 years George? someone told me it was called the white house.

re: Worst crisis since Great Depression?

peterhailey — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:49:12 GMT

If you think things are bad now, wait till next year. With our government acting on behalve of big business and corporate America is it any wonder their decision on how to fix the economy is to LOOT THE US TREASURY to the tune of over 4 trillion dollars so far. Which instead of being used for unfreezeing the credit markets as intended, bankers had adopted a TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN attitude. Leaving the taxpayer holding the bag just as how subprime mortgages were bundled with good mortgages and sold as falsely rated AAA securties with full US Gov guaranties removing the risk from their books and sticking the taxpayers yet again.

I have absolutely no faith in our government whatsoever to act on behalve of the middle class or working poor. Chaney has already announced he is moving his Haliburton corp. to the Middle East and Bush just purchased a 100,000 acre ranch in South America so he can go retire with the rest of the war criminals outside US treaties and extradition. When government employees have to ask the Attorney Generals office for immunity in order to carry out a presidential order we should are start saying --WTF--

re: Worst crisis since Great Depression?

Bill Johnni — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:01:53 GMT

My Dad used to tell me to always keep " your baloney detector switched on" and if it starts to beep turn it way up. I saw this coming 10 years ago...how can you inflate prices (and profits) without value added. the difference is only paper, not "real value" and paper value/paper profits can vanish like a magicians trick flash paper. while lumber got cheaper (flakeboard not plywood) pipes got cheaper(plastic not copper) ,the manufacturers got more efficient in producing cheaper substitute materials, the bulldozers got bigger and cheaper (old usa icons made overseas)...go ahead check out caterpiller and some other brands like komatsu and on and on) the site work and the real work got more efficient, they dont use hammers anymore just compressed air nailers and the plumbers don't have to fit pipe and solder or thread anymore, just cut and glue, and the trades are all done by amatures....most of which is on per diem or contracted by the unit (all outside of the weekly tax paying hourly time clock worker) and also a great deal of those who are illegitimate workers not paying into the system . look at the picture here and follow the money. the insult here is that these houses are built faster and cheaper and crummier than real houses built years ago. i don't think any of these recently built homes are going to be around for the long haul, they just made them bigger not better all they had to do was dress them up and put lipstick on them, now compound the problem with developers and sales people inflating the prices up and up with catchphrases like "you better buy now before the price goes up"

"the one down the street sold for" "it will always appreciate"and the most prophetic of them all.."real estate is your best investment,you can always sell it for more,it will be a major assett for your retirement,go ahead suuuuuure you can afford it, the tax incentives and write offs are worth it...and so on and so forth there is probably a dictionary of pitches for people who sell real estate but as i have called it for years..unreal estate...so while they sold you a house that was really worth 200k (with a modest profit included.. remember value added )for twice (400k) the price and the lending institutions made you pay almost the same amount (15 years interest+15 years principle..with the priciple on the backside of course) usuriosly over 30 years .you put a lifetime and 800k into the old barn which after the builders warranty expires ( they're not stupid, just greedy) has you leaning on your credit cards to keep the place fixed up at the local well placed big box home center.

did you get a house you could afford?that you could raise your kids in?could you save for college for your kids or was that mixed into the "appreciation" "investment" part of the pitch too? and did you have to take a second job or did your spouse go to work to...help out? buy buy buy spend spend spend, let's see who made money here and who's holding the bag. while the bankers and real estate churners grossly inflated the real price of unreal estate they were oddly silent about the fact that population figures (home buying baby boomers) weren 't going to support what they called "the bubble" which they in fact were inflating......and curiosly, when the sales and churning started to plateau a little they were also silent about that ,so then they went into what i will call "creative churning" thats the baloney you hear about" sub prime" "creative financing""no income verified""packaged out" and of course"default insured" money. so then the bankers sold the paper to the depositors(we)and the sales perps sold the goods(us)and the brokers (deregulated of course) lied thier butts off to get deals together that were "unreal" everybody made money(yours)and tons and tons of it.but wait there is more incredulity...now they find out that it was "unreal" and of course it wasn't their fault....the earned the mercedes and the beemer and the park avenue address and the big multi-million dollar parachute...they fleeced you fair and square and now my friend...they want you...scared and broke...to turn a blind eye to their reckless greed and plod on through this bailout.....the hard working shoulder to the wheel citizen. forget them . they couln't count the money they made fast enough while they obfuscated and deceived you. get a little mad and make sure you hold their hands to the fire that they started and hold them accountable after all they have accountants on staff don't they ? and they should know something about checks and balances.............the end.

re: Worst crisis since Great Depression?

KAREN BREIER — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:52:27 GMT

I'm a 60 year old disabled widow. I've paid my mortgage for 19 years, do NOT have credit card debt, pay my taxes, and now, I watch what I'm supposed to live on the rest of my life disappear. I was planning on selling my home to get me through my final years. now there is no money for a buyer. I don't have any children to "fall back on"...so what's a girl to do??? I live a GREAT DEPRESSION!

re: Worst crisis since Great Depression?

Tony DeWitt — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:12:48 GMT

Living like the Waltons sounds good to me. Crank up the saw Austin. Nite everyone.

re: Worst crisis since Great Depression?

Dr Val — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:23:24 GMT

We did it to ourselves. The dollar is only as good as the most indigent American

citizen. We wanted to create a sub-class without money, thanks to Mr. Bush we have indocumented aliens looking down on hard working Americans. Overseas won't trust our paper. The racist and exclusionary policies of the commercial class has caught up.I guess that the dollar will devalue and we'll become a banana republic.I don't care, I finished college and probably will never find a job to pay my school loan back. We can't even do business for ourselves. We learned to have so much racism that we have learned to hate ourselves. Used to be that people could trust the dollar. We have turned the dollar and what represents it, the American worker into an icon that is despised in the world. Foreigners laugh at me an American intellectual because we let the commercial class practices it's exclusion in order to try to make me beg in the name of white supremacy. Gd doesn't like ugly. Our egos have made it so that we hate to see Americans in business. A nation of Ralph Kramdens like on the Honeymooners. Keep up the good work!

Who would trust us?

re: Worst crisis since Great Depression?

mickey — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:17:15 GMT

Dishonesty is the problem and that includes banks. They don't charge you for putting money in, but bank of america charge you for taking money out and they pay very little interest for savings. They are like mobsters. The banks loaned house morgages to people to who had long records of not paying their bills. These are the businesses responsible and should be punished, not rewarded. Its been very hard to be honest all my life while living among crooks. The 33 to 43 year olds are the most dishonest bunch I've ever seen. Frist the dot coms, now the interest only adjustable loan. Product of the both parents work and no one raises the kids.

re: Worst crisis since Great Depression?

Jared Hill — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:05:13 GMT

Mr K. hit the nail on the head. How do you explain normal American families having a mortgage of 250k, jacked-up 1-ton 4x4s, his and hers, a Harley and 2 quads; all on an annual income of less that 50k? Borrow, borrow, borrow, from that cash cow known as home equity, that's how! I'm not a Bush-basher, but remember a few years back, before all this credit mess, how he was carrying on about how strong the economy was? Sure it seemed great! Everybody had nice houses, brand new TRUCKS, you name it, if we wanted it we probably had it. But it was all fake. People were using their houses as ATMs and spending that money on toys. Only problem with this ATM was that the money didn't come from checking accounts, it came from a loan account which belonged to some mega finance company. All good things must come to and end though. It was only a matter of time before this all came crashing down. Well, folks we are crashing. Now, Instead of bragging about how strong our nation's economy is, Bush is telling us that 700 Billion of our hard-earned dollar bills are going to fix our POOR economy. It is all due to gread, and dishonesty. I just hope we can clean up this mess, so our kids don't have to fix it.

re: Worst crisis since Great Depression?

Johnny O — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:24:08 GMT

Is their a real problem with the dow in the last 5years its up 2.113 or 22% from 9,275 to it's current 11,388. The bailout of the stock market with the biggest goverment expenditure ever appears to be totally ridiculous. Someone has to lose money and it should be the money lenders with their wild speculation. 2% to 3% goverment loans made money too cheap. Our elected goverment officials should not buy potentially worthless paper from the money gamblers who created their own financial problems with their unrealistic lending policys.

re: Worst crisis since Great Depression?

Joyce B — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 13:25:31 GMT

As a person who has lived within my means all of my life, been a single mother who put myself and my children through college without the help of student loans, welfare or other government subsidies, including help minority families receive, I am appalled by the state of our economy.

I was against NAFTA because I believed the benefits the government (Clinton) promised would never materialize - and they haven't. Our high paying jobs have moved off shore and continue to do so. I am in the electronics industry and since 2000 I've chased my job from one segment of the industry to another and from my home in the States to Guadalajara Mexico and back again. I now work with off shore factories teaching them how to do business with American companies. I've done all of the above without a raise except for a paltry increase associated with promotions designed to take more and more of my personal time. Oh yes, I could quit but then where would I work? I can't afford to pay for re-education given the erosion of my savings and home value nor would I be able to realize a decent ROI given my age yet I am too young to retired. I am stuck, just like so many other Americans and frustrated by the economic debacle we find ourselves in.

The housing meltdown - anyone with some awareness of economics knew the sub-prime market was a scam - how can someone borrow 120% of their home value? How can someone NOT put down a downpayment at the time of purchasing a new home? These practices were unheard of in the 1970s and 1980s. Who allowed such a scheme to be deployed?

The credit crunch other than the housing meltdown - did no one consider what would happen to our economy when our high-paying jobs were moved offshore? Did no one consider the probability that the average American would subsidize household budgets with credit when high-paying jobs were lost then replaced with service sector incomes?

The US made credit available to everyone - whether they had a job or not (college students, welfare recipients). Why are we surprised now as we deal with the fallout caused by loose credit practices

And the energy crisis - why didn't we learn our lessons in the late 1970s? Why did American car manufacturer's continue to build gas guzzling cars, trucks, SUVs? Why has it taken 30 years to recognize dependency on oil is a national vulnerbility we cannot afford?

Our leadership talks about the 'Free Market' and Global Economics and the benefits of each. In my opinion there are no benefits - we are worse off today - perhaps in the same financial mess as the years leading up to and following the Great Depression.

Where is our leadership? What were they thinking during these last 30 years? Why are we in this mess now? Could it have been averted? If it could have then why wasn't it? These are the questions we need to be asking of Washington right now - and of Obama and McCain - "No More of the Same" and "Change" - by gosh, they need to start laying out their plans to get us out of this mess WITHOUT laying the full burden on Middle Class America.