i was struck by the similarity between your implicitly individualistic orientation- identifying bad guys- and the individualistic orientation of the wing nuts. This situation, as most social problems, might more productively and honestly be viewed as systemic, in a social psychological manner instead of maintaining the individualistic orientation in which we have been so indoctrinated. Good or bad people may respond to the demands of their social, in this case, business context with behavior expected, encouraged and allowed by that context. Viewing this serious crisis as the product of corrupt people instead of a corrupt system is easy, concrete and common in our culture but does not address the fundamental structure that creates the problem. I would remind that you can't blame systems for problems in some instances (poverty and racism) for their effects and then not do it in others and be consistent. We need rather more radical change.

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And that purpose is two-fold: 1) to level the world out and bring out standard of living down so that the developing world's (particularly China and India) can come up. 2) to put in place the next Great Bubble (the biggest bubble in history): the Al Gorian Global Warming Myth bubble. It will be HUGE.

We are already seeing the dire consequences of Gore's strategy: rising food prices, the return of inflation. There will be much, much more. We will see people displaced by the food crisis swarming cities. This will lead to political instability and we will see more crisis like we see now in Kenya.

Most cities in the world will be overcome with frequent rioting and increasing crime. We saw the template in the US in the 70s and 80s: and now this has gone global.

The state and corporations will use very sophisticated surveillance techniques and robotic police to keep control of the situation, protect institutions and supply routes. See the film Children of Men to see our near-future.

An arrogant elite will jet around the world inhabiting these supply routes, never willingly stepping outside them to see what is going on. As an example of the future, the farsical British Labour Party recently staged a media stunt to prove London was safe by, for the first time in many years, stepping out on to the street in a bad neighbourhood in early evening on a Monday (absolutely the safest time you could think of in the week). With their bloated and corpulant bodies, they scuried back to the confines of their political bubble once the cameras were switched off. That episode says it all.

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The bubble was the only thing keeping rotting American economy afloat.

Surprise!


Direct Primaries!

Direct Elections!

Direct Democracy!

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Oh, yeah. This time it wasn't done with federally guaranteed funds. BFD. Guess who is going to have to pay for the bail out of the banks. Same old, same old--us taxpayers.

"Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen" goes the old folk song.

As long as the robbers split their loot with the politicians, they will keep doing the same. And that's who we have chosen as our leaders.

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People keep zeroing in on the greed factor and I think it misses the mark.
The sub-prime market was developed because the average American worker can no longer afford a mortgage. The cost of housing has gone up drastically, our grocery bills have gone up mercilessly, our energy costs have gone up exponentially, our health care costs have gone up obscenely. We have also seen our workloads doubled, tripled, then quadrupled, as our fellow employees were eliminated (but not the workloads they carried).
Arthur Anderson style accounting has kept the bubble from bursting for awhile, but that has only kept the crisis from happening while it was still manageable.
Greed is there, for sure, but desperation is the real engine on this run away train.

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you would never know it where I live. I live in a town that has hundreds of outlet stores and is a central vacation hub for at least four states. This past presidents' day "holiday" was packed, as usual, with state and federal government workers and (DC, MD, DE, VA, PA esp.)the oulets and resturants were packed. People are still buying second and third vacation homes like crazy. Most of these homes sit vacant for at least nine or ten months a year. When people do drive the hundreds of miles it takes to get here they generally show up in huge SUV's. Pricey Med- Beauty spas are springing up all over the place. Developers are clamoring to build and fighting the locals tooth and nail to construct at least three huge shopping/upscale residence centers. So, I remain confused, as always.

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Milton Friedman:
"As you know, I am entirely sympathetic with the objectives of your Monetary Reform Act...You deserve a great deal of credit for carrying through so thoroughly on you own conception...I am impressed by your persistence and attention to detail in your successive revisions..Best wishes."

Marilyn Brannan, Associate Editor, "Monetary and Economic Review":
"Absorbing and very enlightening! There was not a boring minute in the whole thing."

Ian Woods, publisher of "Monetary Reform Magazine":
"This 3-1/2 hour video is professionally produced in the style of A&E Biography and covers the history of monetary reform from Roman Times to the present. It is packed with great quotations which make for a powerful argument for the need to reform the money system. A MUST for serious activists."

Larry Bates, form bank CEO, former Chair of The Tennessee Housing Banking Committee, author of "The New Economic Disorder, Chief Economist FAMC:

"Outstanding!. The best video yet on the history of the Federal Reserve and the mysterious disappearance of America's gold reserves. Fast-paced and riveting."

Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Banks Of England (appointed in 1928); reputed to be the 2nd wealthiest man in England at that time:
"Banking Was Conceived In Iniquity And Was Born In Sin. The Banks Own The Earth. Take It Away From Them, But Leave Them The Power To Create Money, And With the Flick Of The Pen They Will Create Enough Deposits To Buy It Back Again. However, Take It Away From Them, And All The Great Fortunes Like Mine Will Disappear And They Ought To Disappear, For This Would Be A Happier And Better World To Live In. But, If You Wish To Remain The Slaves Of Bankers and Pay The Cost Of Your Own Slavery, Let them Continue To create Money."

See the historical documentary:The Money Masters

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The mortgage crisis has its roots even deeper than this article suggests. Basically, the US has been loosing manifacturing jobs since the 80's and hemoraging them since Bush took office. When the “not a recession- war recession” of 2003-2004 happened, suddenly all the stops were pulled out of the housing market. Anyone who could fog a mirror could get a mortgage, and the mortgages were often for 100% or 110% of the value of the house.

I was reading the alternative press at the time, and they were talking about how the government was using the housing market to prevent a deeper recession, and to hide how deep the loss of manufacturing jobs in America were. Normally in a recession, people find it hard to get a mortgage, because the banks pull back. However, in the “not a recession, war recession” of 2003-2004, the banks marched forward, and threw open the floodgates to a series of ever increasingly risky mortgages.

The alternative press was talking about how the government and the quasi government agencies (FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC) were delibertly using the housing market as a printing press to flood the country with fiat money to pull the country out of the “not a recession- war recession” of 2003-2004.

When you look at the ads that were around then, “REFINANCE YOUR HOME, AND VACATION IN THE BAHAMAS”, it was obvious that someone was telling people to use their homes as a piggy bank to keep on spending. This was not just the actions of a few greedy individuals who ran big businesses- it was far too widespread to be that. It appears to have been a deliberate decision at a high level of government to keep the economy awash in dollars when the jobs were heading out the door.

I am here in Indianapolis, and it is obvious here that the “subprime” crisis is not just for the poor folks. There are large and expensive house in prime new subdivisions that are being foreclosed on. The foreclosures are hitting the middle class just as hard as they are hitting the poverty stricken inner city.

When the war started, all hiring in the US stopped, and the US went into a deep recession. I know this is not what the media reported. During the 2003-2004 period, every night an economic pundit would come on the news and announce "We are not in a recession". However, my personal experience calls this a lie. I am a highly qualified computer programmer that spent a year and a half on the unemployment line during 2003-2004.I graded tests (when I could), cleaned apartments, helped at a food pantry, and volunteered at the unemployment office. Every Monday morning I attended a support group for people who were unemployed (The Business and Professional Exchange). When I first came to Indianapolis, I attended BPE in 97 for a few weeks between jobs. When people stood to introduce themselves to the group, the would say things like : I am looking for a job at a fsst food place. People came and went pretty fast. During the 2003-2004 period, people would introduce themselves as : I am an IT manager with 12 years of industry experience. The difference between the people looking for work in 2003-2004 and the late 1990’s was phenonemal. But the press never reported this.

There has not been a “recession” in Bush’s term . That is the official media line. And what I have written here is not in any press release, or any mainstream newspaper. But then all the mainstream newspapers report on is crazy Hollywood celebrities. Real reporting is not currently in fashion.

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Last night on the PBS News Hour, there was a segment pondering the mysteries of "inflation". Everyone understands it's effects, few seem willing or able to grasp it's cause.

It seems, now that as prices on commodities across the board are rising fast enough to jell concern, confused consumers who have dipped deeply into the "equity" stored in what had been aggressively promoted as the bastion of escalating consumer "value", home ownership, are now betrayed by that vaunted value as it disappears into the black hole of default and foreclosure.

This overriding, perplexing process of eroding value, insidious and surprisingly broad in it's effects to the unwary, was danced around on the PBS segment as something so unpredictable, so blind-siding, however strangely familiar, yet presumably natural and acceptable at a previously more gradual, digestible pace, that it's mystical origins must arise from some other obscure dimension. Fun stuff to watch if you're not overtly concerned about feeding kids, heating the soon to be foreclosed house or paying the new tuition.

But as in other mystical religions, the high priests thereof find strange comfort, renewed purpose and career advancement in the dependence by the desperate need of their abject faithful for orientation, guidance and penance. By now one might think, in an informed and educated populace, we'd recognize the advantageous business interest for those selling bad faith and quick fix, stop-gap remedies to profound systemic inequity, but the price, so far, has been channeled to the distant or least audible, less seen and those not yet born deferring the requisite consciousness of responsibility to another more pressing day.

The debt we've assumed for the facsimile of wealth, the appearance of ownership, is based on a foundation as sound and sure as the barrier islands of Texas, with a future to match. The forces of nature pressing the issue on the gulf coast are no less likely to impose a hard, swept away reality on the resident believer in the viability of sand than the American citizen is to the real force of market tides distorted and imbalanced by the rippling effects of official monetary excesses. A hard reality easily evident in the statistical sea of historic, orchestrated official monetary abuses.

The myth that a sound economy can be based on debt, and war and that dependable value can be found and trust held in the variables of politically influenced, constantly eroding fiat currency is as feeble to the future as a given sand bar is to shifting disappearance against a relentless, observable reality.

Ask yourself why a gallon of gas, a loaf of bread, a watt of energy or a college education should cost 1000% more today in dollars than 35 years ago. Then calculate the same cost in the dollar value of gold or silver. Then wonder why so few have any savings, why every American man, woman and child owes the world nearly $40,000.00 and what your personal prospect is to paying that back. Finally, ask where all that money has gone.

Maybe every candidate for President should be asked those same questions.

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We have a corrupt financial system. We have stock markets that are composed of companies with corrupt practices such as those used by Enron. We have banks and accounting firms that support the corruption and engage in corrupt lending practices. We have no efficient regulatory system to provide oversight and punish infractions. The people in power have benefited and continue to benefit by the corrupt system, so there are no motives to change the system. We need for the Democrat president and the Democrat controlled Congress - I'm assuming that the Democrats get the White House and keep control of Congress- to change the system and provide regulatory oversight. Is that likely to happen? Probably not, because the Democrats also benefit from the system. I believe that we need to elect progressive people to Congress to fight the establishment and to force the issues before Congress. If we can not get public funding of elections, then we are going to have to pool our funds from the Internet and from local communities to support progressive candidates. As Rome burns the politicians fiddle and the media focuses on everything but the disaster that is our country's financial system and economy. As individuals we need to save as much money as possible, live within our means and not support the corrupt credit card industries. If we stop spending our money on things other than essentials, government will have to respond to the public not spending and supporting the current economy.

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I know exactly what he is talking about. I live in Indianapolis, just west of downtown, in a poor blue collar part of town. I know of people I work with who are as confused as you. They have held the same jobs for 10-20 years, drive to their suburban home, shop at the suburban stores, and have no knowledge of what is going on. I have to drive to the suburbs from downtown in order to buy anything- since there are few if any stores downtown. Those suburban stores are crowded. But the empty storefronts I have to drive by to get there stand as monuments to waste. 30 years ago, those empty stores were as bustling as any you currently go to. Now they are empty.

The people who are unaffected by the huge foreclosures tend to live in 1970’s houses, they do not live in new home subdivisions. For many years the banks had a double standard- one standard for “new” homes- anyone who could fog a mirror could get one, and a 10% down, you must qualify for older homes. So many of the older home neighborhoods have more stability than their new counterparts. The bulk of the foreclosures are in the poor areas of town, where life is always on the edge, and in the new home subdivisions.

At the height of the great depression, ¼ of the people were unemployed, ¾ had jobs and incomes. There has never been any economic downturn in the history of America that has produced pain everywhere. At the height of the great depression, one of my grandfathers was a doctor, and the other sold mouthwash door to door. Their experiences of the time were very different.

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To understand correctly what is happening in the world the today, in order to get it correct we have to understand how MONEY operates. To understand that we need to have a thorough understanding of the "Federal Reserve System." Once that is known, you will then say, "ah ha!" A good place to get this understanding is to first of all read a good book called, "The Creature from Jekyll Island -- A Second Look at the Federal Reserve" by G. Edward Griffin. Yes, it is a thick book but it is an easy read.

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I could not agree more with this article and the facts that demand our politicians to actually do something about the real problem. The finance bundlers and peddlers of the loans and the packages are all living large and like the so-called Mexican Bail-out (Chase Manhattan, Citibank, and Goldman and Sachs)we "The People" will be stuck with the bill.

I want to believe O'bama who says he has not taken any money from corporations so-far. But I wrote his campaign and asked if he will take money from the DNC which is corporately financed for the general election. If that is the case, then we can figure on more lies and cover-ups.

Back to the article. This is a mess and we cannot blame this on two Savings and Loan executives for the whole country, although that is what will be done. Two to twenty chumps will be hung out as sacrificial lambs and taken care of on the down-low.

The truth would imprison at least 50,000 individuals, but we have no room for them due to incarcerating pot somkers. Should these people be prosecuted under the "Patriot Act", strip their rights and throw them in "Gitmo" for treason? I'm saying this with tongue in cheek, but the sad news is that as long as the press is bought and sold by the unscrupulous banks, insurance companies, corporations, oil companies, the message will be kept amongst the few of us still thinking. Welcome to the "Matrix". There are legitimate banks. Why should we bail out the greedy banks and I think the press should be pounding this question.

Who knows, maybe we can wake up the "People" and get them to stop watching TV, Caring about overpaid jocks and actors, and buying into this illusion we call reality. I doubt it, but I am hopeful.

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He lives in a area around Washington DC, and the bubble created there!
And 'we the people' wonder why OUR elected officials 'don't feel our psin'??

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"Since January alone, the public's perception about the state of the economy has plummeted -- with just 17 percent calling the nation's economy excellent or good -- down from 26 percent last month. The percentage rating the economy poor has grown from 28 to 45 percent."

Is that because people are losing jobs left and right? Or is it cause the media keeps talking about a possible looming recession?

I'm not saying we aren't headed for a recession, what I am saying is public perception is created by the media, not the people in the trenches.

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an excellant article in The Nation magazine, by Max Fraser, Feb. 11th edition.

I don't know about these 10 point programs this author is referring to. The article above tells it like it is!! There are no easy answers! Housing prices were highly inflated, and realitor's are trying desperately to keep them there! They make more money the higher the price!

We need MORE small, well built, well designed, homes, and a lot fewer McMansions!

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How do you keep a nation in turmoil? Start up a war? Get high profile figures killed?Cause millions to loose their homes? Create a Savings and Loan failure?
It seems pretty same ol'-same ol'. I've been watching this crap for 50 years. Everytime the government gets into a jam homeowners get the shaft,the middle class gets dumped on and the poor go even more hungry,while society casts a glaring eye at all who need help from the disaster caused by out of balance social policies and outright greed. Pay attention to how the fallout goes. You'll see just who runs things in america. yeah,we all know it ain't the congress.Nor banks,they exisist to give money to folks that don't need it. Just the fact they made such knowingly bad notes,they knew what the end result would be...economic turmoil.
Draft jeffrey7 for Prez '08

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...and everyone else involved.

You want a home you can't afford? The you go to someone who will offer you "duh lowess dam monfly payments inna county" and get your loan.

You don't read what you're mortgaging 30 years of life for, you just read duh munfly payment, and hand over whatever small amount you've saved, assum the PMI, and get yer' dam loan, pilgrim.

You're a greedy consumptor*, who gambled your family's well-being on a stupid bet that you can't afford.

And then some cowboy finnacier looks over a bunch of loans like yours, and assumes he'll do better than break even, so he tells his company to buy your stupid loans that you have no logical probability of repaying.

He or she is a stupid consumptor, acting on behalf of a lending/speculating company.

So that leaves us with a market in which the people who bet the farm on obviously stupid loans are losing their farms, and a market in which obviously stupid financiers are costing their companies billions of dollars in stupid investments.

Financial education costs time and (often) a little money folks, but ignorance is priceless, in terms of losses.

This would all be business as normal--the costs associated with ignorance and stupidity--except a bunch of you greedy fools are asking that Congress mandate that the rest of us bail you out of your stupid and/or ignorant mistakes.

How dare you?

*obviously, i made consumptor up. sorry...just couldn't think of anything in the vernacular to describe the rampant stupidity that people have been buying sh1t in the real estate market for the past six years. you make the bed that you lay in. you bought it, too. it's right there in that stupid ARM mortgage you decided to sign. if you decide to be broke, don't decide to charge the rest of us.

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See http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/mortgage-crisis17:

"Mortgage Crisis Triggers Walk Aways -
Desperate Decisions Mark a Shift in Home Ownership Attitudes"

". . . Across the country, more than 30 percent of homeowners who bought in the last two years are now saddled with negative equity, meaning they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, the research firm Zillow reported recently. Those homeowners can’t easily sell or refinance their way out of those loans, especially with house prices still falling. The Wall Street Journal described this as a vicious cycle, giving borrowers "an incentive to walk away from their mortgages."

"It’s more fodder for a blogosphere already inflamed by the prospect of widespread walkaways, prompted by Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis’ observation that social attitudes toward default have changed, making walkaways culturally acceptable. Fear of walkways also motivated a recent plan to delay foreclosures for some borrowers."

Q: Why do credit markets and banks need to be tightly regulated?

Q: What happens every time Republicans manage to deregulate some critical industry?

Q: In the end, will all this mean more consolidated rental housing owned by absentee landlords, and another increase in the gap between rich and poor?

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It's an intensely regulated market in which the regulators are deeply connected with the perpetrators of the frauds they are supposed to be regulating. It's going on right under everyones nose, and everyone in this case, SEC Currency et al are merely pawns in the beuraucracy with shots called by oligarchs who run the bloated government they pay for.

(Fox)-Henhouse

We have a state controlled economy that is supposed to not perform these sorts of deeds, regulating it more (without refining what constitutes regulation and where conflicts of interest should be enforced) is not going to do the trick. In some respects, it's a communist utopia, it's just partially implemented communism. A Free Market would not actually work this way, because people wouldn't put any money in it if they knew they were being robbed by the ones running the market and setting the rules.

Adding more government involvement in this economy will just add more layers of bullshit to hide fraud in.

Our economic regulatory agencies, need rather than an injection of steroids, cloning and a boob job, a serious bout of liposuction, reconstructive surgery and seriously minimalist regrowth ONLY where it benefits the people as a whole.

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The Bush administration is taking obviously desperate and highly inflationary measures to fend off the recession (or worse). Since none of the underlying flaws are being dealt with, this will make the inevitable economic collapse that much more damaging. At the same time they are proclaiming that the economy is strong. If they succeed in bulldozing this mess into the next Presidential term, it will be declared to be the fault of the new resident of the White House. Bush learned this trick when he inherited the Y2K/dot-com recession.

Right-wing radio is working this angle, saying the only current problem is liberals running down our great economy. They will be the first to declare that all the economic problems started on January 2th, 2009. The mainstream and financial media are not much better, cheerleading the torrent of newly printed debt Bush is preparing to dump into the system.

It is coming, and Democrats had better start educating the public.

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Yep, there were many people involved in providing loans to people who couldn't afford those loans. A lot of faceless evil corporations are taking the hit, and deservedly so.

But lets face it, the bottom line, is that people took out loans they couldn't afford.

Yes, the banks are willing to loan you much more money than you can ever pay back, and we all know that. Thats why YOU are responsible for buying a house in your price range. YOU are responsible for your budget, and YOU should know, what you can and can not afford.

It's called personal responsibility, and this case shows a sheer lack of it.

A side note: Countrywide, the predatory company most responsible for these loans, was awarded for being the best minority lender, because they overlooked things like "personal income and credit history" to allow subprime loans, after being told they weren't approving a high enough percentage of minority applicants.

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You cannot have a free market that is also Fair without regulation. The Uncle Milty Friedmanites promote the attitude that customers are suckers : sheep willing to be fleeced. Listen to the ENRON tapes and you will learn all you will ever need to know. It's not the exception it is the rule.

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You ask excellent questions:
"Who is ready to stand up and organize a national mobilization to stop this outrage? Who is ready to fund it?
Who?"

Why ask these questions when you already know the answer? You said so yourself, earlier in your article, when you recognized that no one had the issues on their "political agenda save for the efforts of a few advocacy groups on the left and Ron Paul on the right".

I guess we're not giving him the time of day, because he's a Republican? Not Politicaly correct? Whaaaaat???!!! Too bad. Ron Paul's the only presidential candidate I've heard talking about these things - since day one, yet.

Though most candidates try to pretend otherwise, A candidate can't be 100% all things to all people on all issues, so we voters must pick our battles.

When a candidate is taking a unique stand on an issue of extreme importance, when other candidates are failing to do so, what should that tell us? Even if for some reason we might not ultimately cast a vote for that person, we should at the very least, force debate organizers and mainstream media to respect rather than marginalize the candidate.

In my view, for the most part, the left has so far failed to stand up for Ron Paul, even as he has stood up for all of us.

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http://www.sltrib.com/ci_8318199?source=rss

And how amazing that Rightwing Religious LUNATIC fundies can make STRANGE BEDFELLOWS with those "Capitalistic" SINNERS !

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Because the elites arent the ones who are going to lose their shirts. They have a vested interest in destroying the economy, because they can move in and buy everything up for pennies on the dollar. It's always the poor and middle class that loses. But you can bet the elites wont explain that on the tv, because they're too busy laughing at us being brainwashed.

It's up to the poor and middle class to educate themselves. Right now the poor and middle class are obsessed with football, Britney, American Idol, Obama, Hillary, McCain. And NONE of that is going to serve them. Sadly, the middle class just cant seem to get that through their thick skulls.

We tried to warn the masses, through our support of Ron Paul. But as usual, all they could do is make jokes... while ignoring the fact that Ron Paul has been shockingly correct about what he's been warning us about. Especially when compared to the track records of McCain, Hillary, and Obama over the last 5 years.

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The same sort of story was on 60 minutes a couple weeks ago, and it's just astounding how people will simply decide not to pay their mortgages when their assessed value drops below the price they paid. Is there no sense of ethics and personal responsibility anymore?

For me, I have herpes and feel depressed. but site herpesmates.com makes me feel better. I am really receiving many support by joining this.

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What a shock. Americans got played and Wall Street got paid. Again. What else has been new since "supply side" economics took over the country?

The U.S. economic system is engineered to be against the poor, lower middle class, and those who don't have assets. You need only to review the tax code to see that this is true and in recent years it has been so regressively engineered it's a wonder any of the median and under income people survive.

The tax code provides for multimillionaire CEOS to get write offs for their companies for their health insurance, for their limousines, their jets, and their financial advisors. As if $130 million or so wasn't enough to take home, they get these services for free while you, the average U.S. citizen pay about 30% taxes on his wages. The mortgage write off favors those who are fortunate enough financially to be able to own a house...and worse, it also exists for second homes. Most average citizens cannot even afford a first home. The best interest rates, the best investment packages, the best prices.....are almost always given to the wealthy. Everything is stacked against the average consumer now....and here we are with a government that is supposed to protect the rights of the people - just trampling over those who need the most support.

The "nanny state" that right wingers so disparage actually exists to serve the moneyed interests now - although they don't want the regular citizen to figure this out. The crippling of the FDA, affordable housing, and the infrastructure has been engineered by the anti-government greedy crackpots who run this mercenary game for their own gain - but they certainly have been busy empowering Wall Street, empowering companies so that worker's rights are trampled, and empowering the wealthy with unconscionable tax breaks that just perpetuate the abuse of the average citizen - how? Because the wealthy have so much, they can afford to run up prices on housing, they can engineer communities to keep out affordable housing (zoning and NIMBY), they can depress wages with threats that there won't be jobs if wages go up, and so on.

It is a subcrime, exactly. The author is right. Where is the outrage? Why are the most strident candidates - the ones who really expose this abuse, such as John Edwards and Ron Paul - not listened to enough? Because the average citizen just smiles and takes it. Because anger (like Howard Dean's anger) went underground when rampant consumerism and shallow values took hold in this society...and the media was complicit in all of it by making a spectacle of the anger instead of exploring the very valid and important reasons behind it.

We should prosecute the criminals who engineered this mess and walked away with millions. We have nine more months to go. Democracy. Let's hope it makes a comeback.

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It's true that no one needs these amenities...but the bill of goods that was sold by the media was nothing's too good for the American consumer...that the old and used wasn't good enough...wasn't worth repairing and so on. It's rampant, mindless consumerism and keeping up with the Joneses that was pushed upon the consumer relentlessly, along with credit card offers, overpriced and needlessly luxurious housing and so on. And the average consumer never thought about the old days and being prudent, mindful and protecting himself.

Basically, this whole thing was engineered by Wall Street to keep people buying needlessly and unfortunately, prices were rocketing sky high because really this was all about wealthy people and what they wanted - not what middle and under income people needed.

Personally I am very happy to buy used furniture, to have a paid off, used car, and we aren't taking any vacations...and we go to Dollar Stores. I am not keeping up with any Joneses...just keeping my money in my pocket and away from the financier loan sharks...and that's what people should be doing if they're not wealthy. I rent and will never buy in this expensive area we live in...if I do buy it will be something 100+ miles away where housing is really affordable and I won't worry about paying for it.

We all for the most part have more than we'll ever need...I think this is part of what the economy's going through now. How is it they expect people to be in stores every minute?....There is only so much room in a house or apartment. And maybe we can move on to better and more worthy activities than shopping, like activism against the system that got us into this mess in the first place. Thinking instead of consuming. That would be a better direction to take.

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Who forced people to sign for a sub-prime mortgage?

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The real reason that there was a housing market run-up that led to a building boom that led to a bubble was that the rules were changed and they allowed the well off to keep practically all of their capitol gains while labor is penalized.

In english: the rich had money to speculate with so they did.

I worked in property management during the big boom years. The market I worked in had housing price increases in '02 to '05 of 10 to 18 percent. Doctors, lawyers and other overpaid proffesionals would fly into town, sign the purchase papers on a brand new house they'd never seen, sign a property management agreement for that same unit that day and leave. The rents weren't going to cover even one-third of the monthly cost of these places but they didn't care. Their paper gains each month exceeded the carrying cost of the mortgage.

In effect a giant pyramid scheme was put into place where rents were raised because houses cost more because absentee owners were bidding up houses....to rent. In order to escape this treadmill increasing numbers of renters bought in to the pyramid at the low end pushing up prices, and rents, even further.

The nasty little fact that actual wages were flat was missed by everybody but the lenders. They simply ignored all common sense and sold loans instead to people who couldn't possibly afford them unless the bubble got bigger quickly. Since they were selling the loans on to Wall Street anyway it just didn't matter if they were doomed to default.

So when that other form of wealth inequality, energy costs, decided that THEY deserved a bigger chunk of our paycheck "consumers" hit the wall. They have to buy gas to get to work and they have to pay the power bill to be in a condition to work when they get there. These are non-negotiable conditions. They also have to eat and that portion of their budget has gotten bigger too. What to do?

What they do is quit paying the full rent or quit paying the full mortgage. The effect is the same. The cash flow stops and the loan goes into default. When enough of these piled up the market collapsed.

The original problem however was that a small group had the ability to raise the marginal cost on a neccesity, housing, for everybody. Their extra income allowed them to deny access to housing to the market or to everybody else until the prices raised. The money they made from this allowed them to repeat the cycle as it was taxed at half the level that wages are. Wage-earners can't keep up.

Because the trades are not between equals it becomes a pyramid scheme instead of an equal trade of resources fairly valued. Money is far cheaper for the rich than than it is for the middle class.

Well, we've run out of suckers at the bottom of the pyramid who have anything to push into the pot. All of the money is at the top and they aren't sending any our way.

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