Posted on 01/03/2010 8:23:44 AM PST by blam
Scenes From The New Depression
Henry Blodget
Jan. 3, 2010, 9:42 AM
Gone are the black-and-white photos of bread lines. Today's depression is playing out in full color.
Here are some snapshots from NYT reporter Peter Goodman's return to Cape Coral, Florida, at the center of the housing bust. The unemployment rate is 14%. A quarter of the houses in town have been foreclosed on in the past few years:
“One elementary school principal noticed parents going into schools with kids in the morning and sitting down in the cafeteria with them,” Mr. Browder said. “Then they noticed parents eating breakfast off kids’ plates. And then they noticed parents taking scraps home.”...
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
This can’t be true - the media keeps telling me we’re in recovery.
How Prices Have Changed Since 1999
A large Slurpee costs 114% more than it did 10 years ago — and other examples of why the CPI is a joke
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-prices-have-changed-since-1999-2010-1
Yes! I keep hearing that EVERY day! -We’re in RECOVERY!!!
yaaaaay!! Meanwhile, here in Detroit...
From the article:
This is not work for the squeamish. Some people depart in a rage, leaving graffiti on living room walls (profane suggestions about how bankers might rearrange their anatomy), mounds of trash, dirty diapers, even piles of human excrement.
“It’s pretty gross,” says Ms. Clifton.
As she gathers the artifacts of lives gone wrong and deposits them into Dumpsters, she wonders what happened. “People can just up and leave, and it seems like they leave their whole lives behind,” she says. “Army medals. Photo albums. Framed photos of children. Cribs. Toys. I don’t know if they don’t have anywhere to go or anywhere to put this stuff. But you’d think that pictures of your kids you’d take.”
That doesn’t sound normal to me. What were all of these clueless people DOING owning homes worth $300K+, then trashing them in this manner when they couldn’t live ‘The American Dream?’
Quite the disconnect there, if you ask me.
(Yes, I know...lots of people that should NOT have been home owners in the first place were given financing...when you basically GIVE someone something like this, they have no sense of ownership...)
Being that the Democrats are in charge, this is one of the greatest economic “recoveries” from the blackness of Republican evil that has ever been recorded. And we are in a ROARING recovery and prosperous era. Health care and candy for everyone! (Except the rich of course.)
In other news....President Obama enjoys "Snowboma Cones" with his family during a lavish vacation in Hawaii.
Interesting, gasoline only rose 96.92% in the last 10 years, the least of all other examples noted in their list.
It’s not always a case of giving them something. Take a look at the slide show in the article. It says the woman bought her house in 2001 for $97,000 and it was appraised in 2006 for $267,000. Now it says she has been foreclosed on, and still owes $260,000.
Sounds like they refinanced in 2006, took the equity out, and blew it. If so, this is just as bad as letting someone have a loan they cannot make payments on. At least those slugs can use the mental evasion that they were fooled by the mortgage broker or real estate agent, or whoever.
When you take all the cash out of your home and blow it, counting on record high home prices to stay high, you have no one to blame but yourself!
Personal greed and lack of moral responsibilty is what got us into this mess. Let’s take all the prudent citizens’ tax money at the point of the federal marshal’s gun, and bail these “poor unfortunates” out? No, let’s not.
I’m in the D too.
I’d like to take some photographs of all the zombie malls and strips around here.
btt
TYRANNY OF THE TAX-EXEMPT
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01062009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/tyranny_of_the_tax_exempt_147343.htm
IT now looks like half of President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus package will take the form of “tax cuts” for 95 percent of all Americans. Yet this wouldn’t so much boost the economy as trigger a massive, unhealthy shift in American politics.
Under Obama’s plan, the majority of American voters would pay no federal income taxes, but would get money from the government instead. That is, these “refundable tax credits” are basically welfare checks - and Obama’s plan would leave the most of us collecting, not paying.
A $200 billion giveaway won’t do much to get a $14 trillion economy rolling again. But the plan would leave any future taxpayer revolt no hope of majority support.
Today, the bottom 50 percent of US taxpayers pays a total of $30.6 billion in federal income taxes on a combined income of about $1 trillion. So about 3 percent of all federal income-tax payments come from the poorest half of the country. (The top 1 percent pays 40 percent; the top 25 percent pay 85 percent of the federal income tax.)
Obama’s plan - he’d give all couples a $1,000 refundable tax credit and all single people $500 - would funnel more than $50 billion to the lowest half of the country, thereby completely wiping out their total federal tax liability. In most cases, it would trigger a “refund” welfare check.
In one stroke, this would transform the majority of voters from taxpayers into tax eaters - and leave an increasingly small minority to pay the bill.
A friend’s neighbor had their house foreclosed on.They opened the windows,shut off the furnace,and left the tub and sinks running.The ice built up to the point that the floors collapsed into the basement.These people should be arrested and charged with felony vandalism.
People are pretty bitter about losing what they have worked for years for. Yes, maybe some of them should have prepared better, and some shouldn’t have bitten off more than they could afford (that’s what caused part of the mess), but some hard working, honest folks have got caught up in this too. While I don’t think they ought to vandalise the place, either, I can see why they wouldn’t want to give years of thier life away either. The old saying of being between a rock and a hard place sure fits sometimes.
My guess is during the housing boom many were making some money in the state that ordinarily is not known for supporting a thriving middle class.
Yep and I’d guess that in most cases of forclosure it is because people used their home as a credit card thinking the value would always rise. Very irresponsible if you ask me.
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