Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Housing-Crisis”
Steven Hyden
If ever there was a period in modern American history that deserved to be described in Dickensian terms, it was November 2008. If you voted for Barack Obama (or just appreciated the historical significance of our country electing a black president) it was the best of times, the age of wisdom, the epoch of belief, the season of light, and the spring of hope. But if you paid any attention to the financial news pages (or simply owned a house that was now worth a year’s pay less than what you paid for it) it also seemed like the worst of times, the age of foolishness, the epoch of incredulity, the season of darkness, and the winter of despair.
Life Isn't Fair: Housing Edition
One of the earliest demands for justice children make is that of fairness. What parent hasn’t heard the complaint “That’s not fair!” uttered by their children? Scarlett isn’t there yet (shoot, she’s barely speaking so far), but I imagine one of the hardest things I’ll have to do in her toddlerhood is to explain to her that life isn’t fair. It must be such a scary moment for children. It’s the first time we realize that the adults in our lives aren’t always going to provide justice. It’s funny because it’s an extremely important life lesson to learn, but it often arises out of frustration when another child won’t cooperate in the fairness regime. And it’s a tough balancing act if you’re sovereign over both children between requiring fairness and teaching that fairness just isn’t in the cards all the times.
The Current Financial Mess - We Never Should have ended up Here
Today I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR. They had an economics guy on who’s now a professor at one of the University of Maryland campuses and was involved in Clinton’s economic team. (Although he didn’t always see eye to eye with Clinton’s treasury secretary) This guy put the current economic crisis in the best terms and framed it so well, I can’t believe that we’re in this mess. Those stupid jackasses on Wall Street “were betting that people who did not have money to pay their mortgage would pay their mortgage.” Just take a second and read that again. Yeah, pretty nutty, isn’t it? If people had just used their noggins we wouldn’t be in this mess. “Sure,” you might say, “hindsight is 20/20.” Yeah, but it doesn’t take hindsight to see that people who have bad credit probably aren’t going to pay their mortgage. Couple that with the fact that Wall Street swindled them into interest only loans and variable rate mortgages, and you HAD to see that a disaster was on the way. Again, they were betting that people who didn’t have the money to pay their mortgage would somehow pay their mortgage. Again, in their defense you might say, “but they thought housing prices were always going to go up.” And to that I say, WHEN has ANY market EVER gone up FOREVER? Hello! The tech bubble was just 10 years ago! Nothing ever goes up without an end. That’s just ridiculous. Sigh! Seriously, I don’t know how they let this happen. These guys all have degrees in finance. They should have known and done case studies on how whatever’s hot now won’t be hot in a few years. And then AIG freakin’ insures the mortgages of people with bad credit? I just can’t believe it!