Is Obama serious?

[Setec Astronomy]

Originally Posted by rydawg

I totally agree with you on the sports and ticket pricing due to the greedy players. I say get rid of them and get some new talent in.

So should we skip the bailout and get some new executive talent into the financial institutions?

[fbirdquik6]

Originally Posted by TH0001

He is blaming McCain for the turndown now? Politics are seriously stupid (both sides).

couldnt agree more!

[TH0001]

Originally Posted by Setec Astronomy;1180212[B

]So is the problem the people who wanted to buy the house? Or the enabling lender who gave a loan for more than the house was worth? [/b] The car salesman who talks the car buyer into a higher payment than they wanted so he can make a bigger commission...who's fault is it when the loan is defaulted and the car gets reposessed? How many more people would be in that kind of trouble with their cars if the dealer said...gee, I'd love to get you into this car for $400/month, but see that couple standing over there? They'll pay $425/mo., but if you pay $450 I'll give the car to you!

If the gov't eased lending rules, it was so people could buy that $199K house, not so the real estate people and the banks could collude to drive the price up to $349K.

The people buying the house, period. If you sign the paper, take respondsiblity for it. Free Market=People don't pay the asking price, the price comes down. When people start accepting offers like that (that THEY cannot afford) then it comes down to my original point.

[Setec Astronomy]

Originally Posted by TH0001

I'm not so quick to let people of the hook because of the lenders.

I don't think anybody should be let off the hook with their mortgage. Is part of this bailout deal keeping people in their houses when they can't pay their mortgage? I didn't think it was, and I don't agree with that if it's true. I thought the bailout was for the banks and other institutions who aren't getting their mortgage money...who I contend shouldn't have lent it in the first place. Or bought mortgage-backed securities from those "trustworthy" mortgage brokers.

Originally Posted by TH0001

If people signed the loan or mortgage and they couldn't afford it, then really the blame relys on the people who choose to sign their name.

You're a lot stronger, better person than most people then. I see a lot of people, including people I know, who, in a desire to have a nice place for their kids to live and be able to go to a decent school, bought houses that they could marginally afford, because the alternative was to live in an area that was a step down from their upbringing, and they refused to succumb to the reverse "American dream" of bringing up their kids with lesser opportunities or surroundings then they had. Maybe that's the reality, but it's a pretty bitter pill, and when people hang a mortgate in front of you, for your "dream house", not all people can say no. Not because they are irresponsible, but because they are trying to do the best they can for themselves and their children.

The bottom line in this is: there are two sides. I don't condone people taking on more debt than they can afford, and I don't condone business and government not taking responsibility for their poor management.

[weekendwarrior]

Well, this is an intersting argument. I believe people should take responsibility for their own actions. In this case, many people took poor actions that brought us to this point. The banks should definitely be held responsible for loaning money to people that had no business borrowing the amount they were loaned. The people that borrowed more than they should have should also suffer, and are in most cases.

I remember back in 2002 when my wife and I bought our current house. We are both college educated, and are respnosible with money. We knew what we could comfortably afford to pay for a mortgage - and to still be able to have a new car periodically, travel, splerge on luxuries from time to time, give to charity, save, and to not have to fret over making the mortgage payment. Well, when we went to the bank to get preapproved, they were tryig to convince us that we could afford almost 2 and a half times what we were looking to spend. Of course, we probably could have listened, but if we had, we would be living in a nice house, driving beaters, and eating peanut butter and jelly every day, for every meal.

My point is that there is more than enough blame to go around. Setec and Todd are both right. I personally know people that aren't very highly educated, that went to look at spec homes in starter home neighborhoods, and were convinced by the builder's sales person, and their lender that they could afford a home - even though they had no business owning a home. Whether it was through exotic mortgages or whatever, these people got a home, and could not keep it. What I have learned is that most stupid people don't realize they are stupid. All it takes is for a smooth talking sales person, that seems to have their best interest at heart for them to go along with all of this and to get in a mess. Should these people still be held responsible for their stupidity, and for being taken advantage of - YES. Should the people that took advantage of them be held responsible - YES.

[Setec Astronomy]

Originally Posted by TH0001

The people buying the house, period. If you sign the paper, take respondsiblity for it. Free Market=People don't pay the asking price, the price comes down. When people start accepting offers like that (that THEY cannot afford) then it comes down to my original point.

You know what they say, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is a large element of human nature at work here.

If you basically tell a CEO he can make an unlimited amount of money, then some (many?) will do whatever stupid stuff they can to make that money. If you allow them to have an employment contract that stipulates they cannot be fired for doing a crappy job, some (many?) will do a crappy job. If you offer a home buyer a 40-year mortgage (yes, they are offering them now), some (many?) will use that to buy a house they can't afford. If you offer that home buyer a mortgage for a value more than the house they are buying is worth, some (many?) will take it, especially if it's one of the few houses available (it's crowded here in NJ).

[Picus]

Originally Posted by rydawg

Your right Todd. This is why the economy is struggling so hard. I remember from 2002 to 2006, people were putting offers on houses more than what the house was actually selling for just so they would get it.

Bidding wars are extremely common in just about every major metro area of the US. They aren't single-handedly destroying the US economy. In many of those markets bidding wars are totally sustainable. What happens in a specific local economy doesn't really apply to the national economy.

I'm a little surprised people are so freaked out by this current correction. I guess having lived in the US I shouldn't be; I am sure you're all being bombarded by media telling you it's the end of the world. It's not. It's a correction, it's going to suck for a lot of people but that's how it was in the early 90s, and in the late 70s, and so on and so on...

[Setec Astronomy]

Originally Posted by Picus

I'm a little surprised people are so freaked out by this current correction. I guess having lived in the US I shouldn't be; I am sure you're all being bombarded by media telling you it's the end of the world. It's not. It's a correction, it's going to suck for a lot of people but that's how it was in the early 90s, and in the late 70s, and so on and so on...

Wait a minute! You mean my hair's not on fire??

We are so driven in this country by soundbites and heresay....

[qwertydude]

So if a con man cons a little old lady out of her life savings do you bail the con man out saying it's for the good of the economy? Thinking like that is just scheming and underhanded.

A lot of these financing and wall street companies are the con men, lending agencies that don't refuse anyone, there's even things called ninja loans look it up and even a retard can see these are a bad idea. Those were bad investments. I thought the business people should know a thing or two about bad investments, guess not.

What about the people who's lives we're ruined because they didn't know better or fully understand their loan. They have an excuse and weren't purposefully defrauding someone to get a home. They were the ones defrauded out of a decent future because of a greedy lending agency, which I know is staffed by greedy AND intelligent people who I know understood that they could lose their investment yet willfully gave out loans. If you want to put it simply, do write a check you know won't clear, that's a crime. So why are these companies allowed to write so many bad checks when they don't have the funds to cover their losses? And can even get bailouts for writing bad loans.

I think it's also in part because of insurance companies like AIG. Corporations see these as saftey blankets. They're not supposed to be. It makes the corporations more willing to take risks. Like short selling, insurance covers that even though it's a known loss in value, that alone reeks of poor business ethics and profiteering.

The crafty home loans were dependent on constantly increasing home values so that when the people subsequently sold the home everyone made a profit and the debt was erased (not really because it was just passed on at a higher rate to the next buyer), did they not see that homes were overvalued? And the whole thing can come toppling down if home values decreased or even flatlined. I can understand the everyday person not seeing it, the uneducated consumer. But irresponsible money lending should not be bailed out

So who's more to blame? The con man or the conned. If you say the conned person should have known better, you're probably on the side of the con man. That little old lady didn't know there was no beach front property in Arizona.

The reason why the bailouts were proposed was that a lot of rich republicans had lots of money riding on these investment firms and didn't want to see it disappear since they understood it's high risk and could face losses. They're protecting their own ***-ets. So now instead the corporations get permanent tax cuts. While the little guy foots the bill to pay for the rest of the governments functions, sure we're not paying to keep the company alive directly, but government spending has to come from somewhere and if it's no longer coming in from the big guys where else does it come from? I hate to say it but it's gonna hit our grandchildren even harder when China comes to power and starts demanding repayment of all the debt they bought up. So in this case America has got caught in a bad loan in itself.

All of this is a really bad situation. A deeper look into the economy is very disenheartening because it shows the depths of greed that man is capable of and just how much he is willing to screw his fellow man just to get ahead. It's pandemic. Free markets are everywhere, some more free than others. When I met friends in Philippines which has a tremendously free market economy you see multi million dollar mansions surrounded by poor neighborhoods full of starving people just trying to scrape a living from nothing. Everyone wants to say it won't happen here, but take a look at the increasing gap between rich and poor and the trends it's following and we'll be there in a few generations.

So what is ultimately the root cause and fix for this mess? Tighter regulation? Sure it'll help. But the ultimate cause is breeding a sense of entitlement and over competitiveness in our children, coupled with a very free economy and you get people with no shame in stealing from the poor to give to themselves with complete disregard for what it does to the less fortunate. I see it everyday in the store I work at, I deal with children on a daily basis. I have no problem taking a brat to the side taking away their toy robot and telling them that hitting people and taking other peoples toys away is not right, and yet the parent gets mad at me. They raised their kid poorly, I even had one claiming he's king of the world because he won a game and that no one could challenge him and he'll kill everyone else who tried and if the cops come he'll kill them too then kill himself, literally.

The competitiveness leads to the debasement of society where it's viewed as a good thing to be competitive and even support multi-million dollar sports stars, if you think it's obscene; don't watch. I myself don't watch any professional sports, and don't go to games. I have no interest in it, but I will participate in sports with friends instead. Kobe is not your friend.

We need two things, to instill more of a sense of cooperation, not testosterone driven competition, in our children and a better education system. These will take a long time but the rewards are well worth the investment.

In short I support Obama, he's not elitist. At least he's not hypocritical. A lot of republicans want to be seen as the everyman even though many were born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Obama came from a poor family and worked his way up, that is the epitome of the American dream. And the republicans want to paint him as elitist? Republicans politicians are hypocritical at best, being born into money and pretending to understand the everyday man.

[Setec Astronomy]

Originally Posted by qwertydude

The crafty home loans were dependent on constantly increasing home values so that when the people subsequently sold the home everyone made a profit and the debt was erased (not really because it was just passed on at a higher rate to the next buyer), did they not see that homes were overvalued?.

Great post, man, I just cut out this little part of it, because I like to call this the "fake money", the overvalued homes, the overvalued stock market...it's a big game of musical chairs, and you want to have somebody else holding the fake money when the music stops. I actually predicted this financial crisis at the time of the Enron/Worldcom implosion, but it didn't happen then. The music stopped and the only chairs are the real money.

All this talk of a "strong economy" is just BS to me. When I grew up here in NJ, there were factories where we made things, and farm fields where we grew things. These were tangible products, not intellectual property and money. At the end of the day strength is going to come from tangible goods, that require a factory or a field to be made, and can't be emailed or electronically transferred. But you know what happened? All those factories and farm fields got replaced by office buildings and homes, filled with monster conglomerate insurance companies and "financial institutions" and the people who work there. And the shelves in the stores (all parts of huge chains...hmmm) became filled with products not "Made in USA" but made elsewhere.

So when the music stops and the fake money is gone, what do we have? Well, we don't have any factories and farm fields to get anything tangible from...so what is left? As qwertydude said, I really think we've collectively sold our souls, and it's been going on for some time.

[DaGonz]

Evewry single politician and bureaucrat in Washington shares some reponsibility for this mess.. Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Liberal.... it doesn't matter.

PS: if they do pass a bailout bill.. every single CEO, CFO and other high level muckymuck should be paid the same as Lee Iaccoca was when he asked the Feds to bail out Chrysler nback in the 80's...

$1 a year.

[qwertydude]

Originally Posted by DaGonz

$1 a year.

Agreed, if they truly wanted to save their company, not just their money they should get only $1 a year until the bailout is paid in full plus interest. That's truly taking responsibility. Instead they get to keep their, jobs salary, with included yearly bonuses and raises.