Housing Crisis
Reason #59: Over a Barrel
High gas prices are a huge story these days. The so-called experts in the mainstream media treat them like a natural disaster, a hurricane or some other act of god. They breathlessly report on every half cent rise in a gallon of gasoline, but they make no real attempt to explain why it’s happening. The closest they come to giving their audiences actual reasons for the problem is when they blame increased demand from China and India or tensions in the Middle East.
But like the dotcom bubble of the 1990’s or the housing crash earlier this decade, the oil boom is not…
August 27, 2008 | Read More
Reason #57: Paving Wall Street with Taxpayer Gold
Politicians like to talk a good game about “individual responsibility.” But when it comes to the housing crash and other bubbles, that’s just code talk for “the little guy is on his own.” Thanks to greedy banks and their too-good-to-be-true loans, millions of Americans are literally being thrown into the streets. Yet for months - even years - Washington acted like that wasn’t its problem. But as soon as all those defaults and foreclosures started to put a dent in Wall Street’s bottom line, politicians were eager to act.
Wall Street gets to swim in more money, but we pay the tab.…
August 27, 2008 | Read More
Reason #55: Home Inequity - Wall Street’s Subprime Madness
A friend of mine bought a home in the early 1990s for $265,000. By 2007, it was worth a million dollars. But his wife is a spendaholic. She’s been using their house like a giant ATM machine. Since the housing market started going nuts a few years ago, they’ve refinanced five times and sucked all their equity dry.
Like millions of other suckers out there in the real estate market, they thought the good times would never end, that people would just keep paying more and more for houses. But the wild ride is over now and their place is already…
August 27, 2008 | Read More
Reason #54: The Wall Street Propaganda Mill - Fleecing us with Lies
Just like the federal government uses cooked statistics to keep us spending, the hucksters on Wall Street are always working overtime to keep the suckers’ money flowing in. Big investment firms run massive propaganda mills that crank out overly optimistic news and sell the common investor financial snake oil. Do our leaders in Washington require them to substantiate their claims? Don’t bet on it. In fact, they stand side by side with these silver-tongued snakes, hissing the same song.
During the housing boom earlier this decade, big financial players like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch made fortunes packaging subprime mortgages into…
August 27, 2008 | Read More
Reason #41: The Declaration of Corporate Independence
The Declaration of Independence states every American has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our economy is supposed to help us achieve these goals. Ideally, it creates good paying, rewarding careers for us; it allows us to trade with each other and our neighbors; and gives us opportunities to invest in real estate and businesses. All of these should improve our lives, ensure our liberty, and allow us to pursue happiness.
The problem is, our political leaders have forgotten the Declaration of Independence and the rights it grants to every American. Instead, they seem to follow a different…
August 27, 2008 | Read More
Reason #28: Hell Care - How Big Business is (Literally) Killing Us
Billy Tauzin’s work for drug makers while he was in Congress is not rare. Other than arms contractors, perhaps no other business buys off politicians quite like the medical industry.
The U.S. healthcare system is a disgrace. We spend up to 14 percent of our Gross Domestic Product on medical care, yet 45 million Americans have no health insurance. That’s almost 7 percent of the national population. Maybe 7 percent doesn’t sound like much to you, but think of it this way: Every year 18,000 people in the U.S. die because they do not have medical coverage. And yet, year in and year out,…
August 26, 2008 | Read More
