>
> And the following came up totally at random:
>
> :::: The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population
> has been growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the
> stability of democratic capitalism itself. -- Alan Greenspan ::::
>
Ah, but never dismiss nature's way of correcting unbalanced situations. All
it took was for a Bernard Madoff to equalize things for a number of those
rich.
Throughout the coarse of history there has always been the haves and
have-nots. A thriving middle-class is actually quite an abnormal condition.
Our current economic "crisis" is just part of the cyclical nature of how the
economy works. This recession was not caused by the housing crisis, but was
caused by the obscene increase in energy costs in 2008. Too much of our
discretionary spending went to paying for gas instead of buying things. This
was true for both individuals and corporations. This slowdown in spending
on non-energy items is what precipitated this recession.
The housing/banking crisis was caused by the huge number of refinancing that
happened several years ago during the housing boom when too many people got
those ARM mortgages because they thought they'd spin the house prior to the
rate increase. Housing sales slowed down and interest rates were too high
to pay. The gamblers (and idiots who didn't understand what an ARM is)
couldn't afford the mortgages and gas.
The last two mortgages (and refinances) that I've gotten, the banker types
were heavily pushing ARMs and would specifically ask "How long do you plan
on staying in this house before selling it and buying another house?" If
the answer was anything other than "many years", they were praising ARMs
like crazy. I always had to stand my ground.
AG
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