Cringe-worthy politics.

Gah! I just can't watch this without feeling embarassed for humanity!



In the past two days, I have seen quite a few surgical procedures, some from less than a foot away. I observed a double knee replacement, a hip replacement, ACL reconstruction, rotator cuff repair, numerous knee scopes, and a carpel tunnel repair. The past two days were pretty easy on me. I thought this was because I had a rock solid stomache, but that is most definitely not the case because of the video above. I don't think I've cringed this hard since Tom Cruise went full blown crazy on Oprah.

The Poor Poor Middle Class

Reason does a terrific job telling you just how bad the middle class has it!

*edit* Sorry the size sucks...

Housing Crisis

Like always, I'm sure that I'm oversimplifying this difficult issue, but here is how I see this currently situation.

We have a certain portion of the population that has, until recently, never been able to buy a house. Lenders have historically shied away from people with bankruptcies, terrible credit, or just entering the workforce (no monetary history and no money behind them). Well magically, these institutions started modifying their risk assessment practices and started lending to this higher risk population. Lenders were able to justify their risk and entice people to borrow from them via sub-prime loans (loans at interest rates higher than prime rates), adjustable rate loans, or multiple mortgages to cover very low (or no) down-payments. If the borrow is already strapped in making payments, what happens when they get laid off, get sick, their beloved Dodge Neon up and dies, or magically they now have crotch-spawn to take care of? Should we claim that these borrowers have no way of understanding numbers and that predatory lenders were skulking around just looking for someone's life to shit on?

There's another portion of the population that is just living beyond their means. Let's call these people "older douchebags" (OD-Bags), but we should be calling them "should-fucking-know-better-bags". OD-Bags ostensibly do understand numbers, but they are either overly optimistic or willing to assume some risk to live better than they should. When other people in the real estate market are making money, OD-Bags just have to jump in. Some use higher home prices to refinances; using the money to send their little snowflakes to some $50k/yr college day-care or maybe they just use it to buy themselves a Truck-boat-truck.



Things get especially hairy if that extra money is put towards buying other houses/property with little or nothing down with a sub-prime, interest only, or adjustable rate loan. Some OD-Bags justify buying at an increased prices because someone in the future is bound to pay even more. I'll give you one guess as to what happens when housing prices for a certain market begin to tank.

What is especially distressing though, is that a lot of the above is avoidable by making reasonable monetary decisions. I get pretty worked up though, when dumb decisions are talked about as if it isn't their own fault. Articles are written making a call for action that "something must be done" about this unjust situation. Bullshit. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks this way. These are definitely worth reading.

Linda Keenan, on who's really at fault. She also talks about "victims" of predatory lending (1, 2, 3). She does a good job pointing out and skewering the bad decision makers that we trotted out by the New York Times as sob stories. Definitely worth taking a look at.

People all too often forget that as these people file bankruptcy, those unconscionable lenders are hurt also. Many no longer exist because of their bad business decisions. Things aren't all black and white though, because this is also disrupting the stock market. As financial institutions have all of this lent money making them money, they also use their holdings as something people can invest in. A lot of investment funds have certain portions of their portfolios dedicated directly or indirectly to betting that these mortgages will continue to gain them money. When these seemingly solid loans are actually junk, a lot more people get hurt by causing stock values to plummet.

Maybe I'm callous, but people should think long and hard about their financial situation before jumping headlong into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. On top of this though, I think that fund managers and heads of lending institutions should take this lesson to heart and quit gambling with their shareholder's money; looking for easy money to pad their earnings is and always will bite you a business in the ass. Only good business practices and reasonable financial decisions will pull people's attitudes out of the gutter and put the market back on solid footing again.

Oh, and don't shit your pants that international markets will pull the rug out of under the U.S. anytime soon. Remember, this is a global economy and if the U.S.'s market tanks, many others will fall as well. It is in everyone's interest to get this figured out and going forward in a direction that benefits everyone.