Its a greed problem. Banks, realtor's, mortgage brokers, builders, and speculators all got greedy and thought they could make tons of money off a false real estate market. This was also fueled my the media. The Tampa area is a perfect example of this. Back when this boom started property was affordable but it very quickly rose to ridiculous prices. Then the building got out of control and homes, townhouses and condos were built all over the Tampa area. They were selling at prices that where much too high for the area. It always seemed strange to me that all these property's were selling at the prices they were going for. There was no way wages were rising this fast, so were was the money coming from. Greedy people giving bad loans. Like they did not know these people could not afford what was being sold. They are getting what they deserved in my opinion. Unfortunately now we the taxpayer are going to have to pay to bail these assholes out. I say let them fail and we can have a major correction in real estate so that property prices can better reflect what peoples wage can support.
The other thing that amazes me is that we have huge numbers of unoccupied property's and the prices are still too high. They would rather just let them sit empty and be bailed out down the road. Well I hope that doesn't happen.
This may be an over simplification of what happened, but most likely not.
5 comments:
Today W said the economy is "basically sound" while at the same time his Fed chairman was saying the economy is "fragile". I dunno!
Interesting thoughts on the real estate market. It amazes me how our great grandparents were able to live so simply and scares me to see how deep in debt people starting out today must go just to live.
Ken, I vote for fragile. Unfortunately I think we are closer to a melt down than most people think. When does the credit card market crash? I do not understand how people can continually charge everything they purchase. Heck I carry virtually no credit card debt, almost always pay with cash, I know that is weird these days, and I feel poor.
Kim, I think much of it has to do with "Keeping up with the Jonses".
Most Americans expect the American dream and put themselves in debt to get it. They forgot how to work to achieve it. Not matter what one thinks about immigrants legal or not they come here to achieve the American dream and go to great lengths to get it. We on the other hand wait for it to fall in our lap. From what I read in your book it seems that a lot of hard work was done to get to where you are today.
I agree with Iconic Rambler. The houseing market was totally manipulated by big business. Same as with any of the world markets, especially OIL. What do the greedy care if our economy is ruined or the world's econmomy goes into a depression, they have theirs! Even the Japanese fishermen are stiking, that's something you don't see everyday. Funny how they carried that on what they call "NEWS", but hardly anything was on the tube about the truckers protesting at the White House. It's going in the toilet faster than most people know or want to think about. Too bad... more need to pull their heads out of the stand and start getting their info from other sources than Faux News.
Thanks Niki. I agree with you on the news. When I can I watch BBC or news from sources outside the U.S. to get a different perspective. I am one of what is most likely a low number that wants Al Jazeera on my cable system.
The greedy do not care about the common man. I think we need to raise taxes on corporations and lower taxes on the rest of us. Oh, I think we do away with most subsidies to corporations.
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