Archive for October, 2009

How is this for efficient use of your tax dollars?

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/30/news/economy/Stimulus_jobs_created/index.htm?postversion=2009103007

Let’s do the math:

$150,000,000,000    One hundred and fifty billion dollars spent.

/ 650,000                        Jobs “created or saved”

————————–

= $230,769.23             Tax dollars per job “created or saved”

This is being touted as a success? The U.S. median income is about $50,000.00. At least four families could have been handed one years earnings for the cost of one “created or saved” job and had enough left over to pay income taxes.

The fact that our government touts this as a victory is stark evidence of just how bad our education levels have fallen and just how delusional our media has become.

Are we sure we can afford a health care system run by these people?

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Here we go again.

http://www.businessinsider.com/20-year-old-buys-home-with-183000-fha-loan-and-just-35-down-2009-10

Since the end of 2007, private mortgage resources have dried up. Private money stopped funding mortgages. In late 2008, as Fannie and Freddie collapsed (and should have been wound down), We The People started funding the mortgage market. Our children and grandchildren have guaranteed these loans, through government price support loan policies, in order to keep housing unaffordable and out of reach for the very children and grandchildren that are subsidizing this wealth transfer.

Just like every one of us knows that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, yet we still allow the ongoing theft from the future generations because of our own selfish interests. We all know that Real Estate prices are unsustainable, but we are not willing to see our fantasy equity vanish as prices discover their natural place.

We have become too greedy and too selfish to make the hard sacrifices necessary to wash out the problems we have created.

We used to be a nation of people concerned for the future of our kids. Now it appears that it is every man for himself.

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Bush or Obama? That seems to be the question. As usual, the real culprit is not being confronted.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a_A5nqmw9Dq8

Sadly, the it is us. Decades of excess consumption, financed by fantasy equity has driven us off the cliff.

New car every three years, clothes, clubs, vacations, medications and a charge card. Irresponsibility will turn out to be much more expensive than anyone expected.

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You may have seen those ads for debt settlement companies. Most are written off as a scam. A local one has retained me as part of an effort to move clients too deep in debt into a more sensible bankruptcy option. I have found some startling things about the debt settlement business, and debt in general.

I expected to find hard-sold customers, pissed off and looking to blame someone. Instead I have found that these are people who are mostly trying to continue their life in denial of the financial facts of life. The first thing I have discovered is that debt settlement companies can reduce peoples debt in astonishing amounts (50K or more wiped out sometimes in a few phone calls).

The second thing I have learned is that the people who seek debt settlement services have some common issues in communication within their household. It seems that Bankruptcy will force them to admit the true state of their credit to their wives, husbands and families. It seems that so many simply want to ignore reality and just keep kicking the can down the road until, somehow, their finances improve. Sadly, these people are 40, 50, and even 60 years old. Short of a lottery ticket, their opportunities to massively increase their income are non-existent.

What has stunned me the most about this experience is that the people I am talking to, who  should be old enough to understand and make the necessary changes, are the ones least likely to accept the facts. I am finding that the younger debtor has a much more intuitive understanding of their debt, their options and they are not as hung up on image and stigma of Bankruptcy. The older one, the ones who can least afford to keep up appearances are the ones who hold on until the catastrophic end.

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