I know that a lot of people are going to be hurt by the crashing housing market and the waves that is creating in the stock market. I feel for them, nor do I mock them.  Read more 

I’ve been surfing, and this is a question on my mind. Really, why? Tell me why you think owning is better than renting, or not. Be specific. I just did some reading on our housing situation, and I’m left with this feeling that…it’s very stupid, if you’re not really, really rich and very, very armed and buying property with a natural, deep well in Idaho, to buy long-term financed housing. Am I just bitter and off base? This isn’t about those who already own or mostly have paid off their homes, but about peeps today who don’t own and are thinking of changing that. Yes, I’d like to own a sheep farm in New Zealand and a French wine-growing estate with a huge Chateau, but I probably never will. So why is buying a pre-fab near-trailer 55 miles away from an urban center with no municipal amenities a good idea? Because I want to be a debt-slave, thanks to the new BK bill, for laminate floors and Chinese-made plastic shelf fillers? Home ownership is dead to people like me, and with it, the “American Dream.” Am I an outlier, or just a loser?

Gee, I’m so shocked. Not. There is a limit, to graft, to cronyism, to the false narratives which speak of easy profit for some, but not all, at the expense of most. So many things play into this, not the least of which is that a lot of people must be starting to think about the end of various gravy trains, and asking themselves if a 1.5 hour commute to and from a “community” with no community is really worth the $2,467/mo mortgage. Also: building standards, anyone? Compare your average bungalo in Chicago’s classic 1920s ’hoods with your average exurban development, and it’s more than clear which one isn’t going to last 35 years without significant decay and rot. Yes, I’m having a schadenfreude moment, because so many of our environmental problems are a direct result of the madness that made these communities desirable, at the expense of so much. Perhaps now some of these communities will listen when people like me speak of such “unimportant” or “irrational” issues like the water table, public transportation, integration of schools, moderated development schedules, etc:

Exurbs hardest hit in recent housing slump  Read more 

Sundown towns. Excellent MLK Day reading. I’d make the point that people often forget that this whole “give them a middle class!” thing has been tried before; white folks tend to get twitchy with the guns and torches when middle class communities of color get “too big.” Progressives should never forget that the more recent history of white oppression is just as ugly as the antebellum version.  Read more 

Via Blondesense, a Tom Paine dicussion about economic policy and China, and more from the idiots who brought you the fallen Saddam statue.

Yes, the Red Menace that we spent so many years fearing as a military threat now represents a far more serious economic threat. Mao must be turning in his grave with the news that no less than six U.S. Cabinet members are on their way to the Middle Kingdom on Wednesday to beseech, beg, lobby and try to persuade the new mandarins not to sell off their vast reservoir of dollars.
snip
Already, as I have reported , the Treasury Department has opened a global crisis management center that sounds very much like an economic war room. It is headed by none other than Jim Wilkinson, the GOP info warrior who ran the Coalition Media Center during the opening days of the Iraq War, when great victories were all we read about in the news  Read more 

Imagine a 40% crash in housing prices . Seriously just run through the scenario in your head. How much of your net worth is accounted for in your house? How much of your retirement nest egg? How much have you drawn out of said house in equity? What would that wonderfully extended mortgage look like, you know the adjustable one with the interest only for the first five years or so; the mortgage that will last you a good fifty years – yeah that one. You in the service industry, the paper pusher who is about to be down sized, the data entry operator or phone jockey making more than you know you should – you. How would you like to be holding a mortgage on a property that is worth about half what you paid for it, making half of what you used to? Get the picture? I’ll buy it off you for transaction cost.  Read more 

Yeah, the stock market is at record highs and gas is back to the low-low-low still higher than when Clinton was in office price of $2.50/gal, and we’re building a fence so I can pick lettuce for my second job instead of some undeserving Mexican, all hail the Bush Boom!

By David Streitfeld and Martin Zimmerman, Times Staff Writers
October 19, 2006

The number of Californians who are significantly behind on their mortgage payments and at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure more than doubled in the three months ended Sept. 30, providing the latest evidence of trouble in the housing market, figures released Wednesday show.

Lenders sent out 26,705 default notices — the first step toward a foreclosure — during the July-to-September period, up from 12,606 during the same quarter in 2005, according to DataQuick Information Systems.  Read more