The Housing Bubble bursts on a speculator. Parody using a clip with Hitler as the real estate investor. He bought a house to flip, faces foreclosure, and now wants to get bailed out.
… The main premises of the documentary and book are that banks and other creditors deliberately market to people who are more likely to have problems paying predatory lending and that the creditors benefit from connections to government, the debt collection industry, and from lawmaker apathy. …
From what I can see, it looks like rules in the States will be tightened. That’s a good thing.
People hopefully will be better protected from their own stupidity.
I can look down the stupid (at the moment) because I have no credit card debt. Certainly I have been stupid in the past. Once having over double the average credit card debt of Americans today.
Finland is the most sparsely populated country in the European Union.
Dana sent me a link to a good article from the Christian Science Monitor.
The point of view of an American expat:
“I’ll never become rich in Finland,” one explained, “the taxes are just too high.” But for him it was a trade-off worth making. “Great healthcare, basically free. My kids get one of the best educations in the world, free.” By the way, that includes college, free. He had no plans to move back to the States.
As I spent more time in Helsinki, my own notion of the luxuries available in Finland expanded to include more than just the quiet pleasures of a cabin getaway. Finnish cities are filled with universally well-maintained and high-quality schools, hospitals, buses, trains, and parks. While most Finns might never be able to own a well-appointed SUV or a big house, they value the less-tangible assets they do have, which add up to quality of life and peace of mind. …
If you were lucky, you sold a house after it went UP.
If you were unlucky you got stuck with a house that went DOWN in value.
Don’t look for much help from the U.S. government.
… This is a HOUSING crisis, not a BANKING crisis, yet $700+ billion has gone to help bankers and only $75 billion to “help” homeowners. The banker’s money has mainly been spent and the homeowner money has hardly been touched. If this is a HOUSING crisis, why aren’t more resources being devoted to housing? …
Ten days ago, Don Braid, local columnist for The Calgary Herald, blogged about the abysmal care that his wife received at the emergency.
It’s something we all know about, it’s something we all wring our hands about, and it was nice to see it written about. Sparked a bit of an outroar, but nothing will happen.
Our politician’s pretend all is good, except that we need to cut back on health care. What a difference from the States. We just returned from San Francisco, where we observed bus ads for local emergency departments that guaranteed patients would be seen within a half hour after arrival. It was shocking not just to compare that half hour guarantee with Don Braid’s wife’s nine hours of intense pain before seeing a doctor but even more basically to imagine a health care system where you are seen as an opportunity (to make money, to be sure) instead of a burden.
Certainly private Health Care is the only model that stands a chance, long term. But it isn’t working yet in the USA. Once Obama gets through with reforms it will be further muddled.
The Canadian model is too expensive as well as inefficient and impersonal.
My advice … DON’T GET SICK. In either the USA or Canada.
For the record, when I dislocated my finger last Fall, my emergency care in Calgary was very good.
Our economy is in crisis, and our government says that bold action is required. So we’re diving in head first to get things back on track. But… what are we diving into exactly? Take a closer look at the government response to our current economic crisis with narrator Nick Gillespie of ReasonTV. And please visit http://stopspendingourfuture.org for more information and to find out what you can do to help!
The best commentary I’ve seen was by Stephen Colbert.
People can work up a good anger at CEO bonus payments, corporate jets.
Understanding the REAL big picture is too complicated. Too boring. The real problem is far worse than fat cat executives cashing in. A quarter of a billion dollars is chump change in this crisis.
“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
— Joseph Stalin
John Fedak, a recently ex-Californian, linked to this post:
Rick McCharles 