Me to Economy and America: Fornicate Yourself

The BBQ Pit
21

I had read that most bankruptcies were caused, not by retail therapy, but by health care expenses. And yet we vilify national health ins. :frowning:
Yep–and what tipped us over the edge of the precipice (we’ve since found there are several stops on your way down–little scraggly trees like Wiley Coyote grabs onto as he falls), was COBRA. $1200/month for us and we paid it for at least 4 months. Then I managed to get some half way decent insurance at a job that was toxic to my emotional health, but I did (on meds) for 7 years. Right now, today, we have Blue Cross PPO–thank god. But with the financial crisis, we won’t have it long (husband will have to change jobs).

We aren’t starving. We have managed to keep the house and have a kid in college. We seem to be about the only couple in this area (and I know this is false, but it sure feels like it) to have not flourished in the boom of the 90s and Y2K etc. I wouldn’t mind so much, except now I feel a slow slipping away of the security we did have… and we are in our later 40s now.

I’ll have to work my whole life. Soon, I wiil have to work FT. When does it get easier? I thought mid 40s were the time when you’re career is established and you start making plans for all the things you want to do once you retire.

Guess not.

22

I plan on working till I’m 75, then I will die and call that retirement.

23

I lost over 20K in the market in 2002. Oh well. (Yeah I know that’s peanuts to a lot of folks, but I don’t care about them.They don’t pay my bills.)

Nowadays, I’ll be damned it I give a fuck about my credit card debt. Sure, I’ll keep paying as long as I have a job. When the shit hits the fan and my employer can’t make payroll, the big banks can just kiss my ass.

24

Ahh! It’s fornicate with yourself. Fornicate is an intransitiveverb.

Sigh The state of America today… :wink:

25

Hey, you’re another stockholder. Thus a rival to be destroyed. Am I the only person who gets Social Darwinism?

26

I am “delurking” for this one.
I am not an economist and I really don´t know how this will end. It seems though that you’ll be hit pretty badly. But it won´t be the end of the world: I speak from experience. I am Argentinian.
I am only 28 years old and I have lived through, at least, 3 big economic crisis: Hiperinflation in the late 80s, The recession of 1998 and the economic meltdown of 2001.
Compared with any one of those, your crisis is a joke.
Unfortunately, you don’t have the experience to look at things in perspective: Only very old people lived through the great depression of the 30s.
Unlike you I did. Some of you will get poorer and a few will get richer but life will go on. It’s a promise.
Of course, this crisis will hit us all. But at least this time we can REALLY blame you: we are pretty shocked down here because for decades we had to listen to your advices of how managing the economy and now this.

27

Interesting perspective. What kind of impact did you experience in your day to day life?

28

The difference being that if Argentina’s economy takes another plunge into the abyss it makes ripples around it’s immediate neighbours at most. If the USA goes kaput it wrecks the entire economy of the planet.

29

[pet peeve] One thing you did do wrong though, you spelled the past tense of “lead”, the word meaning to pave the way or go in front of, (the past tense of which is actually spelled “led”) like the metal “lead”. Otherwise, good on you. [/pet peeve]

30

So many memories.
I don’t remember much about the hiperinflation (I was ten at the time). I do remember that one week my father would give me 100 pesos to buy lunch at school and that the next one he would give me 1000 pesos: I was only ten and I already knew what inflation was. I also remember that in church the priest added to the traditional prayer (Pope, bishop and the argentinian people) a prayer asking god to deliver us from blackouts: We also had an energy crisis.
Tequila (1995) and the 1998 recession I remember better. Those ones, specially the first, were very tough for my family: my father used to run a family “farm”. He had to find, at 55, a new job and he created an agricultural service company. We weren´t poor but we stopped spending in cars, holidays, etc.
The economic meltdown of 2001 wasn´t that bad mosty because it was a very hard time for everyone in the country: your perspective improves a lot when you read at the papers that people actually starve to dead in a country of only 40 million people that produces enough food to feed 400 million.
But we managed. Today my father “new” job is soaring and he actually earns more money with it that he earned in his farm.
I know realize that in Argentina we have and advantage over you. One of the reason that we run periodically into deficits (besides our corrupt politicians) is that we have a system of public health and education. When we realized that people (chidren in fact) were dying of malnutrion, additional resources were sent to schools and hospitals to stop this crisis. Even when we actually had no money to spare.
Also in 1998 I was beginning college and I went to a public university.
The Argentinian State is inefficient, corrupt, and pretty bizarre but we’ve managed to create a kind of safety net. And we believe in it: I consider myself liberal but reading that a man died at 40 because he can´t afford the treatment is crazy for me, specially if that happens in the richest country in the world.

31

In a very un-American fashion, I have continued to live without debt for the past two years (after previously having more than $76K of non-mortgage debt). Actually, the two-year anniversary was last week, but I thought there were crises going on several days ago, and wanted to post when things calmed down.

I’m down $80K YTD**, but six years ago, when I got religion about money and started paying off my debts, I adopted a lifestyle which has resulted in my having about 15 months living expenses on hand. I am very bitter. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to become a financially responsible person, and every dime of that $76K was paid in full. Now I feel like they’re reaching for my wallet, but they’re jamming their fists up my ass to grab at it from the inside.

The irresponsible mortgages account for (in my estimation) just a small part of the losses everyone’s talking about, and I despise and pity those people, but I don’t see a way out, other than for me to fucking rent my fucking small apartment for another fucking ten years to fucking subsidize those fuckers. The real motherfuckers are the thousands of middlemen who inserted themselves between all debtors and the ultimate bag-holders of their debts. AIG got bailed out. They didn’t have bad mortgages; they were the company which had the bright idea of insuring the CDOs, which were all smoke and mirrors. We bailed them out, and they weren’t about to be kicked out of their homes – they were going to have to pay out on all those CDOs they’d insured. This whole mess (minus the irresponsible mortgages) is me (and you) paying the financial institutions for their CDOs which are exposed as being worth shit.

This isn’t about keeping people in their homes, though portraying it that way is required in order to blackmail Congress into giving out the blank checks. I got so angry that I read the entire 110 page bill (summarized with some editorial slant here), and there are repeated references to the fact that we citizens are not just buying mortgages, or mortgage-backed securities; we’re buying anything the Secretary wants to buy, to keep all those fucking companies alive long enough for their managers to get out while the getting’s good. Yes, we absolutely get an ownership stake in the companies we buy from, but those companies do not deserve to survive, and in fact are already dead. No one wants them, and though they do have some assets worth more than zero, that is trumped by the massive debt they all carry.

The OMG Trillions of dollars of losses we’re all having to pay for are accounting fantasies. Someone “buys” a house worth $100 with $0 down, the bank sells that mortgage for $110 (to someone who borrowed money from someone else), and they sell that for $120, and so on. Fucking AIG insures that first $10, but also that second $20, and so on. At the end of the chain, the companies were offering imaginary debt to financially conservative people, telling them that the debt was AAA-rated, when the original $100 was never going to be worth $100. But that suck-ass imaginary $100 ends up representing $1000 in fake assets. And we citizens are paying every middleman in that chain.

IAC, I’m responsible now. My 401K is taking on water and listing to one side, but it’ll settle down at some (much lower) point. I actually have $23K in gold on hand, along with other stocks worth another $10K, no, $9K, no, $7K, no … crap. I have the $23K. If a can of cat food goes up to $5, that gold will hopefully go up to $100K, so I can buy the same amount of cat food. I’m going to pay off these other peoples’ debts by working more years than I’d intended, still living in this cramped apartment and eating cat food. If I had kids, I’d be sad, because they’ll also be paying taxes up the wazoo for all of their working lives to pay for this mess.

I should end on that bitter note, but I just want to repeat what everyone already knows: we’re handing the keys to Fort Knox to the same people whose criminal irresponsibility caused this mess. In what universe does that make sense?

**I must truthfully report that the bulk of my 401K is in an S&P index fund, which frankly got some benefit from the artificial run-up in stock prices. So I didn’t really have that $80K in the first place. It wasn’t as much of a fantasy as peoples’ real estate empires, but nonetheless it was artifically inflated.

32

I feel your pain.

33

Okay; they think they can defeat me, but they don’t know that I am the mighty groo, and that adding 340 pages is not going to intimidate me. But I have to go to work. However, here’s a portion of what they’ve added, all of which somehow gets mixed in with “poor people who were fooled into buying houses”:

Legend:
WTF means, quoting Welch, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
BO means, “Bend Over – we’re going to use big words to hopefully distract you while we rape your daughter.”
Blow Me means, “Yeah, let’s vote for saving orphans because that really relates to Collateralized Debt Obligations”

TITLE II—EXTENSION OF INDIVIDUAL TAX PROVISIONS
…
Sec. 206. Treatment of certain dividends of regulated investment companies. ** <<< BO!**
Sec. 207. Stock in RIC for purposes of determining estates of nonresidents not citizens. ** <<< BO!**
Sec. 208. Qualified investment entities. ** <<< BO!**
TITLE III—EXTENSION OF BUSINESS TAX PROVISIONS
…
Sec. 303. Subpart F exception for active financing income. ** <<< BO!**
Sec. 304. Extension of look-thru rule for related controlled foreign corporations. <<< WTF?
…
Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. <<< WTF?
Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa. <<< WTF?
Sec. 310. Extension of mine rescue team training credit. <<< Blow Me
Sec. 311. Extension of election to expense advanced mine safety equipment. <<< Blow Me
Sec. 312. Deduction allowable with respect to income attributable to domestic
production activities in Puerto Rico. <<< WTF?
Sec. 313. Qualified zone academy bonds. <<< WTF?
Sec. 314. Indian employment credit. <<< WTF?
Sec. 315. Accelerated depreciation for business property on Indian reservations. <<< WTF?
Sec. 316. Railroad track maintenance. <<< Blow Me
Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility. <<< WTF?
Sec. 318. Expensing of environmental remediation costs. <<< Agggg…
Sec. 319. Extension of work opportunity tax credit for Hurricane Katrina employees. <<< Blow …
Sec. 320. Extension of increased rehabilitation credit for structures in the Gulf Opportunity Zone.
Sec. 321. Enhanced deduction for qualified computer contributions.
Sec. 322. Tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia.
Sec. 323. Enhanced charitable deductions for contributions of food inventory.
Sec. 324. Extension of enhanced charitable deduction for contributions of book
inventory.
Sec. 325. Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products; wool research fund; wool duty refunds. <<< Wool …
TITLE IV—EXTENSION OF TAX ADMINISTRATION PROVISIONS
Sec. 401. Permanent authority for undercover operations.
Sec. 402. Permanent authority for disclosure of information relating to terrorist
activities.

TITLE V—ADDITIONAL TAX RELIEF AND OTHER TAX
PROVISIONS
Subtitle A—General Provisions
Sec. 501. $8,500 income threshold used to calculate refundable portion of child tax credit.
Sec. 502. Provisions related to film and television productions. <<< WTF?
Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children. <<< WTF?<<< WTF? <<< WTF?<<< WTF?<<< WTF?<<< WTF?<<< WTF?<<< WTF?<<< WTF?<<< WTF?<<< WTF?
Sec. 504. Income averaging for amounts received in connection with the Exxon Valdez litigation.
Sec. 505. Certain farming business machinery and equipment treated as 5-year property.
…

TITLE VI—OTHER PROVISIONS
Sec. 601. Secure rural schools and community self-determination program.
Sec. 602. Transfer to abandoned mine reclamation fund.
TITLE VII—DISASTER RELIEF
Subtitle A—Heartland and Hurricane Ike Disaster Relief
Sec. 701. Short title.
Sec. 702. Temporary tax relief for areas damaged by 2008 Midwestern severe storms, tornados, and flooding.
Sec. 703. Reporting requirements relating to disaster relief contributions.
…
Okay, that’s it

34

I feel like a dodged a bullet. Or like one of those folks who can’t find a cab and later find out that the plane they missed crashed after take off.

I moved in 2004 - at the height of the boom. The mortgage broker I used outlined a vast array of options - interest only, teaser rates, 125% of the house’s value. I was also told that I could afford “a lot more house” than the one I was interested in and encouraged to keep looking for houses $50,000 to $100,000 more than the one I wanted. I went with house I was originally interested in, but got an exotic interest-only, low fixed rate for 3 months mortgage. I figured I could pay some principle each month and do as well as a fixed rate for cheaper.

Anyhoo… after 3 months the rate became non-fixed and began rising every month, and after 6 months I thought the whole thing was hinkey and went into a 30-year fixed.

As part of the refinance the house was assessed - and the guy who came out briefly walked through the down stairs and then told me that I could “re-fi” for $60,000 more than I had financed 6 months previously (or more if I wanted to go 125% of the home’s value). Even though I got the soft sell to increase my debt, I kept it simple and just swapped the existing house debt into a plain vanilla 30-year fixed. If I had waited or not moved over I’d be in the same boat as millions of other Americans.

Thing is - I feel lucky. I switched over because I wanted a regular payment, nto because I knew the end was near.
I’m no dummy, but it didn’t occur to me that THE ENTIRE CULTURE had this wrong and I was being sold a bill of goods. This was the time that every ad on TV was about using your house as an ATM. When articles in every publication from Wall St. Journal to Reader’s Digest was about the great “never go down” investment that houses represented, when professionals - bankers, brokers, etc. - all were selling this stuff sincerely. It makes me angry when folks now smuggly say that regular folks “should have known” this was a house of cards when Greenspan and every investment bank apparently did not.

35

Bingo, right there you nailed the genesis of this debacle. “Creative financing”… pfft.

36

I regained that same perspective at some point last week. I now see the losses in my portfolio as a “loss” of gains that never were…and most of those gains were realized over the last year. So I “lost” a bunch of money I never had-----and the truth is I still have everything I put into those accounts + more, what was lost was never real.

37

Well, I hit a jackpot (for a taxable amount) on a nickel slot machine at a CA Indian casino, and my mom hit an even bigger progressive 'pot (because she played the max bet) on the SAME machine a month later. What the heck—might as well try it, right?
I’ve also sold so much stupid crap on eBay that I can’t believe it. I’m amazed by what people will spend their money on. And if they want me to have that money, that’s fine.
That said, I’m not rolling in it; I still have multiple PT jobs. But I have no debts.

38

Why are you complaining about how you made smart financial decisions?

You’d be on the streets selling apples if you hadn’t made smart decisions. You didn’t make those smart decisions to benefit the economy or to benefit America, you made those decisions to benefit yourself, and you did indeed benefit. You aren’t going to lose your house. You still have your savings. So why the whining?

39

Want to talk about pissed off, try getting a loan/lease this week for a small business. I had a very fun week. Started the process to bring in a new to us/used piece of equipment last Thursday, never thought this crap would touch me.

Went to the same guy I already have one piece of equipment leased through (not car lease, $1 buyout leases). 100% financed, $250 for the paperwork, bing bang and done, 9.5%, big tax breaks blah blah. This time around, no banks were getting back to him until Tuesday, then got rejected by 3 banks, then to another lease company, won’t even talk to us. Put 25% down, no difference, nothing. “well maybe something in the 20+% range with 25% down”, still rejected.

Very screwed up, me and my partner both have good credit, I’m about a 750 he’s sitting about 690 and the business credit, I don’t know if it has a #, but its damn good. We’ve paid down $28k in debt in the past 2-3 months and there is only the one lease and about $6k left in debt.

So right now I want to do bad things to people with suits and ties.

I hate to admit this, but I needed to move on this machine, we need it, we are that busy, we could have completely extended our business and personal credit, but that would have put us too close to the edge. So I took my pride and shoved it up my ass, all the way into the middle of the small intestine and went to “the bank of DAD”. He didn’t have the cash on hand, but he had the credit cards, all empty. American Express to the rescue, 3% up front and 2.9% after that, and my old man is going to transfer the balance as soon as it shows up to another card that is 0% on balance transfers. I’m money ahead.

Actually I really didn’t have to tuck tail. My old man called this morning and had me buy about $250 of stuff on e-bay, and then asked how the financing was going. I told him it sucked and we were probably going to have to give up the machine since it was going on a truck on Tuesday, and if the truck wasn’t heading here, the price went up $6k.

I’m a lucky bastard, I have great folks, (my mom did all the leg work on this one), and they trust me enough to throw me a big huge pile of unsecured money.

So yeah the stuffed suits can go fornicate themselves with very large pitch forks, lubricated with coarse valve grinding compound.

They are just sitting there screwing with the common people waiting for all the free money to roll in.

As one guy told me this week. “getting a loan this week is like walking around a nuclear power plant on 9-12-2001 wearing a turban”.

What a pain in the ass this week has been, and I never thought it would touch me.

40

If I had a nickel for everytime I heard “real estate never goes down” before I bought my house, I’d be out of debt and sitting on an island somewhere right now.

Other bullshit I heard every day from professionals, experts, and armchair investors:

“Real estate is always a safe bet”
“Renting is throwing your money away”
“This trend is not reversing; if you don’t buy a house now, you will not own property in your lifetime”

It almost seems like the day we got the keys to the house all of this sentiment evaporated and all we’ve heard since then is “unsustainable can’t go on forever. Any idiot should’ve know that.”

:smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: