I was painting that room we hired those guys to finish, you know, the one where the guys ran off with the money and never finished the job? Yeah, that room.
So I’m in there and Blane Jr. comes around for a visit. He asks if I’m getting the place ready for Our Clan. We laugh a bit and talk about electronic bolts and some wild scenarios. Secret passwords and spy stuff.
I ask him if he understands I’m just kidding about all that. He just gives me this smile, like, maybe. He has the best poker face in the world and I just can’t know anything off his look.
Just skimming through the news channels watching the journalists hyperventilate makes me ill. They all bark out, “Never seen anything like this before.”
Really? Shit, you don’t have to be an economist to understand what’s been going on. Take a look down your street. All your neighbors spending money they ain’t got on crap they don’t need. Money they will never be able to pay back. Look around. Everybody has everything. Nobody does without. Not like they used to. But hey, it made the economy look badazz, huh?
Lenders are happy to put these people in debt. They make heaps off each loan they create, and it’s not really their money they’re lending.
Maybe I’m not talking about your neighbors so much as I’m talking about mine, I live in the wealthiest large city in America. On my drive to work I’ll run across at least five Hummers and two exotic cars with vanity plates. Could be their money. But it’s probably yours, the money you have in the bank that they borrowed on their good credit. (You want your Hummer back?)
I’m not talking about the poor or the needy. That’s not what’s causing the mess. It’s the middlemen. The regulators and the bankers.
I wish I could tell you all I know but I have this rule about not writing about the job on the blog.
So here’s a good tune for you tonight, “New Frontier” by Donald Fagen. Funny the A-bomb is based on an implosion. Song still works for me.
The Show Must Go On 
Man, “New Frontier”, that takes me back to when I used to watch MTV …
So true, your observations on the economy. It is an interesting bubble of illusion we live in, yes?
I’m a music video junkie, never stopped watching MTV.
It is a sad stich, Lea. And it’s not just us, it’s worldwide.
Several of my friends in New York are BSD’s. Right now the New York guys are in panic mode. One of them put it like this… ” I feel like a bar tender on the Titanic. The band is playing. People are dancing. Drinking. They give me hundred dollar tips. I never made so much money. And we’re going down… fast.”
To quote Metallica, “Sad But True.”
I feel like someone took my paycheck and blew it on crack. Can’t get it back, can’t fix it, it’s gone and there’s nothing to show for it.
spot on ma mate…
How ’bout laying the blame on Congress? They’re the ones that passed laws requiring lending institutions to lend to EVERYBODY lest they be subjected to profiling lawsuits. Our US Congress created the sub-prime mortgage mess, and now they’ve taken it over.
The worst part is that we (taxpayers) end up holding the bag. Vote the babosos out.
I do blame Congress for starting it. I don’t know what you’re talking about when you write “profiling lawsuits.”
What I do know is they relaxed the lending laws to where no one had to have much skin in the game. That makes it very easy to walk when the going gets tough. I see a lot of it every day. It’s been like that for years.
Lawsuits brought about by “profiling.” Congress threatened lenders if they denied loans to unqualified buyers.
This whole mess is all about greed.
At the root of it is economic policy set by the executive branch.
For instance, interest rates have been so low for so many years, lower than the rate of inflation. Money sitting in a bank loses value.
mishele– This whole mess is all about socialism.
Kitty– Economic policy is created by the legislative branch, not the executive branch.
Bunk, America is not a socialist country, now you stop that trolling or else.
Not trolling, Kit. Sorry you thought that I has was been. We are not a socialist country…yet. However there are folks leading us in that direction, step-by-step, and I don’t like it a bit.
Just teasing, Bunk. Are we really a capitalist nation when the Fed steps in and saves the day for Wall Street time after time after time?
Our government has never been so… BIG.
If the Fed wants to provide the safety net for Wall Street, they should at least provide a little health care for everyone.
With a healthier nation you have a healthier workforce. You have that, you have a stronger country. It is simple to me.