The concept that corporations are solely to blame for this is very foolish.

How many people stretched their income, or lied about it, to get the biggest possible home mortgage?

There HAS to be some amount of personal responsibility in this. There are people out there that owe 500k, with no house, it's THEIR responsibility. Nobody lined their pockets off of that.

How many people took teaser mortgages that for 2 years had a really low rate, knowing they couldn't afford the larger payments, so essentially they HAD to sell in less then 2 years. Doesn't matter if the market is up or down.

Then why were mortgage loan companies "offering" these "exotic" motgages in the first place? Answer: Because these people couldn't qualify for anything else except a exotic "smoke and mirrors" type loan. Mortgage companies don't make any money unless they write loans. Then they packaged the "loans" and sell them to someone else. They made their money, now it is up to the other person to collect.
Now add in Wall Street, creating new forms of derivatives from these loan packages, that can be bought, sold, traded, insured and leveraged. Making commissions all the way through, although it seems now no one bothered to mention the risks involved.
Of course add in the speculators also that helped drive the prices artifically higher also. They also took the "smoke and mirrors" loans, never intending to keep the property, but to flip it and make a small killing in the process.
A game of last one holding the bag.

Sounds just like the oil market.....

Starting about next year, if Obama gets elected. Raise taxes and reduce the money that people can spend will put even more corps out of business, reduce jobs even more, And, McCain's idea of breaks and incentives to corps won't do any good either. Let the companies keep on making things, then, because we don't have the money to buy any of them, the companies get to spend their tax breaks and incentives on warehouses to store their products for the next how many years.

Actually, Bush did have the right idea, but without control of the energy costs, it was doomed to failure. OPEC was formed in order to use oil as an "ECONOMIC WEAPON", and it's working because there is nothing in place to give the international oil industry any competition. What we're facing has been coming for the last 50 years, but it's only just coming to a head now. And, without a viable competitor for oil, it isn't going to stop.

My personal opinion is that OPEC has less to do with it this time around (unlike the shortages of the 70's), and the speculators are driving up the price.

I am beginning to think now what maybe the Fed and Gov't. are trying to do is a keep a more orderly collapse to the financial system. The concenus is that there are more failures are to come.
A lot of regular investors, reitrees, pension funds, and other institutional investors are going to take a big hit on the AIG bailout. This was a $100 stock a year ago.
Hopefully someone in Congress will have the guts to order a serious investigation into these failures, and put a few CEO's, and top manangers in jail if they find the usual accounting errors, insider trading and stock manipulation.
Puts a whole new perspective on our so called "strong economy" the last 8 years, as it now seems it was all based all on a sophisticated "shell game."

Again, no different than the "strong economy" of the 90's. The investors are the ones who control everything. What they control has simply changed. This is mainly due to the fact that the United States manufactures very little anymore.

As I said. " OIL NEEDS COMPETITION". Beef competes with chicken and pork. Chevy competes with Ford and Dodge, and now all the rest too. But, what competition does oil have? Soy bean oil? Alcohol? Not enough to do any good. They're used as suppliments, not a competitive supply. Electric cars won't do much either. It won't take long for people to realize that when they come home on a hot day after rush hour traffic, and plug their electric cars in for the morning rush, and the power grid goes into melt-down because of all the cars being charged, that will go by the wayside too, just like the hydrogen cars that were never intended to work out. But I have a couple of letters in mind that may shake things up a little. :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

Code enforcement stopped by today. I have one week to remove my installation in the back yard. I guess he drove through last night about 1 AM, and saw the flame where all the excess hydrogen is being burned off. Not visible during the daylight hours, but at night you can see it. The first thing out of his mouth was that "THIS IS A RESIDENTIAL AREA, NOT ZONED COMMERCIAL, OR RESEARCH." But, I did have to agree that he had a point when he started talking about liability in case of an explosion. I don't have enough to do a lot of damage, but windows would rattle for a couple of blocks. So, I've already shut it down and started taking things apart. If he stops by tomorrow, he'll see that I've started to dismantle it, and he said that would be okay since I'm a truck driver and not home much. But, I thought it was really curious when he asked if I could put one in his back yard for him to use. :?: In case of an accident, he's not liable, but here, I am????

I told him that it was a brand new super secret process and can not be made available to anyone until the patent office is done, and that I had planned to have it shut down much earlier, but was not able to get the time. That I had put it together to prove the concept, then wanted to get it taken apart before anyone saw it and tried to copy it.

I don't know if he believed me, but he didn't say anymore and left.

Latest thing I read about is the CEOs of Ford, GM, and Dodge are in Washington, lobbying for $58 billion in loans because the domestic auto industry is in the worst shape it has been in the last 30 years.

And, I'm afraid we're only seeing the start of it.

Canada has had "Exotic" mortgages for years now.

The difference is, we treat our house as shelter, not an investment.