Yup. they wanted $40B from the fed, instead they got permission to borrow $20B from themselves.

 

Health care too.

 

Health care is creating replacements for the old blue collar segment. 9 to 5 jobs that people can support the family on. There are many 6 month to two year programs to become techs of various kinds. These people seem to find work too.

 

What the hell were these financial institutions thinking. What the hell were the CEO's and board of directors thinking. Can somebody enlighten me on this?

 

There are also many, many high paying jobs in health care. There are a lot of research centers, etc. looking for talent. It's not just about doctors and nurses.

 

Greed.

 

I've have been preaching on that stump for a while.
The only problem is the size of my stump...

But seriously when we approach this with a serious effort the general public will respond with enthusiasm and the markets will wake back up again.

 

Well, we've all talked about this before, and without getting into a political debate, much of this started with what both political parties saw as a big problem; the American dream of home ownership was no longer attainable due to escalating housing costs and little or no growth in the average income. Throw in tons of unnecessary consumer spending (an unwillingness to delay gratification in order to save up a down payment) and low income people could not afford to buy a home. I can't imagine i'm telling folks here anything they didn't hear as a regularly repeated sound bite during the last three or four presidential elections. Heck, I think there are some threads about the subject here in Vintage if you go back four or five years.

So the question was, how do we address the problem? The solution, lax lending standards. Let low income folks borrow 90, 95, even 100% of the cost of a home. heck, let them have 110%. Why be so generous? The lunkheads were operating on the premise that property values always go up. So even if these folks got in trouble, they could always sell the house and get out of debt. But then the real estate market cooled down and all the folks who were upside down couldn't make payments OR sell the home. This resulted in forclosures, further cooling the market. Of course, these loan practices got so silly that in the end there was also some straight out fraud.

 

Bill, I agree with all you've said. What I want to hear is that we have President waiting in the wings that understands what Priority One is and gets it moving at a level the oil rulers never imagined. Instead I am bombared with ads and BS that don't mean $hit from both sides.

Back OT. I sure hope we see something to stem the tide tomorrow. We have to get the housing market out of the crapper.

 

Once again, I am resisting the temptation to access my Online Vanguard account

Luckily, we have 12 months cash needs in our Money Mkt account. I wonder if many younger folks have followed the old step 1 in financail planning:

*3-6 months cash in an emergency fund, if you have two incomes and/or good job secuity
*6-12 months cash in an emergency fund, if a family has only one bread-winner* or widely fluctuating income (like a commission job)

*how's that for a quaint anachronism.... bread winner