Last week a 90 year-old woman attempted suicide, because she couldn't pay the mortgage and was being evicted from her home. Now this:

I've a bad feeling we're going to see more and more of this kind of thing.

The State of Massachusetts is putting people up in motels, now. No more room in shelters.

And for the first time in 35 years the agency for the homeless & working-poor I work with has had to put out a call for extra donations because our food pantry is stripped, new clients are up 60% over last year, and a quarter into our fiscal year the annual funding for utility, medical and other forms of assistance is almost gone.

I wouldn't focus too much on the Porter Ranch incident - whacked out folks were killing their families and themselves when things were better, too. But there are plenty of other signs that are bad.

You got that right kiddo. It's ot the already poor whowillbe goingberzerk, it's the middle class who can't delay gratification, who can't manage money; who had it good and then illness or other misfortune related to this Bush Economy..."ownership society" style trickle down crap rendered them broke.

Now they've gotta buy the scratchy toilet paper.

People who find their happiness in their ability to keep up with the Jonese, or whocan't standthe durty masses are going to freak out big time. The shame and humiliation will be great.


The free market doesn't care about that. The free market is impartial and has no safety nets.

It doesn't care about people freezing or starving to death. It doesn't care if you're homeless, and apparently is doesn't care about grand theft of the US treasury either.

We have Alan Greenspan, Bill Clinton & George W. Bush to thank for this economic clusterfuck. It's a battle for global domination of the world market and our leadership doens' give a rats ass about what it will do to We the People, they don't have to care, the Congress just gives them our money and we get nothing in return. The Haves and the Has More are pleased it's all going so well. They aren't paying for it after all...their golden parachutes are filled, they're getting bailed out and it's not costing them ANYTHING.

They play King of the Hill and we get the bill.

I expect more of this. Naomi Klein chronicles the suicide rate going up in countries where the Shock Doctrine has been applied. Tom Hartman frequently recites a UK study that shows a co-relation with higher suicide rates when conservatives control the government.

What concerns me more is how anybody can be such a monster to take lives of their entire family. I don't care what his financial tragedy was, what a selfish, loathsome unhinged creep.

Yes! In the 1929 crash, the greed-heads had the decency to throw only themselves out of windows. They didn't push their wives and kids out first.

No, I fear this may end up looking like Jonestown before it is over.

At least the un-hinged one could have asked how THEY felt about the situation before he shot them.

I know this scenario. And now I can't remember which city I was living in when a very similar murder attempted suicide took place. It was a big deal, and the local tv news framed it as a useless loss of life, of course.
What's more, the father, who managed to kill his wife and kids, forgot to kill himself completely, and wondered into the police station distraught. He told the story of how his wife and kids would not be able to handle their fall from GRACE.

Can you imagine? Thinking death is better than losing their high standing in the community.

Anyway, I was thinking last evening and hoping the news organizations would start telling more detailed stories of so-called MAIN STREET and what they're going through. It would be helpful for the mental health of this nation if there were a national conversation. Unfortunately, all we have right now is Phil Gramm's declartion that we are a nation of whiners. We need a different, more detailed picture of the whiners.

What a scumbag. Your not a real man if you can't handle being poor for a little while. Why didn't he just jump off a skyscraper and leave his family out of it?

It appears uncertain why this guy was in financial straits. He didn't own his home - he was a renter, so he had no mortgage. He had a mysterious company and no one knew what it did or sold or operated. He worked for a company til '99 (Price Waterhouse) and Sony doesn't say what he had done with them.

I think it's more grandstanding on the part of the media on this thing. Lots of people make bad financial decisions and have for centuries. This guy obviously is one of them.

The current situation clearly illustrates that greed 'bites' at all levels. There are those in the markets on Wall Street who were refusing to acknowledge the existence of a 'tomorrow'. And then at the other end of the spectrum, there are the borrowers who clearly borrowed more than they could afford, gambling on refinancing over and over again for years, thinking that the economic sector is not cyclical. Oh, and let's not forget those who refinanced over and over, getting cash out and buying their big-ass SUV's with it. No one twisted their arms and made them borrow too much, nor made them sign the loan documents and the disclosures. They were just too busy not thinking about tomorrow. Greed.

But, but, but I HEARD Sarah Palin say "You're darned right it's those predatory lenders! She wasn't wrong, was she?

But to the point:



I'd agree the tie is being made exclusively through media speculation and coincident timing.

I doubt there's been a month that went by in the last several years when there wasn't at least ONE widely reported incident of a family member killing - or trying to kill - everyone in the house/car/apartment/hotel room, and then killing themselves. And we have no idea if or how many of those were in dire financial straits.

How a story like this is covered is a spin of the wheel - and this one fell when there was free time and space (from the news director's POV). And once the real or imagined financial link was perceived, others leaped aboard the wagon.

No one here, and I seriously doubt anyone in the media, can tell us how this incident is dissimilar to any other over the last 2-3 years, but for the timing of outside events.

Welcome back, WM. You here to stick around this time?

Mebbe. I've gotta see how my time constraints shake out. I've been here on the admin end but haven't had time to spend on posting. I've been busy with business and work stuff, plus death of my father in law plus a long-planned little getaway so we'll see how it goes.

BTW, I seem to remember that you had a neighbor doing this crap. Has he crashed and burned yet? If not, he deserves it. I sure as hell don't want to bail that asshole out, do you? Please keep us up to date on him. He deserves his karma.

We have what? 9% mortgage default rate and that means we have 91% who are NOT in default. I have lived within my means the past 10 years, driving a 10 yr old paid-for truck. We have a small, hard-earned nest-egg and we haven't bought real estate that we can't afford. So I don't feel I should be bailing out those irresponsible assholes, either on Wall Street or 'Main Street', when I've been the responsible person and they have not. I'm just livid that the Repigs and the Dems have allowed this - they ALL have allowed it. They ALL are guilty. They're supporting this greed. I'm sick of them all. I'm all for voting out every single one of them who approved the bailout, next chance I get.

In the case of my legislators, Bill Nelson (D) voted against it. I'm a fan of his for that. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (up for re-election and R) voted against it the first time. AFTER they added the pork for Hollywood and for nascar and for the wooden-arrow people, she voted FOR it. As far as I'm concerned, she's toast. Most of the FL Dems voted for this pork-laden sack-of-shit bailout deal. The one thing they added that is worthwhile is the $250,000 increase in the FDIC insurance on personal savings. About time.

sorry about your father in law

but it is nice to read you again

Deserve it or not, I hate to see people die like this. It’s hard to imagine but most of the world doesn’t have it as nice as our poor do. Not oddly, they manage to see life for what it is and are happy and generous. To me, their values are something I have admired. Their kids, how I like to judge a culture, are very open, very happy and so unselfish.

Loosing the condo in Aspen and the Hummer should hardly be seen as a reason to cry, much less use a gun on your kids.

I think this stuff is culturally based and I know it doesn’t happen over night.

When I was in the 5th grade, my best friend had an angry father. We would be at his house and he would see the clock and say “Hey, we have to get out of here, my father will be home soon!” Now, we never noticed it but our families were poor. Anyway, Donny had a working mother, a 17 year old sister and a baby brother. One day he came to school and said that his dad blew up completely and shot everyone. He climbed out the window and went the only place he knew to go, school. An hour later they came and got him, the only living member of his family, and I never saw him again. I had never even seen his father.

You can’t tell me that even winning a lottery would have changed a damn thing. The "oh no! I'm poor" thing is an excuse. My point must be that it's a mystery at best.

I don't know, Bushwa, this story was in the India Times yesterday, and I had the clear impression that they blamed it on what's happening right now - they could have been mistaken of course, and it does sound like this guy had been getting depressed for a while, but it also sounds like his work was directly involved with some of the most affected industries.

Yeah, we don't know the history of this family, although it sounds like they were financially doing ok - other than taking out a couple big loans very recently.

Uhh huh. Seems his last job in the 'financial sector' if you can call PW that, ended in '99. His later job (we don't know when that ended) was with Sony. Sony in the LA area is, if I'm not mistaken, is very much in the film/entertainment business. At least, I'm not aware that they have any electronics manufacturing in LA, if they do. We don't know when that job ended but it wouldn't be related to banking or hedge funds or the primary or secondary loan markets. No one knows what his own company did, except that it appears it was created to shield or protect personal assets.

The India times must be mistaken. Do you have a link to that?

I was getting my hair done at the buty shop today and learned local man hung himself and the fneral was tonight in REd Bank NJ. Yup, he lost his job and apparently lost his grip, too. He left a wife and child behind.


This is so sad, man.

I think I'm gonna call my local politicians ans suggest they go some community out reah of some sort. I don't now what they can do, but it would be a start.

Thought he could take it with him?

People are being driven totally insane by desparation.

Furthermore, I have seen a tremendous number of lost pet ads on my street light pole lately. I believe that hungry people are eating neighbor's pets to stay alive. So, little boys and girls are missing "fluffy," "nibbles," "foofoo," and several other beloved pets.

In post WW II Germany, cats were called "roof chickens" because they would sit on the edge of a roof and they were used as one would use a chicken (they would be eaten).

I would like to emphasize that W. Bush is a LIAR!!!!

The lying son of a Bush redefines things to make them seem a lot better than they really are. Thus, the W. Bush administration redefined the word torture so that they could evade war crime convictions and still get away with horribly torturing prisoners.

In the case of poverty, the son of a Bush defined starvation and hunger in such a way that the starving and hungry are no longer counted as they once were.

Many people in the US are now in desparate trouble, and the W. Bush statistics don't even show it.

We don't know just how bad the situation is because the data that is collected is no longer collected in the same way that it was in the past. Those who used to be considered to be starving, are now in the wrong category. So, we can't compare the current conditions with past conditions (hard to blame W. Bush when Bush is altering the data).

Typical of Republicans, the Bush administration doesn't care about human beings. There are families with both parents working (sometimes multiple jobs each), and still they are homeless (especially in California where the land prices have been outrageous). Don't expect compassion from a party that took away nourishing vegetables (under Ronald Reagan's presidency) stating that catsup was a vegetable. Don't expect compassion from a party that let human beings languish and die in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (while W. Bush and Cheney were informed, but unwilling to disrupt their vacations, and Condoleezza Rice was busy purchasing $200 shoes). Barbara Bush (while touring the Katrina disaster) said that the poor people never had it so good, and that they were used to poverty. (It reminds me of the time that Marie Antoinette was informed that the people had no bread so she said "let them eat cake)."

It is hard for me to believe that Americans voted for a leader who doesn't care about them. It seems to me that the role of a leader is to look after the nation and the people in it. Why would people vote contrary to their own best interests?

Desperation? And, um, who created these personal scenarios? Did anyone twist anyone else's arm to go on personal spending sprees or to buy more than they could afford, or to sign loan documents for loans with escalating interest schedules?

While I agree the Bush Admin had a hand in the mess of an economy we have, as much as I hate to admit it and as much as I admire him, Clinton with his push for home ownership for all had his fingers in it too. And the Dems in congress are the ones who voted this massive bailout that we are all paying for, no matter how fiscally responsible we have been in our own lives. Attempts in the legislature to rein in Fannie and Freddie were blown off. All of this of course, doesn't matter, it seems. We're all going to pay for personal bad decisions by creditors and debtors at all levels, corporate and personal.

I'm as anti-Bush as anyone but this mess isn't all Bush-made. Pelosi and Reid and the majority of the Dems in both houses came to Bush's rescue with their bill(s), twisting arms and ranting and raving using every fear tactic they could pull out of their asses to get this tax-payer funded bailout through both houses. Obama has buddies at Fannie and Freddie and even used one to help him with his VP search. All the candidates at all levels have friends in the financial sector. Paulsen is an ex-Wall Street-er bailing out his buddies with our tax dollars. The entire situation is an outrage and to blame it solely on Bush, as much as I detest the man, is hardly accurate.

Until the American people actually THINK and EXAMINE the situation from all angles, and acknowledge that this mess is the fault of ALL in Washington, nothing will ever be fixed. As long as people sit around with their thumbs up their collective asses, blaming 'The Republicans' or 'Bush' or 'Wall Street' for this mess, nothing will ever be done. Until America takes personal responsibility for this mess at all levels, nothing will happen and no lessons will be learned. People will continue to buy more than they can afford. Businesses will borrow more than they can afford. Government will continue to mint money with nothing to back it up, and will continue to sell debt to other countries to cover it's ass.

This fiscal irresponsibility must stop at all levels and it begins with individuals. You don't find Europeans living in debt the way people do here. Yet they're also having to pay for the greed of America.

All the hand-wringing and sympathy in the world is not going to fix this situation. It takes personal integrity and personal fiscal responsibility.

just take a moment and consider the larger picture of what was taking place during this period of time. jobs were being cut in waves, incomes slashed, people who never owned a home or had no knowledge of how a mortage worked were being scammed, not only the lure of getting a home but the pressure of missing your only chance ever......to own your own home. the fact that mergers and global corporations do everything in their power to not pay adequate wages or hire people leaving only the option of credit Instant cash for the seller-prolonged debt for the buyer.

warning this will not only make your blood boil but also make you sick to your stomache.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/17645244/detail.html

But the bottom line is, if you don't know how a mortgage works, you have no business signing on the dotted line. Maybe it was not properly disclosed or maybe it was and the borrower didn't understand it. But any way you look at it, it is not my fault and it should not be up to those of us who educate ourselves to bail those out who choose NOT to educate themselves. The world is full of pressures, day in and day out. You can educate yourselves. You can either step up to the plate and make responsible decisions and decide NOT to go into debt or you can make bad decisions and then what? We're supposed to bail them out?

I'm sorry but I do NOT feel sorry for anyone in this mess.

who you blame at this point is irrelevant, either we get the money into the system to shore up these bad loans thus making new loans possible and get the stock market back on its feet, or we face bad days ahead, which we face regardless.

wall street will always come out ahead of the little guy, no matter whether the little guy knowingly entered into a contract they couldnt afford or not...

remember, there are many of them out there like my daughter and son, who each took advantage of sub primes, in one case to refinance an existing loan and in another to buy a condo...

both of them are able to make their payments and likely will be able to ride out the problem till it turns around, or will end up making short sales if they are allowed to...

Republican economic policies for the past 40 yrs, Republican political policies for the past 40 yrs, have made it a sure fire bet we would be facing an economy where we make nothing, as we do, and are likely never to again. Where unions are dying or dead and where the average american no longer has decent wages and benefits, THAT is not the fault of the average person...dangling the possibilty of affording to be a homeowner during these times in their faces gets the expected results...



p.s. in both cases i was asked my opinion of the loans they wanted to take out and i told them it was likely too risky...but when i was their age i would have probably done the same thing

It's hardly irrelevant when this debt is going to be on the shoulders of taxpayers for another generation or so. It's important to place blame and for those who made bad decisions, to learn to live with their decisions or the consequences or they'll end up doing it all over again. If they think someone is going to bail their asses out every time something in their lives go south, then they've learned no lessons. Society has learned no lesson.

The Republicans have not been in control for the entire past 40 years. We've had many Dem-controlled congresses, Dem presidents, and all are at fault on both sides of the aisle.

Uggggh, what a terrible story.

Why his children? WTH did they do?

My husband and I aren't in the finance field like that father was. How come we are doing better in our finances than that psycho?

i actually agree with everything you said (altho we see solving it differently but i digress) right up until the above quote.

bush jr in 2002 or 3 unregulated fannie and freddie and made a speech saying now the poor could buy an expensive house. randi plays the clip of it quite a bit. it was back when republicans had both the house and senate. say what you want but this escalated the problem more so then any other event in the last 40 years. i'm not saying mccain is responsible for the last 8 years of a neocon corrupt government but yeah i am saying bush jr is mostly to blame for your economy of today.

not quite so black and white simple as that. a lot of people made what at the time they believed were good responsible descisions only to be undermined by the flurry of job losses and wage cuts. in the larger picture people who had every reason to feel secure that they could continue on in their employment or find other work with suitable income. didnt matter what these people did if they educated themselves worked hard were productive, efficient, showed up every day,saved their money, were responsible, the floor was scheduled to fall out underneath them. if the bad part of the loans didnt get em the fall surely would, and did.

Yet, now they're crying 'foul' saying they were 'tricked' into their loans. I don't think the people you reference are the 9%, by the way. I'm talking about irresponsible re-fi's and borrowing more than one is qualified to borrow using an ARM. I'm talking about people who bought several houses with no money down so they could 'build wealth' as they called it. I call that speculation and that drove the market out of whack so no one could really afford to buy for a reasonable price. These same people are the ones who refinanced with they wanted a new car or boat, taking more money out of an already-inflated appraisal until they were doomed when the inevitable market swing occurred and they were then upside down on their loans. (This happened in the early 90's too, btw). We simply chose NOT to buy a house because we didn't want to put ourselves in a position in a few years to be either stuck with a high rate ARM or in the position that the loan payments would out pace our income. Also, the economy is cyclical and always has been. I've been through numerous cycles in my lifetime and what goes up ALWAYS comes down. Ya just don't buy 'high' or on the 'upswing' and so many people did, getting caught up in the frenzy of greed.

The economy hasn't been the ' boom' that was stated for the past 5 years. Were these people thinking that these manipulated unemployment figures were real and wouldn't eventually effect them? Here on this board for the past 5 yrs, we've often discussed the fact that many of the unemployed had 'bled' off the unemployment rolls and weren't being counted. How many people had been downsized and jobs outsourced since the early 90's?

When you get right down to it, everyday life is a gamble. You can walk out your door and get hit by a bus. You can't always go around blaming others. At some point, you have to say "I really screwed up and now I am going to have to pay for it for a long time" and just try to learn your lesson and stop blaming others. I surely never expected others who are uninvolved in my life (i.e. taxpayers) to take up the slack for my bad timing and bad decisions and yes, I've made plenty of them, too numerous and too stupid to even begin to mention. I can sit here today and say I'm glad no one bailed me out because I would never put myself in that position again. I never blamed the economy nor the institutions who loaned us too much money. I am personally responsible for all those bad choices and I paid for it.

The same stunt was pulled during the Raygun created depression. After Raygun gave the green light to employers to treat their employees as chattel, they started closing down and moving out of the country. Many of the unemployed fell off the unemployment rolls once they stopped filing because their benefits ran out. People were forced to take lower paying jobs, but yet we were told that the Raygun Revolution had fixed the economy with low interest rates and inflation.
This current situation has been brewing since 2002. Before the 2004 election the Bushyt Misadminstration was the first presidency to lose more jobs than it created since the Hoover years. They reclassified fast food jobs as manufacturing. And they gave the green light to banking firms to give money to whoever walked into the door. They also looked the other way while these same firms were allowed to increase their debt to asset ratios. The very same conditions were created that caused the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
While it has become fashionable to blame the victims for taking loans that they could not afford, the banking industry not only did not do their job by saying no to these borrowers, but worked under a system where they enriched themselves based on who could give the most away.
And all of this was because of a misgotten belief that "trickle down economics" was going to pave the American streets with gold. Yeah, they borrowers can't afford these loans now, but when the Bush Tax Cuts become permanent, and the wealthiest 1% are no longer burdened by paying taxes, the world will be sunshine and lollipops for everyone.

Lots of greed and irresponsible behavior on all parts - greedy lenders, greedy borrowers, and the secondary market was bundling these crappy loans and trying to bury them.

Wow! This is getting so illogical I can’t believe it.

Fact is – George Bush has been “the most powerful man in the world” for 8 years. He has made some pretty sweeping changes in the very foundation of the US Constitution. He has taken powers that no other president has ever had the audacity to grab. Let me repeat – 8 years.

I don’t care what Taft or Buchanan did or left in place. This guy was the man, in charge, the Head Muther In Charge. To sit and say, well, this stuff was a problem caused by blah blah blah is senseless. When a person takes that office he/she says “I’m going to run this place and I am going to fix what’s wrong, like I said in the campaign and I’m going to make this and that right”.

Didn’t have any power? I ain’t buying that one, I’ve been awake these past years. “They wouldn’t let me!”? You are not a winner, thanks for playing.

Now, I would believe if there were years of attempts to fix something that was messed up at the onset, and it takes more time than the 8 years given. Sorry but I didn’t notice those attempts if they were made.

Stuff all that – “it was Carter, or Clinton, or Filmore, or Harding!” It was Bush and it was the Congress in office and it was the House in office. That crowd was highly weighed by republicans and that’s that!

It was poor people or it was very rich people is just as lame. Look up “government” in the dictionary. Did it happen in some other country or was it under the nose of the government of the United States of America? This isn’t officially anarchy, yet. Government imposes rules of commerce that define what can go on and what cannot. This even in a republican controlled government, like it or not.

My dog ate the economy isn't gonna fly.