No one seems to know exactly what borrowers will be “helped” by US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s “new” Hope Now initiative.
And not everyone’s clear (to say the least) about California Governor Schwarzenegger’s deal with Countrywide, Litton, Home Eq and GMAC to modify mortgages in the golden state.
The New York Times reports;
The Governors plan in California is likely to help about 12 percent of borrowers in the state with adjustable-rate subprime loans, according to estimates by Barclays Capital.
CNNMoney.com reports;
Already behind on your mortgage payments? No help there.
Able to make payments even after the rate on your adjustable mortgage moves higher? You can manage on your own.
Paulson divided subprime borrowers into four groups. The plan would be most geared toward those who can afford the mortgage now but won’t be able to after the adjustment.
The other three groups are largely left out: Borrowers who can afford an adjustment; those who are already behind on their payments; and those who can refinance into a fixed-rate loan.
The plan would also seemingly exclude borrowers who hold option-ARMs that aren’t subprime. These are loans that start with extremely low “teaser” rates before rising dramatically a few years into the loan.
It has also been reported that homes that were bought as investments – as opposed to for the purpose of living in – would be excluded.
Moe rants;
So, essentially we seem to be back at square one and lenders will be doing what they have been doing. Over burdened, over worked, clogged loss mitigation departments. Working with borrowers one by one.
It reminds me of a game I used to play when I was just a little tyke. Maybe some of you all will remember.
Where’s Waldo?
The lenders, servicers and investors say, “Which one of you stinking 2 million homeowners in adjustable rate mortgages can or can’t afford your mortgage? Huh? You better tell me fast, you better prove it and get through my battalion of under-paid and over-worked poorly-trained staff to show me you’re not trying to get a “freebie” loan modification”! I don’t care if we have to play “Where’s Waldo until we go bankrupt and drive our economy into the ground.”
Angelo Mozilo claims to have 3,000 staff members dedicated to analyzing tens of thousands or mortgages. Going through them one by one. Trying to “catch” the people who are trying to “game” the system.
He claims to have helped 50,000 and maybe 40-50,000 next year. What he forgot to mention was that there are well over 500,000 Countrywide mortgages that are delinquent or in default. Oops!
* At the end of September, Countrywide reported that 5.87 percent of the 8.98 million mortgages it services were delinquent, or nearly 530,000 loans are at risk of defaulting. Countrywide said it has completed 20,000 loan modifications so far this year.
* Countrywide has a massive $1.5 trillion servicing portfolio
This is a massive clean up of toxic loans. Hundreds of thousands of mortgages need to be worked out. We’re not picking up cigarette buts up on the shore line guys!
The experts comment;
“There is no cookie-cutter approach that can be taken to this,” said Bert Ely, a longtime banking consultant in Alexandria, Va. “This is going to be a mess.”
“The risk is that you could be modifying loans for people who don’t need it,” said Sharon Greenberg, director of mortgage strategy at Barclays. “There’s only so much you can do without talking to the borrower.”
John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said the rate freeze would help, but that its impact would depend on the extent to which Wall Street investment firms pushed the idea among investment funds that held mortgage-backed securities.
“It’s going to be only a limited help if you don’t have the absolute commitment of Wall Street to reach into those structured investment vehicles and get their approval,” Mr. Taylor said.
The lawyers speak;
“The modification of existing contracts, without the full and willing agreement of all parties to these contracts, risks significant erosion of 200 years of contract law,” said Joshua Rosner, managing director at Graham-Fisher & Co., an independent research firm in New York.
Does the proposed streamlined approach for modifying groups of borrowers satisfy “standard industry practices” as laid out in Pooling and Servicing Agreements, the legal documents for securitized loans?
“We don’t have a definition of standard industry practices; just a functional one,” he said.
The non-profits must be heard;
The group that will be helped represents just a narrow slice of the subprime borrowers in trouble, said Michael Shea, housing director of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). “It helps. Don’t get me wrong. … But it’s disappointing that we are nearly a year into the crisis and the Treasury Secretary is dealing with the easiest part of the problem.”
“It won’t help the majority,” said Lisa Rice, vice president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, a national organization dedicated to ending housing discrimination. “It’s only going to help that one bucket, and it’s hard to say how large that bucket will be without knowing the details of how the Treasury Department will assess affordability.”
If the government relies on mortgage counseling programs and state- or city-backed bailouts to address the rest of threatened homeowners, the foreclosure problem might get worse, said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
Wait a second, you need to read what our Senators are saying;
Also Monday, Sen. Hillary Clinton called for a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures, as well as a five-year freeze on the rates of adjustable mortgages.
Meanwhile, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., also a presidential candidate, called on the White House to push loan servicers to put in place broad-based and transparent loan modifications.
“Modifications also need to be made available to borrowers who have become delinquent because of loan resets, but who had been current prior to that. These homeowners should not be punished because of the abusive loans they were sold,” Dodd said in a statement.
So, my question is, “Have we progressed anymore then where we were a month ago or just last week?” Or has it appears that this is just much of the same’ol, same’ol.
I truly do not see any significant progress happening until a plan is “set in stone”.
As Seinfeld would say, ‘yada, yada, yada’.
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
I HAVE HAD MORE THAN ONE TUFF MONTH IN 22 YEARS IN THE BUSINESS AND HAVE NEVER SEEN OR EXPECTED TO HAVE SOMEONE OR THE GOV’T HELP ME IN MY PAY-MENTS OR HOPEFULLY NOT A GOV’T PAY PLAN.
IF THE BORROWER CAN READ THE ENGLISH LINGO GOOO HOME!!!
Paulson’s Subprime bailout is a farce.
Having the same lenders that made reckless subprime loans determine which sub prime borrowers qualify as deadbeats seems more than just a little crazy.
Cheers to the under leveraged, good credit, taxpayers that will foot the bill.
Jim Brickman
these loans have to be reunderwritten (separating crook from needy) and reclosed (it is a legal instrument sold at a certain price-with different terms) who is going to pay for that, servicers aren’t customer service, what a farce and I smell a bailout of 10 trillion by you and me, ustaxpayer
So, these loans will need to be “underwritten” “properly” one by one. That seems like a huge under taking?
Why do people call it a bail out, when many of these borrowers would have defaulted if their rates were not frozen.
Is this is a bail out of homeowners or realy investors?
I can’t tell if Paulson’s plan is more of a farce or a disaster. It will be truly ironic if this plan gets implemented, “helping” only a very few borrowers, while severly damaging the market for mortgage-backed-securities – including those of Fannie & Freddie. Besides, is it helpful to have your rate fixed if your loan is 140% of the home’s value? From a purely self-interested point of view, the best strategy for many of these borrowers is: milk the foreclosure for as long as you can (feigning a willingness to stick to a modified payment plan), live in the house without paying any house payments for as long as you can and save cash. After the sheriff throws you out on the curb, rent a place, using some of your cash for the big damage deposit that wil be required. You may even be able to buy a house using seller-financing from one of many desperate sellers.
This is ridiculous and unfair,
I as a tax payer now have to foot the bill for these idioit people who took out the mortgage. If they read the paperwork than they knew what could happen, if they didnt read them then thats there own fault. Let the chips fall where they may, if they cant afford the payments than to bad. Hillary Clinton was always a idiot and is proving she is one now. I do not want my money bailing out these people
IS PAULSON TRYING TO KILL COUNTRYWIDE?
THIS WILL DEVASTATE CFC OVERNIGHT.
MAYBE HIS GOLDMAN BUDDIES ARE SHORTING THEM?
dan your full of shit! hillary clinton did the right thing so your idiot ’cause she’s going to be the next president of the united states of america accept the fact that all republican are full of shit! they go to war just to steal the oil making us believe they have wnd in iraq and cannot even fixed the katrina problem.
see what the republican do? a mess in bush administration due to lax lending practice all this wall street pigs,real state agent,lender, appraisser and loan officer because of that YSP homeowners who supposed to qualify to prime they put them into toxic ARMs just for there own interest. if your hard working and limited speaking english minorites and immigrant then your fuck! they will give you loan that not for your own interest and they even coach them to state there income. so homeowners whose born in this country get fooled too! but if your minorites and immigrant with limited speaking english and your vurnerable and eassily get fooled by this crooks loan officers .
imagine that this guys whose job is a strawberry laborer and this loan officer offer him to be a homeowners with no down just sign the papers evendo he dont speak good english because the crooks loan officers are trained to do smooth talk them he fooled this guys making believe that he too could have a small piece of american dream now that guy are f#@k! ’cause he have interest loan and to his income he can’t even qualify for that loan. those are the people deserve to die those crooks loan officers and those apppraiser who inflate the home value.
so dont tell me all you mutha f%##ers out there that those people who got that toxic ARMs deserve to loose there home. you guys are full of shit!
I entered the loan origination business in 1980. I did some research and learned that our business had a reputation equal if not worse than “a car salesman”. Wow … what an opportunity to make a difference and help people, care about them, and never think about earning a commission . The past year or two have been rough as I’ve had to turn away loans I could have done … with a little bit of fraud. In the end, it would have been one more foreclosure.
Surely, there are loan reps out there that think the same way my husband and I do. Unfortunately, I think we are in the minority.
We have been sitting on a time bomb that has finally gone off. We are all going to pay the price whether we had anything to do with it or not. Will a solution be found? I doubt it. Those at the very top have socked away millions while most of us in the business or not will hope and pray we make it through this mess.
Good Night,
Marian
Sadly Hans you are showing your ignorance of how the market works and where the blame truly lies. There is nothing wrong with a YSP, it is what most people choose when given the option. It has been villified for morons like you. If home prices had kept going up that strawberry picker would be living large, but now he just got to live in a nice house and stick someone else with the house which isn’t even worth what he borrowed.
Moe, can you block hans? His profane language detracts from this discussion.
Moe, to answer your question about “bail out”, some/many people think that a select group of people will get preferred treatment (keeping lower payments) while everyone else does not. This includes people that can afford higher resets, the people that took out higher fixed, and the people on the sidelines waiting for a lower priced house. Some people are getting bailed out of a situation that they got themselves into, while others supplement the companies losing money on these loans with thier higher payments/interest. The prudunt are “punished” while the risk takers (loan companies and individuals) benefit – this is how some people feel. Including me.
Is there any other way ? You can’t do carpet bombing … er, blanket loan modifications. That would too freaking expensive. And besides I know that sounds heartless but a lot of those people simply overpaid and can’t afford the house. It’s one thing if borrower did qualify for 30 year fixed (using traditional DTIs) and was sold over to exploding subprime ARM and another when one takes on teaser rate because that’s the only rate he could afford.
DO NOT BUY STUFF YOU CAN NOT AFFORD.
If borrower overbought relative to his income he will have lose the house to foreclosure plain and simple. I know real estate agents and loan officers really pushed but again someone somewhere must take personal responsibility for completely stupid loans like 8-10 times of one’s income.
If anyone disagrees please elaborate why responsible taxpayers must help not so responsible fellow citizens who buy things without regard to how they are going to pay for them.
Hans,
Welcome to America! If you grew up here then you should know from your basic economics class that capitalism is based on free markets (with some controls to keep the crooks on their toes). The real estate industry, credit markets, etc are just markets that go up and down. They went up for a long time with cheap money, now they are going down. People make money and people lose money. That is the game. Right now, people are going to lose money and their assets (for some their house) as the markets go down. Excluding the fraud aspect of loans (that is what the courts are for) the reality is that there are people who are in homes they should not be in. The “Who” to blame falls primarily on the person who signed the loan offer with all the T&Cs that came with it. No common sense person can defend the person who earns $60K a year and is sitting in a $700K home and says they did not what they were getting into and all of the sudden can’t afford the payments. They should not be there, IT IS their fault and that is what the foreclosure process is for… to allow them out and put the house back on the market for the person who can actually afford it. This will be a good market reset (especially for those of us who live in Southern California where the prices are way over inflated). Last note to you personally… better english grammer and choice of words would serve you better to get your point accross rather than profanity.
Side comment with regards to the “rate freeze” plans that they are discussing: If the government orchestrates a deal with the lenders to put freeze rates for certain mortgage holders, does anyone not see the discrimination issue with this? I should have grounds to sue my lender if they do not offer me the same low rate they are offering these Borrowers. I make my payments, have a great FICO score, etc, so therefore, I should have the same rate as them as well. I am not a Lawyer, so any Professional feedback on this subject would be great.
you moron that guy got offered by that crook loan officers and if you have limited english and you dont know what your signing for how’s that gonna be your advantage accept the fact that alot in this country mostly minorites and immigrant dont even know how to read and write but most of them is harworking individual like me i try to explain everything in here even my english and grammar is bad even i dont know where to put period or coma or whatever i just say it whatever i could understand. im not saying all deserve to loose there home into foreclosure or get a help sort of something but you guys have to see it equal and fair so those who lied should deserve it but those who get fooled should deserve to get help and stay in there home. even if your born in this country and speak the language they get fooled too.if have limited speaking english is much worse they are the one who get fooled alot! in order to know more better what people are signing it should be requested in there own language for better understanding or if you confidently speak and understang english then you have both option. so people individually have nomore excuses once they sign it on there own language or either which ever they prefer to understand what they are signing for thats it for them.
you guys only see one side those immigrant with limited english come here in this country and want to work get offered everything to credt card they dont even know what is APR or to getting a mortgage not all people of all walk of life are the same. even if they go to school for second language its not guaranteed that all of them understand accurate english its easy for you guys to say it. the best way even if your white,black or other minorities whatever you getting in this country to credit card,cars or mortgage you should have option if you want it in you language or in english it simple as that so individual know what they are sgning for.
I’m a lender with 6 years in the business, i statrted off working for a bank and then a broker because i looked at i could make more money and in the end i gave up quality. The “EXOTIC” loans created a market for fraud and now we have to pay, i left the broker world 3 months ago because my income dropped by 45% and i had bills piling up, and now i’m back with a bank with a salary instead of (100%)commission, i have always cared about my clients and still do but this down trend is hurting us all. the clients can’t make the monthly payments, which cuases defaults,forclousers,then support staff laid off until the company closes the door. There have been alot of crooks in the business. i’m glad that someone wants to help all these people get out of those loans, but someone please tell me what about the tens of thousands who have lost there job in this business? where will they go? How will they support themselves and family? The biggetr picture is that I made six figures for that last 3 years and now i will make around 55% to 60% of what i used to make so in the end “WE” all need help. Marion Rosenfeld i am happy to see you also turned away those red flag loans and you cared about what you did, i aslo was the same way and did well.
Hans, you need to keep and personal attacks or using f#@k in every comment. I don’t mind a little cussing here and there or I will have to block you. Thanks for your cooperation.
Here are my thoughts;
1. There WILL be NO perfect plan for this enormous mortagage mess
2. There WILL be some kind of plan, like it or not
3. Just freeze all ARM’s for a period of time. ALL of them
4. And if after that freeze, homeowners continue to be delinquent, then let them go into foreclosure
5. That way EVERYONE get’s a freeze and the borrowers that cannot truly afford the payment, will weed themselves out and the ones that can and deserve a freeze, will keep their homes and live happily ever after
6. You can fight this all you want and say NO BAIL OUT, but it WILL happen, so instead of just saying screw that or this, how about some ideas on how this should be done because, again, it will be done and your government is working on this RIGHT now.
I still can’t seeem to understand why investors are crying wolf, when these investments are already and obvioulsy going way south and appaer to be worthless. So, it wasn’t as if they were going to see the glorious returns that they had hoped for when they gambled on these subprime loans, just like borrowers.
You know what investors are making BIG MONEY? Not the the investors of MBS’s, oh NO! It’s the guys you took out derivative contracts and bet AGAINST these MBS’S, those investors are the ones making a killing. They are hoping for more write downs.
One may think this is a bail out. I disagree, it’s a temporary “fix” to an out of control problem with no perfect solution.
Someone will lose here, no matter what.
I have a better plan.
Have the responsible mortgage holders walk down the street to the deadbeat’s house and write the deadbeat a cheque to cover the shortfall. Repeat monthly, for the next 30 years.
Any bailout is the same thing in disguise.
Freeze all primary resident subprime arm’s only for a period of 2 years, not 5 or 7. If they cannot get thier financial situation in order in 2 years they won’t in 5. This is at best an imperfect bailout that should be underwritten and financed by the Wall Street investment banks that created the market for subprime loans initially!. These banks profited greatly by creating a market wherby they would package , tranch and sell these toxic mbs’ to further package and sell cdo’s and siv’s to unsuspecting domestic & foriegn buyers. They should bear the finacial brunt(along with fed regulators who were apparently playing dead,dumb & blind) with fomenting the crisis we now face.
In regard to the rationale for this proposal: it seems to me to be mostly an attempt to jawbone the problem, slowing down the accumulation of negative sentiment towards housing prices in general. These people (Paulson, etc.)are far too smart to believe this will have any appreciable effect, it is a bandaid on a gunshot wound.
In regard to the “victims”: Congratulations! You have now been victimized again! You are free to continue making payments on a house which you have negative equity in. As the price of your house continues to decline over the next few years, take heart, as you will be back to square one in 10 or 15 years.
Eat your heart out evil “investors.” Who are they anyhow?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601208&sid=a3r_IRjU20O0&refer=finance
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601208&sid=a5PJ56devNt8&refer=finance
Orange County? Florida Schools? That can’t be right. They will have to be made whole! Bring on the lawyers!
The truly criminal perpetrators of this subprime mess whom Hans is railing against are the fly-by-night Mortgage Brokers who are already long gone. The remaining firms were just criminally stupid. You aren’t supposed to drink your own kool-aid fellas. CFC, WaMu, Wells Fargo will all be punished severely and will be lucky to survive as going concerns. Next we will be organizing a bail-out of their laid-off employees’ prime loans. The Wall-Street Firms are in the same boat, choking on the mortgages they were in the process of Securitizing when this mess seemingly came out of nowhere. It didn’t come out of nowhere, but those involved in the mania had simply lost all perspective of reality.
Sorry to say folks, but we are not out of the first inning of this disaster. Next will be securitized auto loans, credit cards, and commercial real estate (the business in which I am in). The government would be best served in letting the process play out and then attempting to pick up the pieces. Government intervention now will at best prolong the inevitable agony.
Best of luck to everyone and their families,
Brian
Temporary freeze on primary residence ARM loans that were underwritten as full doc or non-inflated stated income only. Freeze period is 2-3 years. Unearned interest by note holder could be added onto loan balance at the end of freeze or subsidized by government (meaning me, taxpayer) or combination of both. Various equity interest schemes could also be possible (instead of unearned interest added to the loan balance, investors gets an equity interest that will be due if/when borrower sells the home).
Option arms qualified at teaser rate, over inflated stated income or no ratio loans DO NOT deserve to be frozen. Investors in those as well as borrowers that took out those WILL HAVE to face the music and take the losses. If anyone can rationally explain why borrower that took out these loans shall have their rates frozen I’m all ears. That will also teach a lesson to note holders too.
For LENDERS: DO NOT LEND MONEY ON STUPID TERMS
For BORROWERS: DO NOT BUY STUFF YOU CAN NOT AFFORD
Moe,
You’re right, there is no perfect plan. The current dire economic situation we are in is very vast and complex. Unfortunately, there is no MAGIC BULLET.
There does need to be some strategy (PLAN) to help undo the mess that has been created. No matter what the plan is, it will not be perfect, and not everyone will be happy with it. But to sit back and do nothing while the time bomb keeps ticking, will lead to a bigger and more devastating mess to clean up later.
As I stated the other day, there has been to much focus on subprime mortgages, when the larger problem is all the ARM’s that are resetting over the next 18 months. In 2003 or 2004 Alan Greenspan said ARM loans were better than 30 year fixed loans based on what had occured over the previous 10 years. Even though many people knew that ARM’s carried more risk, if Alan Greenspan said they were a good thing, than that must be the truth.
For whatever reason, many people seem to believe the people who are in trouble with their mortgages are either uneducated, stupid, ignorant or belong to a lower socio economic class and didn’t deserve to own a home in the first place. I would really like to see hard data of who the owners of ARM loans represent across the broad demographics of this Country. I think many people would be quite surprised that those in situations where they are struggling with the adjustments to their loans are people not much different from them.
History over many years has shown that there is a certain percentage of defaults on standard mortgages annually. I believe off the top of my head it has been around 2-3%. With all the new creative financing that has come about the last five years or so, there is no history to what type of default rates existed for these more riskier loans. What Has happened, is that the defaults and foreclosures are running about twice as high as history had shown on other convential loans.
When these newly created mortgages were packaged and sold to investors on Wall Street, they were told that they carried relatively low risk and were actually given higher ratings then they should have been given from the likes of S & P, Moodys and others.
We talk in terms of the homeowner who signed an ARM loan that is now resetting and will be forced into foreclosure, as the person who needs to be saved. Some talk in terms of screw the homeowner, they should of known what they were getting into. The ones who need protecting are the investors.
I’d like to throw out a thought I’ve been having for discussion. To date, I do not know who the investors who own the CDO’s and SIV’s are. These packaged investments have been off the books of firms such as Bank of America, Citigroup, Chase, Wells Fargo and other investment banks and over the last few months have slowly been revealed that they exist.
From what I have read, the investors of these funds may be pension funds, 401K investment money, Life Insurance Investments, Mutual Funds as well as other holdings that were seeking higher rates of returns.
What if the homeowners that are in trouble with their mortgages, are also invested into the pension funds, 401K’s, Life Insurance Policies and Mutual Funds they may own that bought these packaged mortgages. If this is truly the case, than the owner and the investor are connected at both ends of the problem and are one in the same person.
Does that make any sense? Maybe I need a touch of reality and that this really isn’t the case.
If this is true, than the investor money that we have created through our contributions for investing/retirement has fueled the housing/mortgae boom/bust. To me, that says that through the choices we have made, we have created our own reality. Everything is going in a circle and we need to get off this marry go round.
Please tell me I’m wrong.
Remod, yes there are many homeowners who have 401ks that are vested in these mortgage backed securities. The merry go round is out of control and we’re all on it “together”, like it or not.
Since these Hedge funds funds are not regulated, and don’t have to report their financial holdings like your 401 k does, no one is quite sure just how much wider these mortgage–related losses will be. Though much of the loss has been felt most heavily by the principal actors in this play, the paper they churned eventually flows into the same financial market that hosts 401ks.
All,
I am still confused why anyone needs help? Last I looked, this is a relatively free country with almost free will. After age 18, you make your own decisions and you live with the consequences. Both Lender, Buyer, Investor, and anyone else involed made their own decision. Now live with it. If you foreclose, guess what…bad decision. If you made a bad loan…bad decision. If you purchased those bad loans…bad decision. Like everyhting else in life, learn from it and don’t make the mistake again.
This is the most competitve country in the world. That is the way capitalism works and guess what… it has worked so well over a short 200 years, that the US is the most powerful, wealthiest nation in the world. We came this far because as business dynamics changed, we adapted and changed with it, becoming stronger and more competitive. We don’t live in a Socialist system so therefore the governement should not even be discussing how to “help” anyone. Those people need to take accountability for their actions, help themselves either out of the situation they are in or chalk it up to a bad decision, move on and don’t make it again. I am in agreement with everyone on the this board that says this plan just prolongs the problem to come up again. It is like the Mother who coddles her 17yr old Boy. She still thinks of him as a baby and just wants to a few more years, but sooner or later he needs to make is own decisions and become a Man. So, all I can say to everyone involved in the mess crying for help…”Grow some Sack, live with your deicion and move on!”
Hag, you said:
“I am still confused why anyone needs help? This is the most competitve country in the world. That is the way capitalism works and guess what… it has worked so well over a short 200 years, that the US is the most powerful, wealthiest nation in the world.”
Hag, really?
For whom has capitalism worked?
Is it for the elederly who faces ever increasing prices for medicine they need to stay alive and confusing drug coverage that will probably end up costing them more than they make on their pension fund, which is practically nothing because some Corporate executive cut throat spent it on all on a$$ and alcohol even though they were receiving millions of dollars in salaries?
Please tell me for whom capitalism has worked?
The Wall Street high rollers have raked in a fortune at the expense of the every day American who toils at work all day long only to face foreclosure because the toxic sludge loan that was sold to him is now foaming over and eating away at his just-above minimum wage salary job, the one he HAD to take because the job he worked at for ten years was outsourced to a third world country that if we haven’t invaded we’ll do so eventually if it has any wealth whatsoever that we can fleece.
Is it our children who are obese and uneducated compared to the rest of the world, who face inheriting a world that will be destroyed by Global Warming that our government will not even acknowledge, and has done nothing about because it will eat into the profits of the big Fortune 500 companies who support the American capitalistic society which promotes commericalism at the expense of the public welfare and common good?
Capitalism has divided America into a society of have and have-nots. Polarized, a vast majority of Americans are callous and cold and unfeeling — we don’t care about the elderly couple down the block on a fixed income who eat cat food for dinner; we don’t give two damns about the inner-city child who grows up knowing more about guns and drugs than he does about basic mutiplication; we are certainly capable of driving our gas guzzling SUV, with the Support the Troops bumper sticker in the back, and ignoring the young men who have been killed by the senseless war for profit against the fanthom “evil doers”, and the deprived neighborhoods they come from, because they joined the military hoping to escape into a better life.
God forbid any help be proposed that involves Government intervention, the selfish doing-okay American who doesn’t give a God damn about his neighbors will bitch and moan about his tax dollars which if he doesn’t pay they’ll throw his ass in jail and good riddens.
Capitalism has made a vast majority of Americans into cut throat swindlers, someone who will do anything for the almighty dollar — peddle poison, sell death and promote and encourage sickness, to the uninsured no less.
Capitalism has made us forget that only people-oriented, collective, cooperative, compassionate solutions that benefit all (or atleast the vast majority) truly WORK.
Chavez orders his CITGO petroleum manufacturer to sell cheap oil to Americans who need it and I say, that’s what we need here.
Not dictatorship or socialism but a society where private greed does not prevail while collective need suffers.
\
So Hag, you said you were confused why anyone needs help?
Maybe you’re confused because it’s really you that needs the help, help seeing the truth.
Well, Moe has graciously created this blog and you’re here, so you’re well on your way.
Hello…Man i just love your blog, keep the cool posts comin..holy Saturday