Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Where is Our Economy Going?

Here we are in 2008 with fuel costs on the rise, the housing market collapsing and America apparently heading into a recession. I know according to Washington the economy is not as bad as we are being told. First of all, I do not need the media to tell me the economy is in trouble. Just stop at the gas station, go shopping for clothes or better yet go to the grocery store. The increase in the cost of groceries is very evident and felt every time we go food shopping. Meanwhile our wage increases are almost nonexistent. The cost of fuel is probably the most crucial part of the equation at this point. Since all of our products are transported via trucks, thus transmitting that cost to the final product. I am not an economist by any stretch of the imagination, however it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out we are in trouble. In my opinion it is business as usual with Countrywide Financial. They were the pioneers in the Creative Mortgage movement, which is the foundation of the current housing debacle. Lets walk through this, a couple of years ago when housing prices were going up at an astronomical rate these creative mortgages were allowing individuals to qualify for loans they could not afford. Now that the introductory rates are disappearing, these homeowners are facing mortgage payments they cannot afford. Should they be surprised? Hardly, unless they were forced at gunpoint to sign the loan package, they are liable for the contract. I am of the opinion the individuals in these loans are responsible for them. I believe most of the homeowners that are in trouble will eventually lose their homes no matter what the government does. The government jumping in a staving off the crisis is just postponing the inevitable. The longer it takes for this wave to crash the bigger the wave gets. This will compound the problem down the road, but then again we have become a society thirsting for instant gratification. Oh ya, we are in the middle of the election so the politicians do not want to rock the boat.

We recently had the pleasure of President Bush begging for OPEC to increase oil production. How humiliating, we beg them for more oil.

Where do we go from here? The United States needs to be independent again and not dependant.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson

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