A Backward Presidency
George W. Bush started out to be Ronald Reagan, morphed into Richard Nixon and, toward the end, is starting to resemble Herbert Hoover.
The shanties, shacks and cardboard shelters in communities spawned by the Great Depression and known as Hoovervilles are showing up in 21st century America as a result of the sub-prime mortgage crisis that has doubled foreclosures of homes in the past year.
“Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes,” Reuters reports, “sits ‘tent city,’ a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.
“The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.”
Cross-posted from my blog. Read more here.
6 Responses to “A Backward Presidency”
Yep all because of the morgage crisis.
I’m no Bush fan, but this seems a bit overgeneralized. The banks who chose to offer risky loans to the sub-prime market AND the consumers who knew they couldn’t really afford them are to blame for most of this mess. Even I can’t blame Bush for this one. I DO think the warnings from many in the financial community should have been heeded when this could have all been avoided.
5.23% fixed baby!
Seriously, the blame belongs with unethical lenders and consumers who wanted more house than they could afford.
And the sad part is that rates were so low there was no reason to be in variable rate mortgages.
But let’s not forget Alan Greenspan’s idiotic advice to homeowners to take advantage of variable rate mortgages.
Fortunately I had reviewed Greenspan’s comments over the years and knew you’d have to be an idiot to take the man seriously.
Entirely agree with Davebo. We bought with a fixed rate of 6 1/8%. Only a moron wouldn’t realize that their payments were going to rise in a way that would soon become unaffordable. And greed blinded lenders who should have realized that the borrowers were going to eventually default when they did. I don’t really agree with a bailout- unless the entire economy would tank without one.
The real morons, who make Bush look smart, will, though.
There is no sympathy among the decent and normal for people who were so greedy and stupid they took on far more than they could afford, often in the bubble-brained expectation they would become wealthy almost overnight.
There is no “crisis”; plenty of us have nothing to do with these problems and we shouldn’t ever be pestered, much less asked to pay to solve these problems. Those demanding we do are parasites.
As for the rest of the thread — the homeless and their encampments have existed in LA for years, including when I lived there several years ago. Obviously this has nothing to do with Bush. [sigh]