From Fox News:
Housing Vampires Walk Streets After Halloween
The more serious threats to the economy and life as we know it, though, will come from the undead who will still roam the streets well after this year’s Halloween candy has been eaten. They will be those folks who overextended themselves to buy a handsome Gothic mansion in a friendly subdivision. And they will have one thing on their minds – needing more cash to make their monthly mortgage payments, particularly after their adjustable-rate mortgages are re-set. One estimate suggests that 2007 will be the Year of the Vampire, as $1 trillion-worth of ARMs (or 12 percent of all U.S. mortgage debt) will be readjusted upward, increasing monthly payments and adding to homeowners’ burdens. The mortgage companies will want more blood from their mortgagees, yet these homeowners have already been bled white: where will they find the cash to make the payments?
As prices of both new and existing homes fall in many parts of the nation, more ordinary people will become unwilling footsoldiers in the vampire empire, because they won’t be able to refinance their homes. Or, to use the vampire vernacular: They won’t be able to get any more blood from their houses, which will be cold relics of themselves.
Those who own their own homes or who can handle the mortgage or the rent payment may need to start carrying garlic and wearing crosses. Suppose your favorite sister calls to say that she and her husband need some help making ends meet with the mortgage. How will you respond – send the money each month or offer room in your own home? Suppose your friends receive an unwelcome letter coldly stating that their new monthly payment has just increased 50 percent. Will they lose all color from their faces? Will they suddenly feel a strong need for cash – or what Lugosi used to call ‘blahd’ in his thick accent? And — again — where can they find the cash?
A Taste for Debt
by Robert Kiyosaki
As most of us know, in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Financed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, Columbus not only discovered the new world, he helped Spain become one of the richest empires of its time.
Soon after Columbus’ voyage, Spanish galleons traveled the world to loot and plunder. It wasn’t long before Spain’s vaults were filled with gold stolen from the New World. While the Spanish conquistadors did spread their religion and civilization to much of the new world, they did so with a potent mix of greed, cruelty, and violence.
Apparently, it was contagious. In 1557, Spain became the first sovereign nation in history to declare bankruptcy. Phillip II, Spain’s ruler, had such a hunger for warfare and conquest that he continually borrowed money from Genoese lenders so that Spain could continue to fight and steal. His greed bankrupted the country a second, third, and fourth time.
…
The Spanish Empire eventually collapsed because of its expensive taste for warfare and conquest. I’m concerned that the modern world will itself be conquered because it’s developed an expensive taste for debt. So what do I recommend? For now, enjoy the party, don’t drink too much, and stay close to the exits.
http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/richricher/11429
Boo (ya)
Look at this Greedy Grubber, relisted 3 times — same price each time — and just can’t figure out why it isn’t selling:
110 Hartshorn Drive
Short Hills
Jul 20, 2006 – $2,300,000 (MLS 2301422)
Aug 20, 2006 – WITHDRAWN
Sep 29, 2006 – $2,300,000 (MLS 2325381)
Oct 29, 2006 – WITHDRAWN
Oct 31, 2006 – $2,300,000 (MLS 2335926)
How about adding a coy pond, or burying a statue? That will help.
Is John Kerry really that stupid?
SAS
Stupid as a fox.
SAS Says:
October 31st, 2006 at 10:15 pm
Is John Kerry really that stupid?
SAS
LOL, did you watch the speech?
The audience laughed!
We are there by design, although some people don’t know it, Kerry isn’t one of them.
-Sapiens
“The audience laughed!”
I didn’t laugh.. I’m x military.
I’d ring that guys god damn neck if I could…
SAS
SAS, I assume you’re referring to this:
“You know, education — if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
– John Kerry
Speech at Pasadena City College
October 30, 2006
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLuMWiQ6r2o
Shameful. Decades ago he said our troops were “war criminals,” and today he says they’re uneducated losers. He voted to send those ‘uneducated losers’ to Iraq, by the way.
Yes, Kerry is that stupid. But as usual on this site, conservative venom and pile-on idiocy stands as the only kind of politic venom not qualified, not repudiated, not pulled from the responses. Get a life, Unrealtor. By contrast, SAS’s righteous indignation seems justified in the largest sense to me, though Kerry is simply obtuse in the end, not even worth commentary, really.
Gotta say, though, Bush is the real ass in the end. People saw through Kerry. They were blinded by Bush, however, and that has made all the difference. I’ll never understand why.
SAS,
Get off the high horse. I was an LT on Desert Storm 1.0
-Sapiens
Can you say Dogma?
The guy claims God talks to him for Xrist sakes!
-Sapiens
“But as usual on this site, conservative venom and pile-on idiocy stands as the only kind of politic venom not qualified, not repudiated, not pulled from the responses. Get a life, Unrealtor.”
LOL, no doubt the hypocrisy of your comment is lost.
If you have some evidence to refute one of my posts, provide it. Otherwise, you’re just pissing into the wind.
“The guy claims God talks to him for Xrist sakes!”
How do you know God doesn’t? I’m not religious, but why begrudge someone their beliefs? Is that how “tolerance” and “open mindedness” works for you?
Would you rather he talked about fighting an “unholy axis”:
Because God talks to me and he has told me that he is not talking to him!
-Sapiens
you guys are off the mark! This is a housing forum. By the way, politicians are all greedy bastards. We should build a prison for them and let them run things from there.
“you guys are off the mark! This is a housing forum.”
I agree.
““The guy claims God talks to him for Xrist sakes!”
How do you know God doesn’t? I’m not religious, but why begrudge someone their beliefs?”
Unrealtor, you have shed your last bit of credibility. How can anyone take you seriously now? It’s obvious you will say anything to prove your far right points, no matter how exaggerated or ridiculous.
How do you know God doesn’t? I’m not religious, but why begrudge someone their beliefs?”
Why? because he leads our country based on his beliefs as does Osama Bin Laden.
I not interested in either of their damn beliefs.
KL
Got it. So an “unholy axis” is OK, but when someone with an “R” next their name refers to God in any way, they’re a nut. (And Bush = Bin Laden. Got it.)
Like I said, just because you and I don’t believe in God, doesn’t mean everyone else doesn’t believe in God. This is how tolerance works — you don’t mock and belittle the beliefs of others, you respect them.
I don’t agree with JFK’s religious beliefs, but I can respect them.
from C.S. Lewis:
“Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations…
The nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right.”
Are you saying JFK ran a “theocracy”? Is it time for tinfoil hats, or what?
Saudi Arabia is a “theocracy” — can you tell the difference between democracy and “theocracy”?
You know exactly what I mean.