Our World Is Falling Apart

Saturday, October 03, 2009
Our World Is Falling Apart
Yesterday afternoon and evening I gave a lot of thought to what has happened over the past year. It has been some of the hardest times I have lived through in my life. All of the anchors and familiar things we came to depend on and trust in life are crumbling as follows:

We banked at Washington Mutual Bank from September of 1999 to October of 2008. The bank suddenly closed its doors and failed. It was the biggest bank failure in US history and probably world history also.
We had our home loan with Country Wide Home Loans. It was the largest housing lender in the US. Country Wide first got a bailout from the US government. That could not stop the collapse. Bank of America stepped in and took a big loss to absorb the company. Tens of thousands of employees lost their jobs. Elena and I got caught up in the nightmare. We had a bad loan. In order to qualify for a loan modification we literally had to default on our loan and ruin our credit. We went through a torturous 3-month battle just to qualify for a loan modification. We have been waiting almost a year and we have heard nothing from the lender. We refuse to make payments. The bank makes no move to foreclose us. We have proof of income and the ability to pay. What the public is not aware of is that the $75 billion US that President Obama allocated for people to refinance their homes is now being used to reimburse banks and investors for their losses as they modify loans. This money all goes to people lucky enough to have a job and ability to pay. If you do not have a job, you're out of luck. You become one of the 300,000 families per month losing your home to foreclosure.
Elena's got her first car in the United States In May of 2001. It was a shiny-red 4-door Saturn. For the last eight and a half years we have been Saturn owners. We got the sad news yesterday that Saturn will soon close its doors for good. Some 13,000 employees will be thrown out of work. The resale value of our two cars is questionable at best.
Last night we went to see Michael Moore's new film Capitalism: A Love Story. We went to our normal theater complex in Daly City, California. We were shocked to see that Fudpucker's had closed. This is a large hamburger restaurant with a reputation for serving the best hamburgers in the San Fran Cisco Bay area.
We have seen our home state of California literally go right to the brink of bankruptcy.
One year from now I will be sixty-two years old. I will be allowed to draw my meager Social Security Administration pension of $1,187 per month. There will be a big deficit because of all the people like me taking early retirement.
We have seen 60-year old store chains like Circuit City and Mervyn's fail.
We have seen 150 year old landmarks of the US financial system like Lehman Brothers fail.
We have seen our government hand out over $2 trillion US dollars in bailout funds to the big banks like Citibank, Bank
of America, JP Morgan Chase, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac
General Motors and Chrysler.
We have seen over 100 banks fail in the US this year. We got the sad news that 20% of the banks still in business should have failed but the government lets them continue. We see that the FDIC that insures all bank deposits is broke. They are seeking $45 billion US in fees from banks still in business to pay for their operations.
We now hear that the Federal Housing Administration that guarantees many of the mortgages in this country is short of cash and in bad shape.
My wife and I disagree on which American president Obama is a model of. She says he is Abraham Lincoln. I say that he is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I say this because in the horrible days of the Great Depression, Roosevelt was a calming and reassuring influence who kept the country going in the hardest times imaginable. Things are much worse than the government wants us to know.

Posted by ohomen171 at 10/03/2009 10:54:00 AM 0 comments