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was quoted in our local paper today, saying that "nobody" foresaw the financial crisis.
That was one of the funniest things I've read all week.
If Cheney had ever bothered to ask anybody outside of his circle of yes-men and wealthy co-conspirators, he might have found people who knew this was inevitable. There were Harvard professors who wrote about the strain the middle-class was under. (Hey, check out http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2003/10/13/bankrupt_parents/index.html).
All of us outside of the tight financial circles, who followed and thought about the news and came to our own conclusions without relying on the so-called experts, frequently wondered when the collapse would come.
A few years ago I considered buying a house, but chose not to, because after looking with my own eyes at what was on the market, I decided it was ridiculous to pay so much money for such poor quality housing, both new and old. Anyone who had their eyes open and an ounce of common sense could see that prices were way out of proportion to the actual intrinsic value of the commodities, as well as to the incomes of many people. I kept asking myself where were people with middle-class incomes getting the money to pay for these homes? I had a hard time imagining sensible people signing up for no-down-payment ARMs that would stretch their budgets to the point where there would be nothing left over in case of an emergency, such as a job loss or illness. Relying on refinancing in the future seemed to be foolish, because anyone who's lived long enough can tell you that counting on something to occur in the future, apart from your own death, is not a rational foundation for a solid financial plan.
As for the real estate agents who tried to convince me that getting a loan would be "no problem," due to the variety of "products" on the market, all I could do was politely decline, while silently wondering at the legality of these "products." How did they come into existence, and why were they even legal, when they were clearly designed for the purposes of extreme usury? The only conclusion I could come to was that the American business community had reached the point where it believed that robbery, usury, and deception were perfectly acceptable business practices. The only thing a reasonable person could do in self-protection (because there was certainly no consumer protection from any part of the government) was to stay out of the reach of business. No revolving credit cards, no loans. Cash for everything, and if you didn't have the cash, you didn't buy it.
Some of us saw this coming. But who pays attention to Cassandra?
