The US government opens its wallet to help victims of the Japanese tsunami while millions of Americans who lost their homes to foreclosure get nothing.
Heckuva Job, Barry
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Give the foreclosure thing a rest already, willya? 🙂 I’m going to take a wild guess and say that you’re the one being foreclosed. Even if not, a huge part of the foreclosure mess involves people who really couldn’t afford the ecologically unsustainable McMansions they were buying anyway. If a guy who makes $300 a week buys a Porsche 911 and defaults on the loan he took out – too bad. Okay, the dipshits at the bank should have refused the credit to begin with – I’m with you up to there – but, ultimately we’re responsible for ourselves and our own mistakes – not the mistakes of everyone else.
Don’t we owe Japan a lot of money?
There’s a reason for that.
The victims of the Tsunami has very little, if any, control over the devastating effects on their lives.
Americans, on the other hand, are in the place they’re in because of their foolish overinvesting and not thinking their purchases through.
On the other hand, the majority (yes that’s right, the majority) of Americans invested wisely and as a result still have their houses and can pay their debts and taxes. It’s called natural selection, and the losers lost out.
It’s unfortunate, but hey, America’s the “land of opportunity” right?
Get a dang education and get to work, slacker.
The first ‘has’ should be ‘have’.
How is the U.S. government supposed to put all these consumers in houses? One of the bankstas biggest crimes was marketing home loans to unsuitable candidates in the first place.
As with Shakespeare’s Shylock, I suppose its a happy ending when the loan shark gets screwed over. But, who’s going to pay for all this? I’ve been giving the McMansion set a big enough subsidy by paying my full fair share of taxes while they deducted all of their interest only mortgage payments from their income tax. Is this not enough? Property ownership is not a right. Its a huge responsibility, and its one I’ve avoided taking on until I’m ready. The rent I’ve been paying for the last 10 years is not tax deductible.
The tsunami could not be foreseen, at least in the sense that the risk of a once in a millennium disaster would preclude anyone from building anything anywhere. The inhabitants of the Japanese coast were in the wrong place at the wrong time and deserve sympathy. The U.S. housing crisis was the totally predictable result of the greed and stupidity by all parties. Damn the U.S. government for bailing out the bankstas, but damn them again if they bail out their willing customers.
Far more than what BM calls “marketing home loans to unsuitable candidates,” bankstas actually steered certain applicants who qualified for more basic, more affordable loans toward more profitable (for the bank and netting the loan officers fatter commissions) subprime loans. To refer to the necessarily disastrous result as “natural selection” is, at best, cruel and callous. To say such a thing in public, one must be either so stupid as to believe it, or assume/hope we are.