Thursday, August 27, 2009

Housing and more

There were(still are) a group of people who actually predicted the housing bust and the current depression-like era back in 2006.People like Peter Schiff, Nouriel Roubini and Warren Buffet(not in so many direct words though).What did the junta do?Sat back and cashed out their home equities and refinanced to ever higher loans.
(http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/)

Our homes turned into instant ATM's for fast withdrawals.All we cared about was where to go on vacation and how to beat your neighbor in Home improvement projects.

Has this taught us a lesson..importance of savings,gravity(markets see-saw) and writing IOU's to Social security and medicare debt.Nooo..we went ahead and walked away from the loans(foreclosure).The question is WHO pays for all the money that we spent.In this case it happens to be the US government and they will continue to do so for years to come.

In hindsight if I had only been an idea-doer and sold my house in March 2006 and not just been an idea creator(planned to move down south,searched for jobs,identified the schools etc),I might have been sitting on a horde of cash.Thinking about it now I would feel sad for the sucker who might have purchased my property at such an inflated price and lost his savings now(down 25% since the peak).So good karma for me..yea!

This decade of lost savings,retirement funds,home equity,jobs will take a decade or 2 to overcome.Unlike the 1929 depression hopefully we don't start a war with some nation to replenish the lost wealth.

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