bostonbubble.com

[balor123]

I didn't mean to offend you and I'm sorry that you took it personally.

I don't think you fall under the category of those who didn't do their homework. You would fall under the category of those who did their homework but just got the wrong answer. Actually, you were among the most responsible as you seemed to recognize that you might not get it right and planned for it. You may even have still bought knowing what was going to happen. Anyway, there were plenty of people who just didn't do their homework and they mostly caused the housing bubble. Namely, those who just signed whatever paper appeared in front of them as long as it got them into a house. Just watch a few old HGTV house hunters episodes and you'll know who I'm talking about. Rather than keeping them in their houses, I'd prefer to focus on getting them into houses that they can afford.

I just think that housing, like all things traded, come with risks. You make your bet and hopefully it works out in your favor. I think you are getting the wrong connotation from my usage of "losers" since I'm thinking of the losers of this game. I lose games all the time and there's nothing to be ashamed of. I just think that those who played and lost should accept defeat rather than trying to force others to share in their loss who never even played (younger people) or who stopped playing (retired people).

I don't support Obama's spread the wealth policy and I don't like that the guy in Newton and Wellesley is getting help and if I could change something, I would change that. I'd rather see him focus on policies that promote equal opportunities rather than equal wealth. Equal opportunities leads to equal wealth. Good schools shouldn't be tied to expensive houses for example. That being said, even the crummiest schools in the US are still better than the typical one in India I'm sure.

[nickbp]

[john p]

Please don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan Baylor.

I'm just frustrated because lots of people look at those levels in 2005 and scratch their heads and wonder why people didn't recognize the laws of gravity.

I looked at the situation like the laws of buoyancy. Think of it this way, imagine the FED inflating the amount of dollars and derivatives inflating and inflating and inflating. I don't care how smart people think they are but who really knew the volumetrics of what we were actually inflating? We inflated China, we inflated the stratosphere of derivatives, but who knew what the containment was going to be. Look at that money supply curve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Currency_component_of_the_US_money_supply_1959-2007.gif

Beyond that, think about the current plumbing in the economic system. If the current wealth distribution system leaves this current resultant, one would think that if you pumped more and more and more money in that it would inflate the economy uniformily. The manner in which this wealth was pumped in did not align with what almost anyone had the capacity to predict. I expected all that new money to eventually trickle down and translate to wage inflation. This really didn't happen. That new money totally disrupted the natural contraction, the breathing and heartbeat of a capitalistic system and we created these pockets of wealth in derivatives. It never exhaled and blew out the bad air. So now, Obama is trying to change the plumbing and is using "fairness" as the basis. When you look at how we're bailing out people who took on too much risk, and making it difficult for those that stayed within their means, that is not fair.

10 years ago people would have argued if their property's assessment was within 5 thousand dollars of what the bank evaluated. Mine is over $100k. I feel like a moron for wasting my time to learn the mechanics of things because at the end of the day it is not a controlled environment, people change the rules to suit their wishes, and all that speculation in Florida was like gorilla prison rules.

I appreciate your comments, because I kind of felt like a good kid who studied but wasn't in time environment like a fancy prep school, it was more like a prison rules time environment. I put it in this context because just like some fancy colleges don't consider smart kids from poor towns, the rich towns's kids get an advantage. Then the banks give them preference by using Zillow and give them more money in their pocket while someone from a poor town can't get access to that lower cost of capital, because the new buyers line up to get into these "Immune"towns and perpetuate this snobbery. These people that line up to these snob towns are the ones inflating the bubble, they make a choice to invest and what they're betting on is that people behind them will line up behind them to create even greater disparity. It takes a certain person to be a builder, one that sees potential. You know what, screw it, I'll end out ahead regardless, I believe in my decision and I'll be able to say that I got into my town while it was still affordable. One could argue that if I moved to Austin. I didn't choose a career based entirely on money, and I didn't marry my wife because she would help me become rich, yet I see many people choosing their societies based on this. To me, I see people that have great intellect and expand societies potential, but there are many people that don't have those gifts but uphold the values and create an environment where when one of their community does have a gift, they can also have the values that will help them and hopefully give them the value of giving back. Ben Franklin's closest people weren't always gifted, some were just bedrock strong with values, because he understood how important they were in a society. The problem now is that the gifted don't seem to want to live among the non gifted.

My beef with the yuppies that love Obama is that they clap when he talks about an era of responsiblity, and spreading the wealth and fairness, but the same yuppies line up to get in to Wellesley. If they gave two shits about poor people maybe they'd buy and restore the hundreds of gorgeous queen anne homes in Brockton, Lynn and help build those poorer communities. Maybe they could get involved in help building those communities and societies and maybe they could get some of those socieities piped into the plumbing where they could get those opportunities. No, the only time we hear about those communities are when they want to shove a casino up their ass and prey on them.

[john p]

This is part of the reason why people aren't rallying to fight for the Globe. They became a yuppie paper. There are writers that did a great job reporting and exposing hypocrisy, but their endorsements didn't align with their best reporting and research. They started going downhill once they got Andy Capp off the cover of the Sunday paper.

[balor123]

[balor123]