One of my friends recently started a site about the misuse of American tax dollars to bail out greedy banks and their CEOs.
Well, guess what, he is on NPR. They edited him down to a single sound bite, which is a bummer, but you can check out his site for tons more info.
Obviously, this is a sensitive issue, especially for people who may face losing their house, and those of us opposed to the bailout, certainly aren't happy about the predatory practices that some banks employed, to get unsuspecting consumers to sign up for unreasonable Adjustable Rate Mortgages. But housing prices certainly did get bloated and banks surely did get rich off these practices. There have to be better ways to deal with this problem than trying to maintain a formerly insane status quo.
I'll leave you with one last fun link and then we'll return to our regularly scheduled doggy pictures and general crafty goodness.
The Subprime Primer explained by stick figures.
Right on, right on.
America's got an attitude towards credit that is unbelievable, and the housing market is a big part of reinforcing the dangerous attitudes and actions--what's happened in the housing and consumer credit sectors is just part and parcel of our (as a country) practices on a federal, international level. Yeah, let's sell a sh^%load of our debt to China, how could that possibly come back to bite us on the @ss? It makes me want to throw things, which isn't a reasonable responsible reaction to the current crisis, but whatcha gonna do? ;)
Love the subprime primer cartoon.
Yay! I am so excited about this, and hopefully if we blog it, it will get somewhere!
And Wendy - dead on! I couldn't have said it better!
OMG, that cartoon was hilarious! Sad, but hilarious. ;) Yay, and many kudos to M!
Hi Marnie:
love your blog (I'm here from the Designers group on Ravelry).
Thanks also for the link to the subprime stick figure 'toon - it will help little Canadian me and some of my friends figure it out. We were discussing it the other day and figured out that we actually had no clue what is really going on. This helped. :-)
Cheers,
Kristina
This is WAY off topic, I know, but I thought you should know...my hubby has been dreaming of you. And the Yarn Harlot. I think that means something, but it better not mean I should stop knitting. Oh, I was in the dream too, so at least you're in good company. And no, we didn't do anything perverted. It wasn't THAT kind of dream.
Speaking as one of the people who was hit pretty hard by the real estate lull, it is horrible. Our house was on the market for 222 days, and the last 60 days were the worst.
I couldn't watch the news, because every time I heard that the real estate market was going to take another huge dump, I physically felt ill. I feel for those people who are losing their homes- we were lucky.
I rarely comment, because I'm a loser, but I felt like I had to say something. I LOVE that you're willing to blog about what you believe in. So many bloggers choose to play it safe, and not mention heavy issues, and that's their prerogative. I'm just glad you're not one of them. ^__^
"school boards in Kansas"
Love it!
The other site will take a little longer to go through. I'm betting there's fewer chuckles, though.
THANK YOU for saying this. I said the same thing to someone recently and thought I was going to get tarred and feathered.
I'm so with you on this. It is time for the paradigm to shift. We need new leadership and several years of clean-up to fix the HUGE mess created over the last eight years.
Strange coincidence - I'm looking at the stick figure primer and listening to WNYC at the same time - All Things Considered came on and they did a blurb on what is a CDO. The pictures and words from the radio came together!