I am so sick and tired of being lectured by good ole boys about what "the rest of us" are and are not entitled to as a result of our 'dead beat' behavior.' I've had it with the long parade of the 'do-for-yourself'ers' posing as 'average Americans' preaching to the struggling 'average Americans' about how irresponsible we've been and how we need to suck it up. Well, I did for myself and still got screwed, Santelli. So. Fuck. You.
I will not be talked down so either take the jump with me or walk away.
Lookie here, Santelli and ilk. I AM an average Amerian. I AM responsible. I HAVE done the responsible financial things. I work more than 50 hours a week, raise my kids with two parents, bought a home within my means and invested and saved more than I spent. I am current on my mortgage that is 2 pts. above today's prime rate. Nonetheless, me and my 750 credit score can do nothing about it because i got fucked by good 'ole boys and their closed-door, crooked-ass system of 'pulling themselves up' at the expense of hard working citizens. You right-wingers love to preach to the lesser fortunate about how they need to 'pull themselves up' but what were you doing while I sat at my kitchen table day after day over the past 8 years watching with horror as my investments tanked with financial scandal after financial scandal? Don't lecture me about being responsible, Mr. Santelli. Let me tell you what being responsible got me.
~I got $0 for college. See, I had a fund that my parents had invested for me since I was young - was always taught it's not what you earn, it's what you save. They lost that savings around the time of the savings and loan debacle. W's baby bro, Neil helped to seal that deal. It's okay. I simply worked my way through college. I don't mind hard work.
~I got a 401K that is now 401 pieces-o-shit courtesy of Enron and Arthur Anderson. Where was your rant when you were trading that option, you pinhead? Ole Jeb Bush helped the with that one in 2002. But no worries, I have another 30 years. I'll just rebuild my retirement better and smarter.
~Let's see... I got a couple of IRAs that looks more like and IOUs. The Lehman Bros. failure, coupled with the concealed failure of other banks, sealed that deal. Funny how Lehman, founded in 1850, managed to survive the Civil War, 2 World Wars, the Great Depression, and the attacks of September 11, 2001. Yet after hiring Jeb Bush in late August of 2007, it suddenly goes belly up in a year. WTF? So much for a better smarter investment.
No worries. I have my house, right? I have about $50,000 in equity built up from BUYING SMART AND PAYING MY BILLS ON TIME! I can tap that should I need it for MY son's education, right? Oh, that's right. I can't! Due to the recklessness of WALL STREET EXEC's who successfully did ONLY for themselves, the market is so uncertain and fucked that my last bastion of investment is now upside down! Mortgages are turning out to just be a symptom of what what we are learning is just a systemically corrupt financial market. Those 'irresponsible' homeowners didn't put guns to bankers heads to steal loans!!!!!
Typical Wall street, blame main street by attacking homeowners. This crap started years ago as a ethics crisis in our financial markets resulting from reckless deregulation and has turned into a terrible reality episode of Banks-gone-wild! Not one homeowner has defaulted on a $68 Billion Fannie Mae mortgage!!! Meanwhile, Madoff, Stanford, and their ilk continue to munch on caviar daily despite having pencil whipped the rest of us out of our life savings. Where was Wall Street and your self-righteous ass when these jerkoffs were robbing us blind?
Now we FINALLY have leadership that has built up the moxie and numbers to at least TRY to affect positive change by offering just a spot of Vaseline for the little guys who've had to silently take it dry for years and you wanna piss on it?
It is my sincere hope that someone develops a statistic that allows folks like me to be differentiated from relatively small number of folks who set out to defraud the system. I'm sure we'll find that at this point, the problem is so bad that there are more folks like me than there are those who knowingly got in over their head or sought to defraut.
Nonetheless, Mr. Santelli. I and my fellow 'regular' Americans will gladly 'pull ourselves up' just as soon as we get OUR GODDAMN BOOTS BACK from the crooks on Wall Street who stole them. That's what the President's mortgage plan represents to me and those like me. How can that be so freaking hard to understand?
In the meantime, fuck you and your bootstraps, Santelli!
UPDATE: Well I'll be! I see I struck a chord. Thanks for the recs all. It must be a lot of pent-up frustration around here for this rant to make the rec list - my first. Keep the faith guys. There are no easy answers for what we're facing, but we'll get through it.
And if you see Rick Santorum, tell him we write in "American!" (Thanks, Rachel Maddow for the GREAT LAUGH on your show last night!)
You really can't make this stuff up!