I've been watching the implosion all day on CNN, I'm home alone while my husband's at work (I'm a professor on sabbatical) therefore have no one to talk to, and my head is going to explode. So please allow me to vent in my first diary.
I can't stand to hear ONE MORE PUNDIT on CNN scold the American public for their overspending or overbuying houses they couldn't afford. People got screwed and are in credit crunches because wages haven't kept up with inflation, because many people, especially in some of the crazy expensive markets, were caught up in the idea that if they didn't get into the housing market right then, they never would. People have been losing their jobs. Then there's the whole predatory lending of mortgages to older people, poor people, people of color...there's the absolute need to establish credit with a friggin' credit card as a young person so you can buy a car and house--I mean, who the hell can afford either, paid for with cash anymore?
Case in point: my own mom. She lives in Macomb County, an inner suburban neighbor of Detroit. My mom has owned her house for thirty five years. When she paid off her mortgage five years ago, she was 63, had only worked for about twenty years (she was a stay at home mom until my parents' divorce) with no retirement plan but Social Security. She knew she couldn't afford to retire, but she thought it would be wise to take out a smaller second mortgage/or home equity (I forget which) so she could pay off her car and her few credit cards; the total payment would be less, she could afford it, and it seemed wise. Then she got laid off, was on severance pay and unemployment for a total of 18 months. She looked for work that whole time and only found a 32-hour a week job as a greeter at Walmart after about 17 months of being off work. Naturally she makes far less than she made before and now has an $800 mortgage, which takes all her Social Security, and she lives meagerly on the rest. Now 68, she has high blood pressure, is a borderline diabetic and has circulation problems and stands on her feet all day at work. Medications for her conditions take up a lot of her pay, as does her "Medigap" insurance, which she must have. Many of her co-workers are elderly; she says several are in their 80's, for God's sake. She says over and over that she's lucky to have her job and lives in fear of being fired because as she says, at Walmart, they seem to be looking for reasons to fire people.
So, to the CNN punditry shaking their fingers at average Americans: go to hell. Lots and lots of people are in trouble, IMO, because of two things--stagnant wages/loss of decent-paying jobs and the seduction of the entire consumer credit industry encouraging people to take the equity out of their houses, to buy cars "with zero down!!!!" to extend credit like crazy to keep us all buying. Brilliant. Anyone who thinks about it knows that this is what has kept the economy going since the Clinton years at least. I'm 45, and my generation certainly learned that we had to leverage credit to own anything from a college degree to a house. And whose fault is that?
And why am I not hearing ANY pushback like this on my teevee?