I saw this story on Daily Kos, and frankly, I was a bit incensed.
Now Dino Rossi is despicable, and his unsavory associations with criminals clearly should be shouted from the rooftops. But the implication that it is inherently wrong to profit from the current financial situation is ridiculous. Read on. I'm a long time member of this community and not a troll...
My wife is of Chinese origin. The city from whence she originally came in China, Wenzhou, is known throughout China as a place rife with people with business-savvy. (And her province, Zhejiang, is rumored to have many beautiful women...but perhaps I digress...)
Anyhow, my wife is well connected in the Chinese community here in the Pacific Northwest, and she can do real estate math as well as anyone. During the real estate bubble, as is well known, there were many speculators, including more than a couple of Chinese folks. My wife was not among them; she heeded people who said, "Don't buy; it's a bubble."
To make a long story short, she scarfed up one of the investment properties that went south for one of her Chinese acquaintances. Her acquaintance still has several other properties; don't cry for that person. And my wife immediately rented the property out at what the market currently bears.
Now Dino Rossi is evil; I will likely give money to Patty Murray, particularly if she comes through and musters up a criticism of Israel's recent actions. Heck, I'll write the check tomorrow if she does that. But when Ms. McCarter quotes the Seattle stranger (evidently approvingly) with:
... people like Rossi, who know how to make a profit from the financial nightmare of others? Real-estate types who wring their dollars out of the common man's misfortune are not so popular these days.
Look, my wife and I are not people like Rossi, and we have not got our money out of the common man's (or woman's) misfortune.
Please remember there's an analogy with Tolstoy's remark about families in Anna Karenina: just like every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, every foreclosure was foreclosed in its own way.
Sure there were lots of evil loans made, and I utterly detest them. That crap affected everyone, including myself, taking a big bite out of my retirement fund.
But the idea that somehow a perfectly legal thing - buying an investment property that another investor defaulted upon - is immoral is bunk.
Thanks for letting me vent, although I suspect I'll get a lot of nasty comments for this.