The shift of which you speak can’t take place until zoning laws and building codes are altered, because the rents haven’t come down enough for those with jobs to afford them, at the same same time that housing prices are dropping like a rock. You must live in an area with too few houses, because we have too much stock here, due to the tourist trade. We have dozens of empty condos at the beach that haven’t been rented in a year, and certainly aren’t going to sell. I’ve watched one brand new house that has been on the market for almost two years with no nibbles.
People stopped holding cash a long time ago, and without cash, nothing is going to move.
]]>1. This is fostering a *gigantic* transfer of wealth from working people to the elite. First of all, homes owned by working people are being transferred to the elite. Secondly, the foreclosed/evicted people have to live somewhere, and where will that be? Either houses rented from the elite, or apartment complexes owned by the elite.
2. Furthermore, by taking some houses or even entire neighborhoods off the market, this raises the price of other houses still on the market, houses which the elite are now more likely to own since they foreclosed on the working people who once lived in those houses.
So who are the losers?
1. Working people, who lose all their assets, both their houses and future pension earnings due to the collapse of the bond market
2. Foreign investors, who have bought gigantic amounts of those mortgage-backed bonds.
3. People who owe money to *anybody* for *any* reason, because when the banks collapse it will cause Great Depression style deflation, which will in turn result in a massive transfer of wealth from those who owe money to those who are owed money.
It’s all just part and parcel of the elite’s plan to loot and gut the American working class. Which working class nowdays, BTW, includes you and me.
– Badtux the Economics Penguin
]]>After one of the big Dow drops when he was still alive, some financial reporter asked Sam Walton what it felt like to lose a billion dollars. He told the reporter that he didn’t lose anything, because that billion dollars didn’t really exist, it was just a guess on paper, and people who didn’t understand that wouldn’t last very long in a real business.
Wal-Mart once featured American-made products and made a lot of money on volume alone. After he died they became the blood-sucking institution they are today.
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