Funny thing is, with a population of 20 million the ‘investors’ would like us to believe that there is in-fact a land shortage. Today it is more expensive to buy a home in my street, when factoring in income and the fact that this backwater dust bowl is about 20 years behind everywhere else, than just about anywhere else in the world.

Fact is, money was cheap and rather than use that fact to get out of debt sooner, many chose to borrow more, buy more, borrow more, buy more. You get the idea.

If it means we have to go back to thatch huts and open fires to wake people up to the folly of ‘credit’ then so be it.

But that’s a scenario many would like to avoid. The problem with all this investing is that it’s left us ill-equipped to anything other than invest.

Personally, I have a hard time accepting that people losing something that they probably shouldn’t have is more important than people who have nothing.

You will be right, but believe me it is wrong to right.

I bought below what they said I could, and stayed. Then
refinanced a while back for a lower rate. I didn’t put myself
underwater as everyone treated their housing as an ATM.
But lucky for me I get to help everybody else buy over their heads
and remodel and go on vacations. YAY ME!

Then make all those rich credit card companies reduce their interest rates back to a reasonable 12 or 15%, instead of 28 or 35% so that people can pay those cards off, sooner and have more money to put toward their mortgage payment.

Then take all the crooked mortgage companies who lied to get the ARM sold in the first place (which is what happened to us), and make them responsible to carry the next 3 months mortgage payments on those ARMs so that those people can get caught up.

This seems like a reasonable compromise between the “idiotic public who should have known better” and the crooked banks and mortgage companies who should have known better and keep the government out of it except for having to force these regulations.

Credit card companies should not be able to extort the public nor should banks, lenders, etc.!!!!

There is no way in Bangalore you can get a three bedroom apartment for the same price I paid a few years ago for a single family home on a half acre lot on the MA-RI line.

Bangalore and virtually every city in India has seen a real estate boom reminiscent of the earlier part of this decade. It has also been helped by lax loan underwriting standards, with no reference to the ability to pay. When I visited my folks two years ago, my retired father was besieged by unsolicited offers from foreign banks (e.g. Citibank) willing to give him fantastic loans sight unseen.

As an example, a 2-3 bedroom apartment in a third-rate locality in Bangalore with zero landscaping (basically a big tall building) goes for around $100,000. There is no way in heck you can find a half acre lot anywhere unless you are filthy rich.

Most Indians are displaying the same kind of confidence in an ever-rising real estate market that we saw in the US. Either I will be proved right soon enough, or I have missed out on the investment opportunity of a lifetime.

The first step to solving the “Credit Crunch” would be to reinstitute the usuary laws and repeal the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005.

You might want to Google the term “moral hazard.” And it is not at all clear that “we have water;” I believe the national debt has doubled during King Bush II’s reign. How much money do you really think it will take to support the Great Housing Ponzi Prices forever? By what right do the bankers/brokers/appraisers/REALTORS/speculators who drove Lexus SUV’s for the past 5 years have to extort money from middle class people in Topeka who are trying to save a few bucks so they can send Toby and Alexis to Kansas State?

Letting nature take its course here would not be “just to teach the banks a lesson.” It would be justice and capitalism. Is the government’s “failure” to bail out my failed business “to teach me a lesson?” I don’t think so; it was the natural result of my poor choices…Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” gave me a good hard smack that I’ll be paying back over many years. But I’m not demanding a bailout.

Here’s an article where a strawberry picker (probably illegally in the US) earning $14k/year obtained a $720k mortgage. Is that really the kind of “business” that should be “saved?”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/04/13/carollloyd.DTL

Would you kindly submit a list of businesses/industries that should be protected from their own stupidity IN ADVANCE?

This is not a surprise natural disaster that harmed a strategic area of the economy. It’s the long-overdue collapse of a Ponzi scheme affecting shelter, a fundamental need and large portion of the family budget.

I’m sick of being held hostage to “THE ECONOMY.” The richest and stupidest now can steal unlimited amounts of money from citizen taxpayers just by invoking that magic phrase. Now King Bush II specifically denied a bailout for the automotive industry, so there apparently are some limits. But, otherwise, where does it stop? We will probably subsidize child pornography next, if the producers will only threaten “If we stop then THE ECONOMY will suffer.” And why do we have 20 million crime-prone illegal aliens clogging schools and emergency rooms? That’s right, “THE ECONOMY” needs them (who cares about the Americans whose waages are lowered and whose communities are trashed).

I’m not at all convinced that a recession is any more or less likely if the Ponzi prices are supported. Given the weak dollar, if houses were cheaper, then the US might be a somewhat cost-competitive for manufacturing and engineering. If middle-class Californians weren’t spending $800k for 800 sq ft concrete boxes, then perhaps they could spend more on consumer goods and even invest in the stock market.