Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] Morning musing

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Morning musing
  • Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:19:03 EDT

> It is said that our physical selves are what we eat. My thought for
> the day is that our minds are what we read, watch and listen to."
>

Gene, you've expressed our skepticism about doomsayers before. But just
because we choose to ignore bad news for the sake of a peaceful disposition,
it
doesn't mean the bad news goes away. In your list of poison subjects did you
touch on the Housing Bubble? For more than five years it was building and
those who saw it coming, not from the fun of doomsaying or conspiracy
theories,
but from crunching the numbers, were poohed and derided as filling their
minds
with doomer garbage.

Guess what? Turns out it was a bubble after all. Except a few pockets of
exception where the bursting is behind schedule, it was a nationwide bubble
if
not a world wide bubble. Alan Greenspan has admitted as much and admitted
that
he knew it all along by saying that his term "froth" was a euphemism for
"bubble." Mortgage companies collapsing, congress scrambling to put together
some
weak attempt at a bail out, home builders going out of business, run on the
Northern Rock bank in Britian because of its holdings in US mortage notes,
record rise in foreclosures, unprecedented drop in housing value .... I don't
believe there is enough denial in the universe to say it wasn't the biggest
housing bubble in history and the consequences are just beginning to unfold.

Turns out that being cheery and ingoring the signs that the bubble was about
to burst didn't prevent it from bursting.

Same with Peak Oil and other such. Ignoring it, declining to talk about it,
won't make it go away.

I can see friends agreeing to disagree and not bringing it up for the sake of
a quiet visit. But ignoring the unfolding of the world around? As well to
throw away the property tax bill because you don't want to deal with such
depressing things, or fail to put in firewood for the winter because you
don't want
to think about it being cold.

Marie:"I don't think the problem is too much information. I think it ia no
response from our government to the horrible problems we face. "

Don't look too closely at the numbers then. I'm not denying that there is no
response from the government, in fact the government is at least complicit if
not responsible for most of the problems. But we've gone too far this time.
We've painted ourselves into such a corner, governments do not have the
resources to bail us out.

Before the housing bubble burst, several people (on different fora) commented
that the government would't allow housing to slump, prices to go down, loans
to default, because so much of the enconomy depened on housing. But it did!
(slump, go down, default). Governments actually have only small influence
over
economy compated to the collective foolish choices.

James </HTML>




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page