Week of 02/02/2015

“Boomerang Buyers” Should Just Say “No”
– by David Matthews 2

So the economy is supposedly waiting with baited breath for the “boomerangs”.

“Boomerangs?” you ask.

Well, the official term is “Boomerang Buyers”, but you may remember them when they were simply “The Forsaken”.

You know all of those millions of hard-working Americans that lost their homes through the criminal manipulations of those “Too Big to Fail” banks?  Well, it’s been seven years since the first wave of those foreclosed homeowners were unceremoniously kicked to the curb.  Hard to believe it’s been seven years, but it’s true. 

And now the credit slate is starting to be wiped clean for them, giving them a new opportunity to try, try, try again.

The timing certainly couldn’t be any better.  Despite the optimism heard in the media, the economy has been struggling to keep moving.  Big Corporate is firing off layoffs, retail stores are shutting down, gas prices and oil prices have been taking a nose-dive, and the 99% of the populace are doing everything they can just to tread water, and even that’s a losing struggle.

So, yeah, the reports of a new batch of “boomerang buyers” looking to get back into the housing market is a needed shot-in-the-arm for the economic world.

And yet, I really hope that these “boomerang buyers” don’t do it.

That’s right, you heard me.  I really don’t want these “boomerang buyers” – the people that were foreclosed upon seven years ago – to go back into the market for a house.

First of all, here’s a little economic reality: every time there is an economic downturn, the average American – in other words the 99% that have to work for a living and cannot afford to have K-Street and C-Street lobbyists on speed-dial – ends up with even less available money than they had before the downturn.  People that were laid off do not get new jobs that pay the same or even more than their previous jobs.  They get less.  That’s less income.  Less available money to spend.  And most people have had to tap into savings, and hope they still had a 401K after the “Too Big to Fail” banks and the rest of the Wall Street criminals screwed everyone over.

Unless you won the lottery during that time, or became a social media sensation, you just don’t have the same amount of money that you did before getting foreclosed upon.  So… how are you going to afford a new home?

Remember how many of those Forsaken Americans lost their homes in the first place?  They were talked into getting subprime mortgages with ballooning rates that priced them right into foreclosure.  Are you really that dumb that you’ll make the same mistake twice?  The banks and the realtors certainly hope that you are!  They’re betting the economy that you’ll be as smart as a box of rocks just so they can make even more money off you!

Of course not all of the Forsaken Americans lost their homes because of ballooning interest payments and slight-of-hand trickery by criminal bankers.  Some of them lost their homes through no fault of their own.  Because banks shuffled around the loans like they were trading cards, passing them from lender to lender, and if a payment was lost in the shuffle, then too bad.  Now, if you were one of those Forsaken Americans that were victimized by this particular screwjob, why the hell would you want to roll the dice again?  What stops the lenders from doing it to you all over again?

That’s probably the biggest reason why nobody should ever trust these criminal bankers ever again.  Because let’s get brutally honest here… the only thing that changed with them is the calendar date!  The only lessons that they “learned” is that they can get away with their criminal activities if they just give the federal government some mealy-mouthed promises and some pocket-change for a fine.

And what did the Forsaken Americans get while the banks got bailed out?  The Forsaken Americans, the hard-working Americans that got screwed over by the criminal bankers, got written off as being “deadbeats” and “losers” and ridiculed live on CNBC as they were being kicked to the curb and their stuff thrown out into the middle of the street.  They were literally forsaken by the institutions – public and private – that fraudulently “claimed” to be on our side!

These are the people that the banks and the realtors are starting to come back to and saying “It’s been seven years; all is forgiven.  Let’s get you in a house again!”

And I really wish the Forsaken Americans, those supposed soon-to-be “Boomerang Buyers”, would turn to those criminal bankers and slap them all in their smug faces and spit on those offers.  It is the absolute least that they deserve for the crap that they pulled on the rest of the nation!

I know that there were many factors involved with the Great Recession, but the subprime mortgage scam was the lynchpin for the whole fiscal house of cards.  And that only came about because of a blatantly-manufactured “need” to put people in homes at all costs.  Just make more homes and put people in them.  Everyone “needed” to own a home!  Funny how that “need” immediately evaporated when the banks decided to go on a foreclosure fetish.

Look, I’m not saying that people should stop buying houses.  I’m saying that if you can’t afford to, then don’t. 

Say “no” to the criminal banks and their promises to “find a way”.  Say “no” to the tax preparer that tries to convince you that you “need” to buy a house just so they can add that to your tax form next year, or the nosy neighbor that thinks that getting a pay raise means you “need” a new home.  Say “no” to the goddamned script that convinces us that our economic survival rests in how many homes are built and sold.

The hard-working Americans that have been forsaken by both the criminal banks and our incompetent government have had seven years to figure out how to survive without owning a home and being owned by a mortgage.  They’ve seen how the goddamned script is a lie.  It’s high time that the rest of the country figure that out as well.

“Boomerang Buyers”?  Just another word for a damned fool.

Week of 01/26/2015

2015’s State of Delusion
– by David Matthews 2

Welcome to 2015! 

After all that went on last year, isn’t it great to start the year fresh?

Okay, enough of that…

Let’s talk about 2016.

You think I’m kidding?  Believe me, I wish I was.

Never mind that the Congress is now under GOP control… again.  Never mind that there are a whole batch of new career politicians to replace the former career politicians, with promises galore to supposedly “fix” what’s broken.  Never mind their campaign promises to shake up the status quo.  Never mind that the economy is still struggling for the 99% of the populace while the 1% are milking even more profits than ever before.  Never mind that there are a new batch of corporate layoffs that have been announced while Wall Street is hitting record levels.

Never mind all of that!

Let’s talk about 2016!

Let’s talk about who will be running for the White House next year!

Let’s talk about Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee!  Let’s talk about Rand Paul and Marco Rubio and even Ted Cruz, even if he is not eligible since he was born in Canada.  (And even he will admit it!)  Let’s talk about drafting Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.  Hell, let’s even talk about Mitt Romney!  He wants another go at the White House.  Third time’s the charm, right?

And while we’re at it, let’s talk about all of the local races that could possibly open up for the next round of elections!  How many senators will call it quits next?  How many members of Congress will decide to drop out to seek higher office?  How many of them will feel a little vulnerable now that the balance of power has already shifted?  We have to think about those things, don’t we?  Yes we supposedly do!

That’s the message that the goddamned almighty script is shoving down our collective gullets.  It’s telling us to forget about this year and everything that goes on from now until December 31^st.  We supposedly need to worry about next year, with the next batch of elections, and the next batch of people who want to rule America and run it into the ground.

It’s a nice little racket that the people in power have mastered over the years.  They keep us focused from one election to the next, even if that next election is two years away.  We worry about who will win the Presidential elections, and then once that’s over with the script tells us to worry about the mid-terms even before the winners can finish getting their transition teams in place, never mind moved in and starting work.  Then, when the mid-term elections are finished, it’s time to worry about the Presidential elections all over again.  And on and on it goes, never ending.  Forget about this year, we supposedly need to worry about the next year and the next elections.  It’s all about the “race”, isn’t it?

And we all know why that’s going on, don’t we? 

Because let’s get brutally honest here… as long as the script has us continually focusing on the next elections, and continually going from one election to the next, then we’re not paying attention to what’s going on right now.

Think back to 2007.  The GOP were kicked out of Congressional power in the previous November mid-term elections.  The Democrats took charge for the first time in over a decade.

You would think that they would start un-doing everything that the GOP-ruled government had imposed.  That’s all that they ever talked about, especially after 2004’s election when the GOP ruled everything.  They talked about all of the things that they needed to do once they re-took majority control. 

But the Dems didn’t do any of that, did they?  No.  Because the millisecond that the elections were over with, the script started in about 2008 and who would be running for president.  Never mind what Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would do in 2007; the script was busy telling us to focus on Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani and anyone else who would dare challenge their presumed nominations.  And who was that upstart Barack Obama? What was that old fogey John McCain doing running as well?

And then after Obama got elected, what happened?  Well, the script started telling us to focus less on what Obama was doing and concentrate more on the 2010 mid-term elections.  Oh, panic over healthcare reform, but don’t worry, we’ll fix it in the mid-terms.  And then after that election it was straight on to the 2012 Fiasco.  Never mind what the GOP was doing in control of the House in 2011!  Let’s see about un-seating Obama!  And after that, well it’s the 2014 mid-terms, which leads us back to the here and now… and that same goddamned script telling us to forget what’s going to happen this year and focus instead on next year’s elections.

All the while, the economy has been running on automatic.  The rich keep getting richer by making the poor get poorer.  We’re told that we have to make do with less and less while the 1% get more and more.  Big Banks get away with crimes against the American people by paying pocket change for fines in moves that are more scripted than professional wrestling.

And the GOP certainly doesn’t want us to think about 2015, especially on the state and local level!  You know all of those “bastions of conservativism” across the country that think “taxation is theft” and chant the mantra of “less taxes, less government”?  Many of those “bastions” are either raising taxes or are seriously considering it. 

What?  You mean you can’t just keep slashing taxes and somehow result in more tax revenue?  But that’s what your script says!  That’s the logic you conservatives chant every time you talk about taxes every other time!  You mean you actually have to raise taxes to pay for your added police presence and for the roads that you failed to maintain all this time?  You mean you have to actually spend more money to pay for better teachers and for more government workers to actually enforce all of those “quality of life enhancements” you put in to “renew America”?  Why that’s just crazy talk!

Oh, and you know those record profits?  Well somehow they’re not saving workers at Coca-Cola, or store employees at JC Penny and Nordstrom.  The mall’s going to get even emptier without Wet Seal and Body Central as well.  How about Target in Canada?  They’re all going out of business soon!  Oh, and you can add McDonald’s to the list as well.  Guess that messed-up Monopoly game didn’t help them after all.

Remember the last time that gas prices took a swift drop and stayed really low for a while?  Yeah, it was a panic move done at the start of the Great Recession.  Warning bells, anyone?

But… wait a minute!  That’s not supposed to happen under the Church of the GOP and the Cult of Capitalism.  Tax cuts and tax breaks are supposed to help businesses, and if Wall Street is in record territory and profits are at the highest they’ve ever been since forever, doesn’t that mean that everybody is supposed to benefit from that?  That’s the whole “Trickle-Down Economics” straight from the Holy Book of Saint Ronald Reagan being recited even today by Fox News and conservative talk radio and the business channels like Fox Business and CNBC.

Oh, but I suppose we can blame all of that on Obama, right?  That’s what the script says to fall back on.  Obama did it all.  He also made your grandmother fall so she couldn’t get up, just for kicks.  Fox News says it and the myrmidons repeat it and the rest of you believe it.

But even if we discounted all of that, how about the promises made by those so-called “Tea Party” members that got elected?  Surly the nut-case brigade would live up to their campaign promises, right?  After all, that’s why they ran for office in the first place!

Yeah… one of those promises was to not vote to re-elect John Boehner as Speaker of the House, and they broke that promise in a matter of minutes after getting sworn in!

As The Who once sang, “Hail to the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Let’s not forget the Democrats… even if they really want us to.  Do you think they will give the GOP majority the same kind of crap that they were dishing out?  History says that Minority Leaders Pelosi and Reid will be nothing more than impotent wallflowers in their respective houses of Congress.  This is what they did in 2007, and this is what they will likely do for 2015.  They have a history of being incompetent.  They’re just waiting for Hillary Clinton to step up so the attention will be on her and not on them to do their jobs.  It’s a party full of nothing but career politicians and seat-warmers for the GOP.

This is why the almighty goddamned script is telling us to forget about 2015 and instead focus on 2016.  Because as long as we are told to focus on the empty promises of tomorrow, then we aren’t paying attention to the broken promises of the past.

Of course it also helps when you have a voting populace that are willfully retarded and vote according to bumper sticker jargon and Fox News sound-bites.  And it doesn’t take much to distract us, does it?  A little football game and some TMZ will do the trick.

I’ve noticed that there are always songs on the radio about people kissing off their boyfriends or girlfriends because they do nothing but lie all the time.  Meghan Trainor just did one called “You Lips Are Moving”.  So, I’m just wondering when we, the great unwashed both retarded and non-retarded, are going to do the same thing to the almighty goddamned script?  The script lies all the time, just like the politicians.  So when are we going to cut them loose?

Take a look at the calendar.  Take a look at the date this article is posted.  It says “2015”, doesn’t it?  If so, then let’s focus on 2015 and to hell with 2016 and to hell with the script that it supports, at least until the end of this year.