Has this person looked at his own back yard? Silly Valley is the epicenter of overpriced and falsely valued real estate. Home equity loans off of SF Bay area homes drove a large part of the Central California real estate bubble.
“Home equity loans off of SF Bay area homes drove a large part of the Central California real estate bubble........”
Amen.
What has gone unremarked, for the most part, in the hand wringing in this crisis is the willing participation of Main Street along with Wall Street and Washington in creating this mess.
It is hypocritical for Main Street to get a free pass in this crisis and only blame the “greedy bankers” and the “dumb politicians”.
Studies have shown that fraud and misrepresentation were present in about 70% of the sub prime loans that went south. The reality of the situation is that many Americans were all to willing to pursue reckless financial strategies as long as their home equity would continue to bail them out.
Politicians can only pander to constituents who are willing to be lied to. There are too many Americans with an entitlement mentality who are willing to accept “free” gifts from the Government.
The Feds response to this crisis has been clumsy but we never would have gotten to this point if there were not many citizens demanding ever and ever higher government benefits, feel-good environmental tokenism AND lower taxes and gas prices.
Phil Graham called many Americans a bunch of “whiners”; reluctantly I have to agree with him.