Agreed - though refinancing in the long run is usually better. In my case, I spent a bit up front for a lower rate, but my break-even point is only 26 months (+/-) or so into the future. From that point on, its all positive. I beleive that despite many folks taking on bitter mortgages with a refinance (roll your credit debt into one low monthly payment!!!!), most of us just work it towards paying less overall interest to the bank during the course of ownership of the property.
One thing that the lower interest rate has inspired is the movement of housing as a whole. I don't know about the whole country, but they're building as fast as they can around here. Its strange. (Oddly, we have a very low unemployment rate locally, something around 4%). Anyway, once people settle into their respective abodes and are satisfied again, housing will slow down. It remains to be seen where people will put their money after that (if they have any).
I'm no economist or expert, but that visceral 'sense' of how things are, regardless of fact will influence a bunch of people's votes.
Yes, you are right. In some cases, it is a personal economic reality, but in others, the sense is derived from sensationalized news stories. The liberal mainstream media still has a firm grasp on many in this country.
I know you're right, but hopefully that is slowly changing as more people have access to other information channels.
IMHO the liberal media has planted the belief in the public's psyche that presidents bear total responsibility for the state of the national economy. That belief has worked for many electoral cycles, purely by chance IMHO, to the advantage of the media's favored candidates, liberal Democrats.
I mean by that, the phenomenon known as the business cycle has by chance favored the Democratic administration for the past 7 or more decades. That phenomenon seems to operate largely independent from government fiscal policy, and Republican presidents have usually had the great misfortune of riding the downside of the cycle. I offer Hoover, Nixon (as Ike's VP), Ford (although the Nixon pardon hurt him too), and Bush #1. Only once in recent history has the cycle worked against a Democrat, the bumbling, clueless Jimmy Carter. It appears to me that the liberal media has a powerful interest in promoting the notion that the economic philosophy of administrations determines the economic health of the nation.
Hopefully the dismal pattern will be broken in '04. I am very hopeful that by then the tide will be running in favor of the Bush administration, and for once the fallacy that presidents are wholly responsible for the state of the economy can work to our benefit. (fingers crossed)