Replies to post #96492 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[wall_rus]

Yep. Politicians are literally just the puppets in a puppet show.

A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.
Joseph Stalin
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joseph_stalin.html

[wall_rus]

The Band Plays On – As The Titanic Sinks
April 9th, 2010

http://blog.youwalkaway.com/

(thnx EZ)

The sinking of the Titanic took 2 hours and 40 minutes. The well informed passengers didn’t know for over an hour. Half the critical period was spent in denial. The majority of the citizens of our country are in serious denial as to the severity of our housing crisis. We listen as the music is playing, distracting us from the problem, thinking to ourselves… This ship cannot sink.

“Nearer, My God, to Thee” is associated with the RMS Titanic, as one passenger reported that the ship’s band played the hymn as the Titanic sank.

This visual comes to mind as our economy continues to sink (unemployment and housing) but the band keeps playing (reports that we are out of the recession) The optimism is cute, yet hollow. Like a hopeful child of a poor family that thinks Santa will bring her a new bike. Come Christmas day… No bicycle.

The Foreclosures have just begun. 2010 will end on record as the most foreclosures in a single year – in history.

At YouWalkAway.com our foreclosure monitoring department has announced that lenders are beginning to move to the next stage of foreclosure. The delays are starting to end.

Bank of America, which estimates it has 1.5 million home loans that are 60 or more days behind on payments has “unofficially” through their OREO(Other Real Estate Owned) department, announced that they will increase their foreclosures 600% by the end of the year. They expect to have 300,000 completed foreclosures by year end.

Expect a massive increase in Bankruptcies to stop these foreclosures. NYTimes reported:

Federal courts reported over 158,000 bankruptcy filings in March, or 6,900 a day, a rise of 35 percent from February, according to a report to be released on Friday by Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, a data collection company known as Aacer. Filings were up 19 percent over March 2009. The previous record over the last five years was 133,000 in October.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics has reported that there are presently 4.5 million homeowners already in foreclosure proceedings or 90 days delinquent on their mortgages.

Bloomberg Reports:

“The mortgage crisis may be far from over,” Diane Westerback, a managing director at the New York-based firm, wrote in today’s report. “The overhang of homes heading toward liquidation suggests more delinquencies and lower home prices are to come.”

Loan servicers that collect mortgage payments and oversee foreclosures will ramp up attempts to repossess properties after seeing about 70 percent of modifications fail in the last six months, according to Westerback’s study. It will take almost three years to sell all the properties that will be seized by lenders, even if no other mortgages become delinquent, S&P said.

Major cities in America are on the brink of bankruptcy

Consider:

Detroit Bankruptcy Looms with Deficit of $446 Million in Budget of $1.6 Billion

Los Angeles Controller Says City Could Run Out of Cash by May 5

Kansas City Closing 26 Public Schools: UPDATED

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive

Illinois is near the point of fiscal disintegration. “The state is in utter crisis,” said Representative Suzie Bassi. “We are next to bankruptcy. We have a $13bn hole in a $28bn budget.”

The Banks are too big to fail. The US is too big to fail. The Titanic also was “unsinkable”.

Timothy Geithner said in a recent interview that the U.S. is in no danger of losing its AAA debt rating even though the Obama administration has predicted a $1.6 trillion budget deficit in 2010.

“Absolutely not,” Geithner said, when asked in an ABC News interview broadcast in February whether a downgrade is a concern. “That will never happen to this country.”

Consider this fact: At the time of this writing, the US Federal government has spent just under $960 Billion. But from all income tax, payroll tax and all other sources of tax revenue, they have only collected $592 Billion in revenue so far. At this rate the US government is bleeding about $1.4 Trillion (yes, Trillion with a T) per year. How long can that possibly last?

US Bailout funds from 2008-2010 to date are just under $6.75 Trillion. The question you have to ask when hearing a number like that, seems to be, who’s gonna bail The US out?!?!

The answer is other countries. The amount of money owed by the US to other countries is approaching $4 Trillion. Fast.

This ship is sinking, and instead of trying to plug the holes and right the course, the band plays on. The media reports skewed data so the public thinks we’re out of the recession and safe. The government makes halfhearted efforts to help homeowners save their homes while at the same time taking their tax dollars to bail out the largest, most corrupt corporations in the world. The artificial stimulation of the bailouts and lack of regulation help the banking industry make record profits, making the stock market go up again. Creative accounting practices and the deliberate holding back of foreclosure inventory make the housing market look like it’s growing again. So now the media can report that things are getting better. Can you hear the music?

But the reality is, the ship is still sinking. We are looking at some of the ugliest financial numbers imaginable, on personal, business, and government levels. Our Titanic has hit a huge iceberg, and we may have only seen the tip of it so far. But instead of fixing the hole and changing course, the captains of the ship are trying to force their way through it, all the while instructing the band to keep playing.

It’s often not very popular to speak the truth and point out the negatives. I like the next guy, want things to get better for our country… for our children’s future.