I think I'm seeing the RW/Bush Big Money Master Plan.

[newportdadde]

Lets look at how the last few years have played out how things are moving. It feels like this big plan forming up to me.

We start out with a surplus and the economy downturns and 9/11 happens. So the answer to this economic downturn? Cut taxes, which mostly go to the wealthy and attack Iraq. Invading Iraq gives oil interests to American companies and reconstruction to American companies. It will also possibly someday give an entire country to make in our image with the Walmart on the corners etc, a whole new market for our junk.

We also drop interest rates to nil. This is important later on.

So now we have this huge deficit. We all yell and scream about it. With this all manner of things become possible. Bush uses it as an excuse to 'fix SS'. Bush uses it to get rid of those annoying public programs etc you get where this is going.

Back to interest rates... everyone in America goes crazy and in effort to maintain lifestyle or just be idiots they buy houses that they can't afford and borrow money for more stuff. The housing market becomes the refugee for all those stock market folks in the late 90s and houses start to be almost day traded as values rise in huge amounts. So these folks get burned in 2000 with money in their savings that they gambled. Now they are borrowing money like 'no money down' loans to gamble again.

Dollar gets weaker and weaker... so we have to raise interest rates. Guess who this is going to destroy? Yep all those house traders and no money down homeowners etc. My generation around 30 has never seen truly high interest rates to us its a myth.

My father talks of paying 18% interest on a combine back on the farm in 1980, my uncle had a home loan at 13% but to us that’s unimaginable. My whole generation gets suckered in for a fall. They are going to be stuck with an overvalued house (built up by cheap interest) with no equity in the home and then the value of the home falls with rising interest making it impossible to sell because you owe all of the principle.

This is one massive redistribution of wealth in motion, with the added benefit of destroying social safety nets. So what’s the end result?

1) Voters who go primarily Democratic have less money to donate and be political with.
2) Workers have even less power, making labor here in the US even cheaper i.e. available to abuse.
3) Massive redistribution of real-estate holdings to big banks, big money. If Freddie Mae etc get in trouble the government will bail them out.

I'm sure others here will have thoughts to add but this just makes me sick.

[mhr]

1. "Starve The Beast" = Grover Norquist = Well Known Plan

Google Norquist and all is plain to see.

[indepat]

2. Those who own/control more than 90% of the wealth want an even greater

portion of the pie, even if the pie has to be made much smaller in the process.

[chicagojoe]

3. Interest rates on homes are at lowest in my lifetime.

My parents were just out of reach of owning a home when I was a kid, due to high interest rates. My first home, purchased in 1986, had an interest rate of 10%, which was then at a low rate. Now I have a 5% interest rate on my second home.
I agree with you that the interest rates are going to sky rocket, and A LARGE NUMBER of Americans are going to be left holding the bag.
I'm trying to help myself by paying down my principle along with my regular payments. Every little bit helps. The problem there, for me, is that in paying extra each month toward the house, I'm sacrificing my long term savings. I'm 25-30 years away from retirement, but time waits for no one. I'm worried about getting squeezed into complete poverty as a senior.
I think we're in for a rough ride. Years of financial idiocy in DC,
plus the coming fiscal fuck-ups of this administration are going raise their ugly heads, and of course, we will pay. I'm socially a liberal, and a fiscal conservative. It has driven me crazy over the years to watch Washington cut services available to the people who need help and generally misappropriate funds.
Like I said, we're in for a rough ride.