{"id":1491,"date":"2007-08-22T00:35:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-22T00:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/letters_to_the_editor_of_the_new_york_times_risky_loans_and_a_jittery_econo\/"},"modified":"2007-08-22T00:35:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-22T00:35:00","slug":"letters_to_the_editor_of_the_new_york_times_risky_loans_and_a_jittery_econo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=1491","title":{"rendered":"Letters to the Editor of the New York Times: Risky Loans and a Jittery Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is one:<\/p>\n

Re \u201cCredit Time Bomb Ticked, but Few Heard\u201d\u009d (front page, Aug. 19):<\/p>\n

We in the United States, at the middle-class level, are conditioned to live beyond our means.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a great economy\u201d\u009d \u201d\u201d the slogan of any administration of any stripe \u201d\u201d is based on our entrenched credit living.<\/p>\n

Just wait a few years, and we\u2019ll see how the debt we\u2019ve incurred for the war in Iraq \u201d\u201d which has filled the pockets of the few \u201d\u201d will blow up in the face of our self-proclaimed prosperous economy and devastate the backbone of this nation.<\/p>\n

Brahama D. Sharma
\nPismo Beach, Calif., Aug. 19, 2007<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read them all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/b>: More from the London Times here<\/a>, including:<\/p>\n

Yes, the bank that for years let me pay even less than the minimum amount of interest due on my mortgage (a phenomenon known darkly as \u201cnegative amortisation\u201d\u009d) had reached what even amateur economists might have considered the bloody inevitable: it had ran out of money. Or, to use the correct euphemism, it had been forced to \u201csupplement its funding liquidity position\u201d\u009d with a $11.5 billion (\u00c2\u00a35.75 billion) mortgage of its very own.<\/p>\n

I mention all this not only because it\u2019s incredible for how long this Ponzi scheme was allowed to continue, but also because it advances the theory that the LA housing boom of the past five years has been primarily responsible for the global financial apocalypse.<\/p>\n

Take Countrywide. There is really only one thing anyone has ever needed to know about Countrywide: that it is based in LA suburb of Calabasas, a mountain paradise so absurdly rich, so helplessly adrift in an ocean of other people\u2019s cash, that its population of 23,000 is able to sustain its very own Ferrari dealership.<\/p>\n

And we\u2019re not talking about any old Ferrari dealership. We\u2019re talking a massive glass-walled emporium, visible from the freeway, visible probably from near-Earth orbit, stacked wall to wall with the $1,000,000 playthings of Countrywide mortgage salesmen. It was once said that if you went into Calabasas at night, and sat very still for a while, you could actually hear the laughter of the negative-amortisation specialists bouncing off the gated marble driveways. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is one: Re \u201cCredit Time Bomb Ticked, but Few Heard\u201d\u009d (front page, Aug. 19): We in the United States, at the middle-class level, are conditioned to live beyond our means. \u201cWe have a great economy\u201d\u009d \u201d\u201d the slogan of…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

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