Media Ignores Reason for Foreclosures

[jeffex]

"Greed " is the downside of capitalism. The gov. plays a role in regulation. Greed oversite if you will. When that fails you have a situation like we are in with forclosures. Its not entirely the govs fault because they don't do too many things well. The military being the exception! Insanity is us expecting the gov. to be a well oiled machine. Look at FEMA , FDA( lead paint in toys from china)... they all have news worthy failures of oversite but for the most part they are doing as good a job as can be expected from a lowest bidder beauracratic based system. If you want to allow the free market to respond to a Katrina like catastrophy then you will get a quick responce . You'll get a stiff price as well. in capialism the rule is generally you get what you pay for .

 

[Paulie]

Don't pay off your mortgage early but don't keep taking all your equity out either.

I agreed with everything you said except this. There's no better financial situation to be in besides being debt-free.

I don't even care about credit scores and all that shit. Thats just a number that defines you to banks. If and when any shit ever hit the fan, the best possible situation you could be in is having no debt. Also, owning property would certainly help, hence why it's better to have paid that motrgage off ASAP.

 

[JeffWartman]

Also, owning property would certainly help, hence why it's better to have paid that motrgage off ASAP.

Of course, I would argue that you never really "own" property in our current system.

 

[Paulie]

Of course, I would argue that you never really "own" property in our current system.

That's true. The whole eminent domain issue further expounds on that.

Although the 4th amendment provides you with some protection. Along with the 2nd.

 

[JeffWartman]

That's true. The whole eminent domain issue further expounds on that.

Although the 4th amendment provides you with some protection. Along with the 2nd.

I'd say the 2nd is your best bet.

The 4th is not going to provide you protection is you do not pay your property taxes. If you do not pay your property taxes, the government is going to take away your house.

And if someone can take something from you, on grounds on nonpayment, it means that they own the property.

 

[Diuretic]

If you have a 401(k) or one of it's relatives, you like the way things are with corporations a lot. And that would be over 80% of working class America that bothers with a "retirement" plan. We have become an OWNERSHIP based society as the classic "pension" has largely become a historical artifact. Better get behind those corporate profits because they are what will make or break your retirement.

When I was 20 I was automatically put into a pension/superannuation scheme by my employer. At 20 I shrugged my shoulders and didn't think much about it. It's a defined benefit scheme. Now I'm a couple of years of thinking about retirement and I'm glad I was in the scheme as a condition of employment.

One of our Labor governments back in the 1990s worked out that the commonwealth (federal) government aged pension scheme was going to be busted by the baby boomers (I am a baby boomer) so they instituted a plan. To avoid inflationary pressures and to stimulate interest in those who didn't have superannuation (shocking isn't it?) they argued that a percentage of the national wage case (our wage fixation principles have historically been quite complex, I can explain but I don't want to make anyone's eyes glaze over) should go into employer-funded industry superannuation schemes. It was very successful. Now the norm is for us to have our own personal superannuation scheme (usually funded by the employer and by us). The industry schemes, by the way, have huge amounts of money and I think are one reason why our economy survived some fairly bumpy times (remember we are a small population with a very small economy in Australia) and will probably weather the coming storm (fingers crossed).

On edit: sorry, this is out of context a little. The thread moved on while I wasn't paying attention