Another Recession Myth Debunked. Ah, that horrible, liberal leaning reality. It keeps screwing with the myths we tell ourselves. "The rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population." Considering the whole "just walk away" movement was targeting at people who make over $0.5 million, not really a surprise at that. "More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent…"
I sense a disturbance in the force. I've only had one interaction with Harlan. I hope he's enjoying the refreshable supply of maple syrup from his beloved homeland (sent his people contact info on where they can get the Geuaga County real stuff whenever he wants).
2 comments:
I ran across this blog entry today. The comments were particularly interesting as people hashed out what the NYT article did and didn't cover.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/07/rich-defaulting-at-highest-rate.html
Anonymous Cassie
Cassie, I haven't read all of the comments (see lack of posting which equates lack of time), but yes, our personal myths die hard.
There seems to be a returning meme of ">1 million loan does not mean 'rich'." Uh, yeah, Bob. Sorry, no. Of course the argument of "what is rich" comes up again. When I hear people bringing in $200,000 a year calling themselves "middle class" I always cringe. Of course to them they aren't rich because they struggle in some ways. That also part of our myths that die hard, that we're all middle class. And the romantization of either class is exactly where these myths come from.
As to having sanitary workers get a $1m loan, sorry. When I bought the house I'm in, my wife and I had a combined income of about $60,000. We have excellent credit (the kind that qualifies us for the best rates), and we only qualified for $200,000.
Again, the myth is that it's the poor walking away/defaulting on their mortgages and being irresponsible for their finances that is causing all the problems. Now, if the commentators wanted to make an argument about how there are many more of the "poor" to default, even though the percentage of their population has lower rates of defaulting, so the overall percentage of total defaults fall to those of the "poor", then they may have an actual point. (It's my guess that by raw numbers they are greater, but by actual total value they are near equal).
Instead I see a lot of "throwing sand" arguments.
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