Do you honestly believe Obama has a chance in 2012?

[richardhutnik]

damndl0ser said:

richardhutnik said:

thranx said:

damndl0ser said:

 

The current financial mess we have now is a result of a housing bubble that was produced, at least in part, by the government pushing home ownership.  People need shelter, but owning a home is not essential.  I also  remember a study where the higher the home ownership rate in a country, the worse off they are financially.

This simply is not true.  The reason we have this housing bubble "bust" was because the banks were giving high risk loans to people that they knew couldn't pay back the loans.  Then they would sell these loans to a 3rd party in bundles as high risk.  And so the bank had nothing really to lose because they sold these loans already.  This encouraged the bank to take even more high risk loans because it was making the banks plenty of money.  So the cycle repeated until it finally burst.

Everyone should own a home.  That doesn't mean it should be a McMansion, or one thats out of your price range.  Simply put thats why these people lost everything.  They were living above their means by using credit cards to pay for everything.  Then after they had no more credit on their cards, the lost everything.

I will disagree here. NO, everyone should not own a home.  If you can't afford to own, you rent.  Now, one can argue about the lack of shelter being a problem, but not owning a home.  A home is NOT an asset that generates income.  A home is a consumer of income, that has been set up by the tax code as the only way people can write off personsal expenses to keep up with the Jones or pay bills, via home equity loans.

The housing bubble was a mix of presumptions and benchmarks of home ownership was a success to all.  The government cheerleadered lenders to get innovative.  The Bush Admin banked on people in houses as a way to recovery and everyone  got stupid.