Reply #21: We can thank Andrea Mitchell's hubby... and of course GWB, too [View All]

[SoCalDem]

By 2002-03, the ONLY thing "holding the economy together" was low-low interest rates and the "hosuing market"..Build a steady stream of Mcmansions, and you gotta have SOMEBODY "buying" them.. In order to GET people to "buy" them, interest rates MUST be inordinately LOW, and almost EVERYONE must be able to "qualify", or the whole thing would have copllapsed back then..

It was no accident that Greenspan suddenly quit, when he did.. he KNEW the whole thing as about to collapse, and he wanted it to happen on someone else's watch.

Our youngest son has FOUR young friends who "bought" dream houses during that period..NONE OF THEM COULD REALLY AFFORD WHAT THEY "BOUGHT",and of course they have all "lost" those houses by now, and have moved back in with their parents..

There was a "money-honey" on the air back then, who actually said this: ..."People earning less than $40K a year, really should not be looking at houses that cost more than $450K..."...as IF a person EARNING $40K a year could afford a house costing $400K...:grr:..

Then the Wharton Whiz Kid "traders", went nuts with the oil futures trading, and that may have been the match that lit the whole mess on fire..

Futures trading is all about jacking UP prices..not about securing a steady supply (as it once was)..and the ones DOING it, have no intention of EVER actually taking possession of what they "bought".. They are just commodity-flippers, and their only reason to exist, is to pocket huge sums of cash, as they manipulate prices that the rest of us have to pay.