Seven hundred billion dollars, the price tag for the congressionally-approved financial market bailout, is an awful lot of money. It's over $2,000.00 for every single man, woman and child living in the United States. Can there really be that much money loaned to people on their homes who can't pay it back? In fact, there isn't - not even close.
"Sub-prime" mortgages have become the media shorthand for the cause of the crisis. The blame ends up placed on the greed or stupidity of home borrowers living beyond their means. To some, foreclosure is just the tough-love consequence for those who haven't learned to mind their money. It is also perceived as an "opportunity" by the untold number of acolytes of the foreclosure investment seminar industry. You've seen the info-mercials for these "get rich quick, no-money down, I'm teaching you my secret method" hypes on TV. Rescuing unqualified borrowers from foreclosure is against the laws of nature (or at least the capitalist nature) and deprives these "investors" of the red meat on which they think they can thrive. The image of bad mortgages as the root cause spreads the blame to lots of poor folks or is as diffuse as the American materialist culture - "we're just all responsible," so goes the line. Main Street and Wall Street are joined at the hip, tisk, tisk.
[first published in California Planning & Development Report on October 9, 2008]
One of my personal commitments during the last year or so to a more sustainable future is to take the train and transit whenever I travel if time and routes permit.
[first published on the California Planning and Development Reporter on October 7, 2008 http://www.cp-dr.com/node/2152] by Joel Ellinwood, AICP
With news of yet another Wall Street icon or banking giant tumbling arriving on an almost daily basis, the Congress and Bush administration enacting a massive $700 billion bailout to prevent a complete meltdown (which probably is only the first installment), and the stock market gyrating wildly with each new shockwave, planners may wonder what all this may mean for planning practice (that is, after they finish anguishing over their own pension plan or investment portfolio).
