Mr. T's Wisdom

"I pity the fool..." was one of Mr. T's famous lines. And fools are aplenty. NPR reported that the housing bubble burst and rising interest rates are causing many people to lose their homes. In fact, the number of people who will lose their homes to forclosure will exceed the number who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina. What a staggering statistic. However, only one group deserves sympathy in my opinion.

Many households enjoyed the low interest rates and soaring home values of the past 5+ years. We were all moving up in the world! Unfortunately, many families did not spend their money wisely and now must face the consequences. Many more households bought their first home. In principle, that's a wonderful thing. The American Dream is coming true for more people! However, many of those buyers had no business buying a home beyond their means and now face foreclosure. If I recall correctly, NPR noted there was one woman who worked at Wal-Mart making $10 or $15 an hour who bought a $700K+ home with no money down. She never made a single mortgage payment. YES, the shady lender shouldn't have made the loan. BUT, shouldn't that woman also be accountable for knowing there is no way she can afford such a home?

To make matters worse, there are all those flippers out there--investors who let greed rule their hearts and mind. Those same jackasses are now stuck with vacant properties and are unable to unload it without taking a loss. To that I say HA! You f'ers deserve it. The investors pumped up the home prices and priced out a lot of legitimate home buyers who just wanted to buy a house. How fair is that? Hard working families can't afford a modest home because properties were overvalued.

Now there's an idiot bitch who wants the government to bail people out of their troubles. She wants to help people avoid foreclosure. That's wonderful, really. She better be using her own money and not the taxpayers'. Why should the government rescue people who made wrong choices? Should we all expect government bail outs for our failures? What if an entrepreneur is about to lose his business? Or how about if I took three vacations and bought two cars over the summer and now can't pay my credit card bills? Will the government help me too? Where is the accountability? When will people take responsibilities for their actions and decisions? Yes, people can be down on their luck and lose their jobs etc. Absolutely we should help those people. But those who willfully engaged in practices or entered into contracts they knew were risky is reckless and they should learn their lesson.