I usually live with my head under a rock.
I like it that way, most of the time. I was a journalist for a few years in my life before marriage (and kids) and I got my fill. More than my fill. So, except for brief blips, and reading my Atlantic Monthly, I don't pay much attention to anything going on in the world.
However.
There is a blip on my radar screen at the moment. It's pretty big and hard to miss! And so I'm scrambling to do my best to catch up and understand the whole Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco. (One thing puzzles me, though, didn't I read about this, oh, say a year ago? The housing bubble was about to burst and folks knew there would be a financial crises when it did. I knew that--me--who doesn't pay attention! I guess I thought it had already happened. Seems I was wrong. But, goodness, why all the scrabbling and "last minute frantic bail out meetings"? Anyway, let's not go there. I've been under my rock too long to start wondering out loud at the lack off proactive foresight in government, or indeed, anywhere.)
Anyway, that unnecessarily long pre-amble is simply an introduction to two things which has helped me sort this out, if you too are wondering what happened.
The first is an article by the Boston Globe.
The second is a You-tube video which is well worth watching, even if it is a tad, oh, shall we say, listing to one side of the spectrum in American political candidate endorsement.
I'm just sorry that real people have to suffer through all of this. Truly sorry.
(And Wende, you are hereby granted full permission not to comment though I'd love to be a fly on your brain right now.)
Oh, I can comment without skating too close to the edge.
ReplyDeleteIf the guys at the Fed and the Congress who are shredding their hair trying to figure out what went wrong want to shoot me an email, I'd be happy to explain it to them, as I predicted back in late 2005 that the housing bubble would bring down the entire economy. So did plenty of other people. We were called "bubble bloggers," "crackpots," and "unsophisticated investors."
The politicians grandstanding about not piling debt on their children's generation need to stop and think about what we're doing to people in or near retirement. The combination of investment losses and inflation is wiping out the people who have no means to rebuild their nest eggs.
I did everything I could to safeguard our clients' money and my own personal money; my focus now is on projects that have some chance of improving the world we've inherited.