"Company is seeing home price depreciation at levels not seen since the Great Depression"The value of the home is the largest piece of wealth normally owned by members of the American middle class. This decline in housing prices means that the American middle class as a whole is losing a great deal of its wealth.
-Previously, the company had stated they expected a turnaround in mid-2008; now, they say they are not sure when housing declines will cease. Refuse to rule out house price declines in 2009;
Bush has frequently spoken of creating the Ownership Society in which every person's value will be the total sum of the values of what he or she owns. (And nothing else counts for value. Mother Theresa, for example, was worthless at her death, since she owned nothing.)
This is the new America. This is the America given to us by the Goldwater Revolution. It is the America brought to us by Nixon, Reagan, the Bush family and Dick Cheney. It is an America in which the U.S. Constitution is rapidly becoming a quaint document left over from that strange period of the American Republic, where criticizing the government or the vice President can get you arrested, investigated and fired from your job.
It is also an America in which only the extremely wealthy count. That's what the Ownership Society really means. Remember that. In the Ownership Society your only value is what you own and the government can take that away with a policy, a whim, or the anger of a government official. If the government decides to take your property there is nothing you can do. From TPM Muckraker:
The order empowers Treasury, in consultation with the State and Defense Departments, to target those individuals or organizations that either "have committed, or ... pose a significant risk of committing" acts of violence with the "purpose or effect" of harming the Iraqi government or hindering reconstruction efforts. It applies to "U.S. persons," a category including American citizens. It had not previously been disclosed -- and still hasn't -- that U.S. persons are abetting the Iraqi insurgency, nor that Iraqi insurgents have property in the United States, raising questions about who in fact the order targets.Surely the Department of Justice, filled with government officers who have each sworn to Defend the U.S. Constitution, would not let these injustices against Americans get out of hand? Well, that is the Department of Justice led by Alberto Gonzales, who no longer even tries to appear as though he is not lying to Congress about how little respect they have for the Constitution or for the American people.
"The part where they reserve lots of discretion to themselves is the list of conditions that goes beyond determination of acts of violence. 'Threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq,' that could be anything," says Ken Mayer, an expert in executive orders and a University of Wisconsin political scientist. "Think of the possibilities: it could be charities that send a small amount of money (to groups linked to) the insurgency, or it could be the government of Iran that has assets in the U.S. and has money that flows through a U.S. bank or something like that."
The order permits the targeting of those who aid someone else whose assets have been blocked under the order -- wittingly or not. And under Section Five, the government does not have to disclose which organizations are subject to having their assets frozen
There has been a coup. The wealthy no longer pay taxes to keep the country going, the middle class does that. Now we can begin to see that this is a country that works to protect and build the wealth of the super rich while it allows the wealth of the middle class to be destroyed. And the government is using every police power it has to expand this new aristocracy of the super rich from the rest of the American citizens.
The sharp decline in the value of homes is just one more step in the coup.
Addendum 07 25 2007 11:01 CDT
Here is what I suggested be watched for in December 2006 - It is dropping, and that will be a major consideration the Federal Reserve has to keep in mind if they want to lower interest rates to stimulate the economy. Any significant increase in the interest rates will increase the loss of value of the dollar greatly.
The fed is in a bind, and the economic problems are largely created by the Bush administration policies.
The wealthy, if they have any good sense, will take any money they get from tax cuts and immediately invest it outside the U.S. in EUROs or Yen. The result will be a hemorrhage of money that should have gone into investment. That will further depress the economy. The poor and the middle class will continue to see their financial situations deteriorate, and the middle class will see their wealth melt away.
The Republicans will try to delay the worst of it for 28 more months so that they can blame the Democrats. In the meantime, the Republicans will continue to do everything possible to keep Congress from doing anything successful, and as long as they have 41 votes in the Senate, they will be able to paralyze Congress. They have done this for six months now, and they are already blaming the Democrats for not doing anything. we can expect more in the future. They want control of the government back, and they will put the American economy into the toilet to achieve their takeover.
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