Thursday, May 19, 2011

The True Story of Obama Fiddling While Rome Burns

Here are some facts pulled from a very interesting post on a blog named The Economic Collapse. I don't buy the hysteria or apocalyptic doomsday nonsense, but I do find these facts very telling. They show that Obama is completely handcuffed by his Wall Street team (Bernanke, Geithner, Summers, etc,) and hasn't done a whit to solve the housing crisis:
The following are 20 really wacky statistics about the U.S. real estate crisis....
#1 According to Zillow, 28.4 percent of all single-family homes with a mortgage in the United States are now underwater.

#2 Zillow has also announced that the average price of a home in the U.S. is about 8 percent lower than it was a year ago and that it continues to fall about 1 percent a month.

#3 U.S. home prices have now fallen a whopping 33% from where they were at during the peak of the housing bubble.

#4 During the first quarter of 2011, home values declined at the fastest rate since late 2008.

#5 According to Zillow, more than 55 percent of all single-family homes with a mortgage in Atlanta have negative equity and more than 68 percent of all single-family homes with a mortgage in Phoenix have negative equity.

#6 U.S. home values have fallen an astounding 6.3 trillion dollars since the housing crisis first began.

#7 In February, U.S. housing starts experienced their largest decline in 27 years.

#8 New home sales in the United States are now down 80% from the peak in July 2005.

#9 Historically, the percentage of residential mortgages in foreclosure in the United States has tended to hover between 1 and 1.5 percent. Today, it is up around 4.5 percent.

#10 According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings in the United States are projected to increase by another 20 percent in 2011.
Go read the whole post to get the other 10 plus some embedded links and commentary.

It is tragic that 2008 was poised to be a hinge point in history like 1932 when a new leader of stature and independent mind like FDR stepped forward to save a nation from itself. But instead, Barack Obama, who seemed to promise "hope" and "change you can believe in" delivered modest embellishments and a few minor alterations. Obama saw himself as a figure like Lincoln stepping into a tear in the fabric of history with the chance to lead a nation to a much needed change with a new vision of federalism and human rights. Instead, Obama delivered more secret tortures in Guantanamo, targeted assassinations, and gave Wall Street a free hand.

It is as if Lincoln ran in 1860 but the public discovered Andrew Johnson taking the oath of presidency in 1861.

The US cried out for change, but got "adjustments" around the fringes. Sure, Obama is a huge improvement over Bush. Sure, Obama is a moral giant and a great leader compared to the midgets that the Republican party puts forward as "leaders". But in reality, Obama looks big only because he is surrounded by fools and incompetents. Obama is living through a Norma Desmond moment: "I am big, it's the pictures that got small!"

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