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Bushvilles? Greenspanvilles?
Monday, March 17, 2008
Reports of tent cities in Southern California due to foreclosures have been circulating for some time now, but this one from the BBC looks like the real deal.
You've got to hand it to anyone who can be optimistic under those circumstances.
The first lady interviewed says, "Once I do get a job full time, instead of just one day a week, I'll be able to save my money, get a car, to make it easier to go back and forth to work ..."
Has she seen the price of gas lately? Diesel is over $4 in this neck of the woods.
5 comments:
Funny how we seem to have to get our news from the British.
As an expat for over 20 years, I don't spend much time in the US, but when I visit, it seems the cities and infrastructure, airports, etc are decaying, at least relative to Asia, and yet most people seem not to recognize it.
That said, I haven't seen any tent cities, being from the Northeast and not back for awhile. Thats pretty sobering, hope it's an isolated case or a hoax.
I hate to use biology type analogies, but I think that two fit;
1.) the FED's efforts to provide "liquidity"- the FED is trying to treat a SYMPTOM, not a cause by giving out cash. The cause is insolvency, the symptom is lack of fluid cash due to declining asset values. As an analogy, if someone presents with chronic bad high blood pressure, say 150/110 constant they need treatment. I can find the CAUSE (renal failure, diabetes, vascular disease) which may or may not be treatable, or I can just treat the symptom. One treatment is puncturing the vena cava artery, which will drop blood pressure in short order, but the patient will die. See what I am saying.
2.) As far as things seeming to be fine on main street, realize that the usual 1st sign of a coronary blockage (ie heartattack) is sudden death or major cardiac event. No pain, no other symptoms exist prior. Things can be great until they are not and it can be very sudden.
Sorry for the biological analogies, but I felt they fit.
There's a tent city clearly visible in Ontario, California as you're flying into the airport from the west.
Reports of this large homeless encampment are real, and by no means a hoax:
David Kelly
"Ontario's homeless feeling less welcome in Tent City"
Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tentcity6mar06,1,3712683.story
"After creating a sanctuary where the homeless could eat, sleep and live without fear of harassment, the city of Ontario[, California] has begun ticketing and towing away the vehicles in which many of those transients reside.
"Now, some of the estimated 300 residents of the fast-growing 'Tent City' feel betrayed by officials they say promised to leave them alone if they moved into the city-run encampment near Ontario International Airport."
This is ridiculous. These people never owned their home. They had a mortgage they were paying. When they quit paying, they were kicked out. There is plenty of places to rent that cost less than they were paying in mortgage payments. If they are homeless, it is because they will not work to pay rent, not because some evil bank took their home.
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