Poll: 60% say depression 'likely'

robo0425 wrote:

I love the crap I am reading.
I have read posts about Depression, Recession, Revolution, and even one about the Anti-Christ and the Rapture.
Here's reality folks, No depression, some recession, but we get over it soon enough. Not the Dems fault, not the GOP's fault. All of our faults. You want a raise every year, but you don't want prices to go up. You buy chap crap at wal-mart, but dont want Mfg jobs to go overseas. You want a mcMansion, but you don't want to put down 20%. Its the American way.
There will be no revolution, there will be no Change. There will be the few, rich powerful people in this nation, taking what they can, and the rest of us in the drooling populace fighting for their scraps. Nothing significant is about to happen, no matter what the disembodied head on the magic box in the living room tells you.
Nothing will change, becaue the system works fine. All the bad crap happening in the economy is happening simply because of things that WE want. Not THEM. Not the rich, not the government, but us. We bought the houses we couldn't afford. We furnish them with Chineese crap from Walmart that we can't afford, so we put it on Credit cards, we will never pay off. We stare at the box on the TV that tells us when to buy things, when to be happy and when to be scared.
Never before in the history of man did the term,"we get the government we deserve," seem more appropriate.

I share much of your cynical views on the "ultimate ends" of political promises prior to elections. I have understood elections for the most part, since LBJ vs. Goldwater. Maybe America can finally start to realize that the "consumption Society & Me First" values may not really make the world go round after all, eh?

depression coming good thing,,,i love it,,,i will trade you a good fat hog for your house,then tear it down so i can plant corn,,really it would be good for us country folks,,and by the way,,i will trade my gold and silver coins for what every i want,,,my grand paw did real good last depression ,,now its my turn,,thank god for our eduction system..that teaches our kids,,that you don't got to work to eat...now maybe its time for a real eduction in money.and what money really is..

bluewv wrote:

<quoted text>I share much of your cynical views on the "ultimate ends" of political promises prior to elections. I have understood elections for the most part, since LBJ vs. Goldwater. Maybe America can finally start to realize that the "consumption Society & Me First" values may not really make the world go round after all, eh?

That's the problem blue, IT IS THE WAY TO MAKE THE WORLD GO ROUND!

Consupmtion and me first drive the economy. The thing is, we act like we deserve things. We act like we deserve nice houses and lots of toys, and cool SUV's. That's fine. Work hard and get the stuff you want. But understand that it all comes at a price, and we are paying it right now.

This really is no different than the "roaring 20's" It was a time of great excess and fabulous wealth. People spent money like idiots, and had a great time. Then the bill came and we all starved for a while. Sound familiar?

When we break with personal responsibility, bad things happen, but if we don't the economy stagnates. So in exchange for a vibrant, growing economy, we have to suffer every now and then.

Like I said, the system is working just fine. We just happen to be getting the yucky end of the stick right now. Its still our doing.

robo0425 wrote:

I love the crap I am reading.
I have read posts about Depression, Recession, Revolution, and even one about the Anti-Christ and the Rapture.
Here's reality folks, No depression, some recession, but we get over it soon enough. Not the Dems fault, not the GOP's fault. All of our faults. You want a raise every year, but you don't want prices to go up. You buy chap crap at wal-mart, but dont want Mfg jobs to go overseas. You want a mcMansion, but you don't want to put down 20%. Its the American way.
There will be no revolution, there will be no Change. There will be the few, rich powerful people in this nation, taking what they can, and the rest of us in the drooling populace fighting for their scraps. Nothing significant is about to happen, no matter what the disembodied head on the magic box in the living room tells you.
Nothing will change, becaue the system works fine. All the bad crap happening in the economy is happening simply because of things that WE want. Not THEM. Not the rich, not the government, but us. We bought the houses we couldn't afford. We furnish them with Chineese crap from Walmart that we can't afford, so we put it on Credit cards, we will never pay off. We stare at the box on the TV that tells us when to buy things, when to be happy and when to be scared.
Never before in the history of man did the term,"we get the government we deserve," seem more appropriate.

You've made some very important points. Americans ARE victims of a culture that exploits human nature and a growing lack of common sense.

Anyone remember a short-lived sit-com in the 70's called "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman?" It was stupid show about a woman addicted to advertising. No matter what an advertiser told her, she believed it.

We're kind of a nation of Mary Hartmans. It is an advertiser's job to B.S. us into buying their product. It is OUR job to deceiver that B.S. and decide whether we can or cannot live without the product and whether we can or cannot afford it.

Write too columns on a sheet of paper and mark them Need and Want. Put under each all the things you purchase that are true needs and all the things that are Wants. Wants are things you can live without without causing you undue distress. I promise the Want column will be much, much larger than the Need column.

Let's shrink the Want column. I think people will begin to realize than CAN be happy with less because it comes with so much less stress and aggravation.

I mean to say it's our job to DECIPHER what an advertiser tells us

Donna Atlanta GA wrote:

<quoted text>
You've made some very important points. Americans ARE victims of a culture that exploits human nature and a growing lack of common sense.
Anyone remember a short-lived sit-com in the 70's called "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman?" It was stupid show about a woman addicted to advertising. No matter what an advertiser told her, she believed it.
We're kind of a nation of Mary Hartmans. It is an advertiser's job to B.S. us into buying their product. It is OUR job to deceiver that B.S. and decide whether we can or cannot live without the product and whether we can or cannot afford it.
Write too columns on a sheet of paper and mark them Need and Want. Put under each all the things you purchase that are true needs and all the things that are Wants. Wants are things you can live without without causing you undue distress. I promise the Want column will be much, much larger than the Need column.
Let's shrink the Want column. I think people will begin to realize than CAN be happy with less because it comes with so much less stress and aggravation.

While I can agree with that in philosophy, the practical matter is that as soon as Americans reduce their "want" list, the heads on the box warn us of "reduced consumer confidence."

One other thing, Americans are not VICTIMS of anything. We did this, therfore we are perpetrators, not victims.

The economy will not fix itself, and we will not fix it while Obama and McCain and all the nitwits with cameras in front of them keep telling us its someone elses fault.

I'm an undecided voter in PA ( an important swing state,) I pledge my vote to the candidate with the stones to place the balme for this on the shoulders onf the American people. I guess I can stay home on November 4th.

BEAN51 wrote:

I do not think so.This word depression is used so lightly.I grew up in a real depression.It was a different world.In that world we had FDR.He tried and tried.But it was the 2nd WW which pulled us out.

You posted this same message the other day, and I'll post my same reply to it.

To even have a slight memory of the Great Depression, you would have to be in your 80's. I'm not going to doubt your age, only you know that, but I will say this. Yes, things HAVE changed. I'm 50 and the changes that have come around in my lifetime have been both fascinating and frightening.

But, thank goodness, I've managed to keep the cynical side of aging out of my view. If you think society was terrific in the 30's, maybe you should have your doctor check for Alzheimer's.
People were divided back then. There was rich and poor back then. The elite hated the working class, just as they do today.

There were blacks and whites, only blacks were kept in the dirty part of town and couldn't get a job to save their lives. They were also hung from trees by idiots in white bedsheets.
There were homosexuals. They were just terrified to let anyone know, so they lived in dark silence. They taught you at school, they preached to you at church, they stood side by side with in the military. You just didn't know. Feel better now?

And certainly not every person in America in the 30's was a nationalist. Even back then some folks recognized that the Constitution of the United States was meant to be challenged, and WE THE PEOPLE, have a duty to question whatever our government does, because it IS OUR GOVERNMENT. It is supposed to run by US!

As as for killing babies, until you've been 16 and pregnant, don't even touch that issue. Until you raise your hand and volunteer to take the next unwanted baby born, don't think you have a right to tell others what decisions they should make with their body.

See, things HAVE changed. They changed for your parents, they changed for you, they changed for me. Change is inevitable and you make the best of it. Personally, I won't vote for anyone who wishes to keep America in the past or in the same spot it's in right now.

robo0425 wrote:

<quoted text>
While I can agree with that in philosophy, the practical matter is that as soon as Americans reduce their "want" list, the heads on the box warn us of "reduced consumer confidence."
One other thing, Americans are not VICTIMS of anything. We did this, therfore we are perpetrators, not victims.
The economy will not fix itself, and we will not fix it while Obama and McCain and all the nitwits with cameras in front of them keep telling us its someone elses fault.
I'm an undecided voter in PA ( an important swing state,) I pledge my vote to the candidate with the stones to place the balme for this on the shoulders onf the American people. I guess I can stay home on November 4th.

I'm not putting the onus on the American people because they aren't the ones who needed a 700 billion dollar bail-out. Did some of the purchase homes they couldn't afford? Probably, but somebody sold them those homes they couldn't afford, so my sympathy does not lie with the banks. It is THEIR responsibility to measure the risks of those they loan money to. If they choose to overlook those risks, then I don't feel sorry for them.

Loaning money is inherently risky business, and the banks were foolish and impetuous and greedy. Now they come crawling to the government wanting taxpayer money to bail them out. On the other hand, the American homebuyer continues to lose. How is that fair?

If we're going to offer amnesty, let's offer it all the way around.

Obama Hates America wrote:

ACORN and Obama are trying to rig next months election. Did ACORN and Obama rig the primary election also ?

Did McCain and Keating rig the S&L debacle?

Don Joe wrote:

<quoted text>
We are already in a depression. I know, bush tells you that unemployment is only 6% but that don't make it so. If you use the method for calculating in Carter's time, the unemployment rate is closer to 12%. Other sources place it as high as 16%.
40 Million Americans have no access to health care. Many millions more have insurance, but the insurance is so high that they cannot pay the deductible so they don't get health care either.
The mortgage crisis has thrown a great many people out into the streets. Food shelves are running empty because of all the hungry people.
What part of this is not like the great depression?

No, unemployment may very well be 6%, but UNDER-employment is extremely high. There is really are no figures to show how many people have gone from a well-paying job down to a make-do job, one that barely pays the rent and/or offers no medical benefits.

Few people are going to sit around without some kind of job for very long. But if they can't find a comparable job to the one they lost, they end up working at Wal-Mart or as a waitress or delivering newspapers or doing some other low-paying job to try to make ends meet.

Just because someone has a job doesn't mean they are doing well.

Donna Atlanta GA wrote:

<quoted text>
I'm not putting the onus on the American people because they aren't the ones who needed a 700 billion dollar bail-out. Did some of the purchase homes they couldn't afford? Probably, but somebody sold them those homes they couldn't afford, so my sympathy does not lie with the banks. It is THEIR responsibility to measure the risks of those they loan money to. If they choose to overlook those risks, then I don't feel sorry for them.
Loaning money is inherently risky business, and the banks were foolish and impetuous and greedy. Now they come crawling to the government wanting taxpayer money to bail them out. On the other hand, the American homebuyer continues to lose. How is that fair?
If we're going to offer amnesty, let's offer it all the way around.

I work for Footlocker.
If the world decided tomorrow that they didn't want sneakers, we would sell boots.

Every bank in the world could have offered sub-prime loans, if nobody bought them, this conversation wouldn't be happening.

If sub-primes are the crux of the issue here, then for every single sub-prime mortgage the Government just bought, there is a silly, irresponsible family that never should have considered that house to begin with.

You can't sell ice in Antarctica.

McPalin wrote:

Oct. 7, 2008 | "My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand."
This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week.
Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that's the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year.("Keep up the good work," Palin told AIP members. "And God bless you.")

Wow, very interesting. Thank you for bringing this to light!!

McPalin wrote:

Oct. 7, 2008 | "My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand."

This is exactly how I feel about my government right now. I never believed in all the 50 years of my life that I would feel this way about my government, but I've come to realize it is stocked with the most untrustworthy, self-serving, greedy, lying and manipulative group of people who were ever put on earth. They have become my enemy.

robo0425 wrote:

<quoted text>
I work for Footlocker.
If the world decided tomorrow that they didn't want sneakers, we would sell boots.
Every bank in the world could have offered sub-prime loans, if nobody bought them, this conversation wouldn't be happening.
If sub-primes are the crux of the issue here, then for every single sub-prime mortgage the Government just bought, there is a silly, irresponsible family that never should have considered that house to begin with.
You can't sell ice in Antarctica.

But you can sell firewood and matches, and THAT is what the sub-prime business was all about. It sold loans to people who either desperately needed or wanted one.

A percentage of the foreclosures here in Atlanta are on the homes of elderly people who had either paid off their homes or were very close to it. Mortgage brokers talked them into sub-prime refinances for needed cash; now these old folks are losing their homes.

The brokers sold firewood and matches in Antarctica, plain and simple. It's kind of like hotels that jack up their prices when they know victims of natural disasters will be arriving. Or Home Depot, that jacked up the price of plywood during hurricanes. It's called greed.

CapitalistPigz wrote:

I'm 32 and my house is paid off and I have enough to retire. What will you republikans do in the coming depression? Your wives will turn to prostitution and you'll be working at McDonalds. LOL! I love the collapse of your filthy economy. God is punishing you for greed and tax cuts for the rich. Have a good trip to hell you pigz. ;) I'm moving back to Israel. Dumb Goyim.

Good job at age 32. I'm 55 with home paid off too. Got credit cards paid as well. 2 more payments on SUV.$100,000 cash available. Still working bringing in about $85K/yr. Sure lost some value in my 401K and stocks but not as bad as most. Holding my own. Prepared for this day years ago when watching other Americans pissing their money away. Americans never learn. They are just too greedy. In a way I'm glad this is happening. Maybe we will learn now....NOT.

Donna Atlanta GA wrote:

<quoted text>
This is exactly how I feel about my government right now. I never believed in all the 50 years of my life that I would feel this way about my government, but I've come to realize it is stocked with the most untrustworthy, self-serving, greedy, lying and manipulative group of people who were ever put on earth. They have become my enemy.

I agree, and I have been on earth for 44 years, I feel the worst is yet to come, dont think the bailout is gonna do anything,,,,

WE have been in a depression, those at the top are never aware of things happening at this level. It is good to be King..........since our top officals ( I use the term loosely) are aware we are in a depression let's hope we don't bail out the dummies that put us here. Oh never mind we all ready have!!!!!!!!! UNBELIEVABLE......

Donna Atlanta GA wrote:

<quoted text>
But you can sell firewood and matches, and THAT is what the sub-prime business was all about. It sold loans to people who either desperately needed or wanted one.
A percentage of the foreclosures here in Atlanta are on the homes of elderly people who had either paid off their homes or were very close to it. Mortgage brokers talked them into sub-prime refinances for needed cash; now these old folks are losing their homes.
The brokers sold firewood and matches in Antarctica, plain and simple. It's kind of like hotels that jack up their prices when they know victims of natural disasters will be arriving. Or Home Depot, that jacked up the price of plywood during hurricanes. It's called greed.

That's total CRAP!

Brokers sold loans to people who wanted something they didn't work for. They provided the easy path and a bunch of half-wit suburbanites went running down it. No one HAD to do anything. They CHOSE to becasue they are greedy, irresponsible fools, whose delusions of grandure made them think that a middle management bean counter is entitled to a mass produced 4000 sq ft home on 4500 sqare feet of land.

Its not like price gouging in the wake of natural disaster, because that is taking advantage of people in NEED. The idiots that are losing their homes right now didn't NEED the house they bought. They WANTED the garden tub with wirlpool jets, and the granite countertops. The WANTED the openconcept entryway with a paladian window. They WANTED to be just like everyone else, and were willing to do anything to get what they WANTED.

Oh, BTW, don't cite the exceptions to the rule. The number of Seinors caught up in thismess in refinance is minimal, every report on forclosure states that the VAST majority of the homes are overpriced suburban cookie cutter houses in the burbs occupied by white-collar middle management.

They took the easy way out, and its costing all of us $700 billion.

V4vendetta wrote:

Seeing Obama and McCain gives me depression! But seriously, this is likely the beginning of america's worst depression. The President and Congress answer every problem by throwing more money at it. Quick fixes are no substitute for real solutions. The bubble has burst.

I totally agree. It's a disaster. The solution is a total revamp of government in America. The tyrants of DC have given into corporate corruption and greed. It is time to restore the power to WE THE PEOPLE. Liberty shall prevail!

McCain - Obama Economic Recovery Act of 2008

1) U.S. Government buys every primary mortgage on every owner occupied home in foreclosure/pre-foreclosure.

2) U.S. Government renegotiates the mortgages, forgiving enough debt to make the new mortgage affordable to the home owner. Government may also lengthen the term or reduce the mortgage rate.

3) U.S Government institutes a "recapture tax" on all homes that have government supplied recovery mortgages.

--- If the home owner profits from sale of house during first ten years after getting the new mortgage, half of the profit is returned to the government to offset any forgiven portion of the original mortgage. From the 10th to the 15th year the recapture tax reduces by 20% each year finally reaching 0% after 15 years.

4) U.S. Government PROSECUTES and PERSECUTES every single last dirtbag who did this to our nation.

---- U.S. Government confiscates the property of every single SOB that got us into this mess. Makes them do hard time in jail and ruins their life.

---- U.S. Government balances playing field and does its job as watch dog and rule maker; ensuring a level playing field exists between all players; like it should have been doing all of this time.

5) We pass a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT that proclaims only eligible voters may contribute to or lobby politicians.

---- It prohibits any and all other types of contributions or lobbying of federal politicians and officials.

---- It limits the total contributions by a single eligible voter in any single year, to be no more than the dollar amount that places an individual at or below the poverty line.

****** NOTE:

For all of you thinking, well what do I get out of this plan....

If you're not in mortgage trouble, you get to see the price of your home stabilize and climb again. You gain the ability to sell your home again. You get to avoid living through a depression. You get to see your pensions, stocks and such build again.

MUCH CHEAPER THAN BAILING OUT BILLIONAIRES EVERY OTHER DAY !