I was listening to a talk radio show the other day. The hostess of the show had three callers on line to get their opinion about an article she was going to read from the New York Times. It was in regards to how our economic ship has sprung leaks, and was listing to the side. According to the article the rate of delinquency in loan payments was the highest since 1992. This included auto, home and credit card payments.
She asked the callers to guess what they thought the percentage of these delinquencies were. The numbers ranged from 35% to 60%. Not being an alarmist and wanting to play the game my guess was in the 15 to 20 percent range; because of all the recent headlines.
The facts? To mine and the callers' surprise, this outlandish number was 2.7% versus the 2.5% in 1992. We all know that each year some people lose their homes due to foreclosures. So what are the other facts? How many more is it now than before? Is it really a crisis or just a way of selling papers, making headlines and manipulating the market?
The same goes with this "housing crisis". Is there a slow down in the demand for homes, or did the builders over construct and outpace the demand for these homes? What are the facts?
Just give me the facts and let me decide. I don't want all these experts with their million and one opinions deciding for me. They are at best wrong, or at worst opining with a hidden agenda.
And what about all those lead- based painted toys? How much is harmful? As kids we chewed on lead pencils and played with lead soldiers. How about the mercury in our seafood? We also enjoyed breaking open thermometers and playing with the mercury; watching it as we rolled it from hand to hand. I and the rest of my generation have survived, and have led somewhat normal lives, even tho we indulged, by today's standards, in these horrific, life-threatening activities.
What are the facts about these dangers? Deaths, illness, stomach flu?????
Kids survived roaming freely in the back seats of cars as they played and bounced around. Now they are restrained and encased more securely then astronauts going into space. Is it one child that died, or was there carnage on our highways? What has been the benefit in restraining the kids versus the risk of self-limiting the number of kids per family by the size of your car?
So enough of these headlines! Gives us real facts, and let us decipher what is really going on. We have been so conditioned to reacting to those breaking news stories, many of us have forgotten how to think and just let others make all the decisions for us. Or at least "the others" think we have forgotten how to.
Just the facts, mam.....
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3 comments:
Hmmm...well, obviously the banks are in trouble for making bad loans,-- maybe there aren't as many average loan defaulters in trouble as has been advertised...maybe we're being lead to believe it's bad so we don't question as much the government bailing out these big banks with our tax dollars. Yeah, it'd be nice to get the straight facts more from our spinning media.
I keep thinking, did the banks loose all that money making bad home loans, or did they just loose a lot of money in other bad investments.
A lot easier for the governament to bail them out when you make it sound like a houising crisis.
Yep, they probably just pulled another one over on us, huh? A fake housing crisis...I wouldn't be surprised...not a bit.
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