There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

Why isn't anyone pointing out that the Fed just dumped 38 BILLION dollars in the market to protect investors (which is absolutly unprescidented) and at the same time and on the same day President Bush comes out and says that he will not support funding helping the almost 7 million people who are about to lose their homes? 

First of all, we are trading debt for tomorrow for debt for today. My daughter's daughter will be paying this one off. (sorry Honey)

Second of all, it is almost obscene for me to think that we have just abandoned helping middle class and lower class (and small business owning) people in favor of bailing out hedge fund managers and lenders who can not only afford to take a hit, but created this mess to begin with. 

I know I am breaking with the heard on this one, but hear me out. 

Many of these people in these loans (alt a and subprime) do not have any sort of reserves. They live paycheck to paycheck. Now their ARMs are going up and they are in a bind. These folks did not know any better. There comes a time when passion over comes reason and during the housing frenzy of the past few years, passion most certainly took over. Buying a house was the biggest fad on the block and everyone just had to do it.

I lost many clients because I refused to give them ARMs because I could see that they lacked reserves and were headed right off the cliff. They thought I was trying to rip them off because I was offering them a slightly higher fixed rate as opposed to the lower ARM rate they saw on tv ads and heard talked about on news programs. 

Now these 7 million (estimated) people are going to lose their homes and have no one to help. 

This is shameful, yes. Are they to blame? They have their share in this mess. I believe that it is everyone's fault. It was a train that started down the track and no one wanted to stop it. Everyone profited from it, governments got tax value, citys got revanue, stocks went up, it was like some great big party. The whole economy got wrapped up in real estate. Now it's time to pay the piper. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Now everyone has to pay the price. It's the law of nature. Everything has it's balance. 

This is where I have the problem: where is the punishment for those who just got bailed out today by the sudden advancement of liquidity provided by the Fed? Does the Fed mean to tell the nation, who has been living paycheck to paycheck it seems, that the tax payer is nothing more than a reserve account for those who have wealth in our nation? That's what those actions said to me. 

If 7 million people out there are going to lose their homes, i want the owners of some of these lenders to lose some sleep at night. I want them to feel the bite of this in their wallets. I want them to sweat a little and have to look through the want adds for new jobs. Are the CEOs of these lenders are so well insulated and their walls so padded with money that they can't hear the screaming of the casualties right outside their doors? What about the employees of these companies going under who just get a note saying sorry we can't pay you, we've canceled your insurance, be sure to turn in your blackberry on the way out. It's happening by the thousands. Do you honestly think that Mozilo at Countrywide is sitting up late at night wondering how he can fix this mess or how he can save a few thousand jobs? Not at all. According to many reports, he's been more concerned with selling millions of dollars of stocks and saving face to investors than trying to help stop the bleeding.

If some have to pay the price for playing the game then all have to pay the price. Either you help out both those losing their homes and the ailing market by throwing some liquidity into the market, or you let them both fail. Not either or. It only creates an imbalanced situation that will spell catastrophe down the road.

Let's look at the cost of 7 million homes. Let's just draw up some random numbers, shall we? Let's just say that the average home price of those homes is $120,000. Now, let's be conservative and say that a foreclosure costs the bank 20% percent of that house they just foreclosed on, which is $24,000 per unit. Multiply that seven million times.... you are looking at billions of dollars in losses that could be prevented. Now we are looking at two future losses. We are looking at the losses of foreclosed homes which will no doubt be bailed out by the government because they can't afford to let the banks go under (think S&L crisis) and we are looking at the surmounting debt that was just thrown on us by the fed to bail out the current crisis.

The party is now officially over. Today's uneven actions by the powers that be have now sealed the fate of our economy and have started a ripple effect in the global economy that will be felt for generations. We all knew that the party was going to end some time, and now we are stuck with the check. I don't ask for justice, we all know there is no such thing. I'm asking for a sense of balance to the whole thing. I'm asking that everyone involved from the top down own up to their shame and then do something to fix it. Unfortunately we live in times where honor is a word rather than a code of conduct. Where integrity is something to be stated rather than practiced. We all have our hands dirty. The banks, the politicians, the media, the brokers, and the consumers, we all will pay the price and no amount of bail outs will stop this train from crashing into the station. There's just too many on board and there's just too much momentum. I just wonder how many millions of dollars could have been saved by helping those teetering on the brink from losing their homes. I also wonder how many years it will take my ancestors to pay off the mounds of debt this giant catastrophe will cause. Lastly I wonder if there was anything we could have done to stop it all if someone in a position of power had the honor and the integrity to stand up and say that the the party couldn't go on forever and there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.