Just thinking about a way out of the current financial situation. They've thrown a small ton of money at the banks to try and prop them up. This seems to have only prevented more runs on banks. We've seen investors move a lot of money from stocks to bonds and cds. If you didn't do that last year or at least this past spring then you missed the boat it's too late now. They still aren't even beginning to undue the mortgage mess. I'm only now seeing banks start to offer refinancing but from what I hear people with good credit are being turned down. And of course we now have the late night get rich quick in real estate gurus crawling out from every rock. Then there's the "we can get your debt erased" scams out there.
Okay I did a little research. On refinancing go to your bank and see if they will make you a deal. If they can't help try a credit union. If the credit union can't help you're probably out of luck. If you're facing bankruptcy go find a lawyer who deals with that. It will save you many headaches in the long run. I was also looking at the prices of foreclosures. The prices aren't pennies on the dollar like some would have you believe. The cheapest one I could find was listed to go for a minimum bid of $65K and you'd only need to put a couple of hundred thousand to get it up to livable.
It's interesting to note that back in the eighties a two bedroom apartment in downtown Tokyo went for $2 million. After their bubble burst it took about ten years to get back to realistic prices. As I see it we have a very small window to really change things before other factors start to kick in that will make the present situation look like a party. That would be the Ponzi scheme called Social Security for one and Medicare.
So what to do? A New New Deal to start rebuilding the infrastructure, fix healthcare, retirement and changes in education. A large push for renewable energy would do wonders for the bottom line and the pay off would be fairly short. I realize this will cost in the tens of trillions of dollars but consider the alternative. And for those who say this is socialist and all that, I say who cares? The results would be the same no matter what name you put on it and it would benefit everybody. Remember when we had one phone company and it actually worked quite well and it was cheap too?
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Um, my place is free and clear. My meager income is double what I need it to be to get by on.
I don't have an empire building bitch here.
I don't give a fuck about money and never really did.
Remember when we had one phone company and it actually worked quite well and it was cheap too?
Oh yes, I sure do, it was people helping people. And how about the old Rural Electrician program? REA or something like that.
It was all government back then but that was when we were the government. Before business conned so many into thinking that they could do a better job for us.
Yeah, right, fuck big business. I'm on a PUD system over here for electricity and water but when big business gets their hands on it I'm fucked and my bills will go up.
Wait, no I'm not, I can do without them if I need to, ha ha ha.
It seems we have 3 options coming at us. Do what bbc is doing and try to live off the grid as much as possible. Work together to resolve infrastructure, energy, and economic issues together. Or continue on our merry way and ignore the reality that is waiting around the next corner.
1. Off the grid will not work for all of us. But it is defintiely something I think we need to have in the back of our minds. If for no other reason than to prepare ourselves for what may be intermittment breakdowns in the normal flow of our culture.
2. Continuing on as we have, happy as if we had brains is a sure fire way to make off the grid not just an option but a reality.
3. Or as you suggest, sinking time, money and effort into meeting the challenges that are surely coming. The time to pull our heads out of the sand is well past. We cannot count on DC to solve our problems without insisting they do so.
But I fear we monkeys will continue to look for our leaders to save us. They have us convinced they can. They can't. Only we can do that. And being monkeys and all, we don't get it.
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