Mother Of God

Why is it that every American who drives a new Suburban or Yukon off the dealership lot doesn't give a shit about it being underwater the second they sign the papers? Yet, when it comes to housing, they cry havoc, expect assistance, expect help, expect a tax credit, or expect a bailout. Why the difference?

Another reason I carry such little hope for this nation is summed up in a single quote in this Bloomberg article:

Rina Serrano, 35, an after-school program supervisor for the Merced County Office of Education, may lose her job next year due to budget cuts. The value of her house, built by Calabasas, California-based Ryland Group Inc. in the Bellevue Ranch development, fell by at least a third since she purchased it in 2007. Her husband’s cabinetmaking business is down by half.
“Nobody has given us any options, but my feeling is there should be some assistance,” said Serrano, 35, a mother of four. The couple took out a 30-year fixed loan and aren’t behind on payments but they are underwater by about $70,000.


I had thought that Stockton, to my immediate south, was the epicenter of foreclosures, but I think it now may be Merced, a little farther south. Merced...another bedroom community for thousands of Bay Area commuters.

Rina perfectly sums up this nation's pathetic character, this nation's unwillingness to own up to their decisions. She "feels" there should be some assistance...while she's not behind on her payments.

You and I both know what she's asking for. She's asking that she not be held responsible for her decision, that someone ought to just erase that $70,000 paper loss. Yep, just erase it. No matter that her $33,000 Toyota Sienna is also underwater, used to haul her four kids around Merced, another town sucked into the exact same suburban sprawlish building pattern as every other town, where she has no option but to shuttle her kids around by motor vehicle. No, she doesn't care about her car payments funding a losing proposition, but her house payments? Mother of God. She shouldn't have to pay.

And never mind the fact that if her house price had risen by $70,000 and she and her husband re-fi'ed and spent the proceeds on a family computer, a motorcycle for her husband, a nip and tuck job for her chin and some bigger tits, and a family vacation to Walley World, she'd not think twice about the incremental 30-year payment required to pay for all that stuff. That payment...she could afford. Paying on a house that's underwater...now, suddenly, it's a payment she can't afford.

Such bullshit, folks. You should no longer wonder why I root for our destruction, why I hope this nation falls apart, why I firmly believe, deep down, that a complete societal meltdown would result in the rebuilding of a nation far richer and truly wealthier that anything currently imaginable. But...the realist in me gives a zero probability of that happening.

Zero. So I'll get to sit and enjoy watching your desperate attempts to return our economy and lifestyles back to "normal" -- back to a new car every two years, housal equity gains at 14% per year, free quality medical care and elective surgeries for everyone, jobs that require no work, no sweat, no dirt under the fingernails and no effort, gasoline at a dollar twelve a gallon, forgotten wars fought by forgotten losers and paid for by others, meat at every meal, vacations to Disney World every year, gambling trips to Branson, MO every quarter, a house four times larger than the one you grew up in, fat guaranteed pensions, and a company car to commute home with every night from that finance, insurance, sales, or advertising job.

Damn it, no matter how I might present this, there's a piece of me that wants us to succeed, a piece of me that wants to light a candle instead of curse the darkness, to continue to live rich fulfilling lives in the same way we've been, but that piece has been ripped out by Rina Serrano of Merced and the tens of millions of other Americans who think like her. This is something of a personal paradox I have to deal with, but the more I think about things, the more I hear about what stupid things my neighbors do and want...the more I enjoy blogging about the sorrowful decrepit state of my Merika.