One Hundred And One

Today there were more notices of default in my local Elk Grove Citizen newspaper than I've ever seen before; more today than at any time over the past three years of recession.

In 2008 I posted the names of those who were then defaulting, and it was clear that they were predominantly non-white. Today in the Elk Grove Citizen there were one hundred and one notices of default. The latest the deed of trust was executed was 2009. The earliest was July 27th, 1999. In this one instance, a couple, Emil and Raquel Canlas paid on their mortgage for twelve years and two months and are now defaulting, presumably meaning that all those payments were nothing more than rent, while the government was able to account Emil and Raquel Canlas as "homeowners" for all those years, inflating their numbers touting the success of the middle class, how middle Americans are doing just fine...prospering during our booming 2002-2006 economy. If it's anything like my brother-in-law, the housal unit will be "stolen" by an investor, a bank, or someone else who picks it up for a song.

Why do you suppose Emil and Raquel defaulted, now some twelve years into their [presumably] thirty year mortgage? Loss of income? Medical bankruptcy? Over-extension due to cash-out re-fi's buying 1080i TVs for each room? Housal unit valuation less than the $160,789.86 owed, and they simply said "fuck it," and drove away?

Why?

I will never know.

Those defaulting today are not the same as those defaulting two years ago. It's clear that those defaulting two years ago were very clearly non-white. Look at the names of some of these 101 defaulters of today:

Jin Wu
Lien Nguyen
Kc Hasse
Lorenzo Durrana
Michael Wells
Trung Tran
Elsa Montenegro
Phuc Gi
James McGown
Gerald Haynes
Murad Ali Kabani
Penny Sulivan
Nancy Boykin
Samantha Stonework
Dennis Martel
Jose Martinez
Amber Peck
Tyler Weisz
Romeo Gatchalian
May Thanh Le
Robert Archie
Jeffery Mcalpin
Natasha Clarke
Joselito Laygo
Robert Jones
Danielle Sada
Deborah Henry
Balwinder Dulku
Umaru Fofana
Rose Valencia
Megan Williams
Brian Rowland
Stephan Leesha
Cindy Titus
Ophelia Delapaz
Duong Chu
Quang Dich
Laura Gardner
Joseph Maggiora
Nichelle Williams
William Hannell
James Dapelo
Jennifer Larsen
Angelito Rubio
Tanya Duplantier
Raymond Hayashi
Kulbir Thind
Randy Stiles (the largest defaulter)
William Page
Lanier Williams
Susan Clanton
Lydda Macellana
Sonia Gutterez
Stephen Burrell
Emil Canlas
Geogina Castro
Masoud Janatpour
Andre Wilder
Tracye Bishop
Angelita Francisco
Stephen Locke
Elias Fares

Whew!

Why am I wasting precious hours of my life posting this shit? To document that every class, every race, every creed, and not just foreign born Americans have lost much of their life's work, but now, white America, too. It seems that white people held out hope a lot longer than when I first posted the names of defaulters two years ago, and now they represent 50% of all defaulters. I say this using the stereotype of using names to presuppose race...Samantha Stonework is decidedly a white woman's name, wouldn't you agree? Two years ago, white names represented 15% of the total.

Coupla ideas why. Perhaps whites were the last fired. Perhaps they cling more strongly to the core value of not defaulting on obligations. Perhaps they are simply economic dolts, having failed to see the value in driving away early. I tend to believe more in #3, because look around -- there are a lot of people out there without a basic understanding of saving, of value, of buy-later-when-there-ain't-no-money...