Serious questions for those who are convinced that Obama, Clinton, and Gore are not liberals.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

237. This recovery has been so slow

because too few Americans have any real buying power today. After 9/11 Bush told the nation to go shopping...and the nation did. Low interest rates inflated the housing market whose only purpose was to encourage too many homeowners to treat the equity in their homes as disposable income. Whenever you hear someone talking about "poor people buying homes they couldn't afford" , aside from being able to identify a fool, you should respond with "No, too many Americans refinanced their homes too many times. Middle and Upper Middle class people." The tragedy of the housing market is that there are people who lost their homes after 10, 15 and even 20 years of
always paying their mortgage on time. Some stripped so much equity out of their homes that when the bubble burst they went 'underwater' and now have nothing left upon which to fall should they have an emergency, nor is there anything left to help finance retirement. Today on Up w/ Chris Hayes someone expressed concern that in 2013 we will begin to re-inflate the housing bubble. Good Grief.

We have tried the "buying" solution...it failed over the long run. Corporations only respond to decreased profit...nothing else will move them. I don't have much hope that Americans will stop buying until they must. That's really sad and it is going to be really painful.