While we are barraged with consumerism, warm family reunions, red and green displays of devotion, one might ponder how the holidays are for those most affected by our ever despairing economic conditions.
A tent city East of Los Angeles is springing up for those who have lost their homes in foreclosure and cannot afford to pay the rent.
Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits “tent city,” a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.
The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck’s novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression.
Meanwhile, in New Orleans, a public housing demolition generates violent protests.
A recent major report tells us, Americans cannot pay their credit cards
Americans are falling behind on their credit card payments at an alarming rate, sending delinquencies and defaults surging by double-digit percentages in the last year and prompting warnings of worse to come…
Even after the recent spike in bad loans, the credit card business is still quite lucrative, thanks to interest rates that can run as high as 36 percent, plus late fees and other penalties
While Americans are swimming in debt, the sharks circle for the kill. Obviously predatory loan practices pay but for how long before America goes completely under?
We also have daily warnings about the housing bubble as it pops. This recent article, Bank crisis may make 1929 look like a walk in the park says:
Credit Liquidity doesn’t do anything in this situation,” says Anna Schwartz, the doyenne of US monetarism and life-time student (with Milton Friedman) of the Great Depression.
It cannot deal with the underlying fear that lots of firms are going bankrupt. The banks and the hedge funds have not fully acknowledged who is in trouble.
Last but not least, Slavery in the U.S. is finally in the news.
A wealthy New York couple were found guilty on Monday of forced labor charges after being accused of keeping two Indonesian women as slaves
With these recent tidbits of joy, I hope all have a good Holiday and onward to 2008 to obtain real change!
Happy Holidays, all.
Give ‘em Hell in the New Year!
Dana