Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoda
I do not know anyone who is getting forclosed because they cannot pay the mortgage. Do you? I do know some who walked away from upside down mortgaes.
When the unemployment rate was 5% I did not know anyone who is unemployed, other than by choice. Now that it is 6.7%, I still don't.
|
Yes, our home up north is in a rural area in New York State with low population density, and we know people in (so far) three homes being foreclosed. The daughter and son-in-law of close friends in New Hampshire were just foreclosed after they'd been unable to pay their mortgage for close to a year, due to loss of jobs.
We know a fair number of people (besides those in the homes being foreclosed, one of which also involves a serious illness) who are unemployed, including one of our sons. Another of our sons who works for one of the big national banks has a job that is very shaky (as well as three children and a mortgage). Ironically, our son with the most secure job is a grocery clerk. We have friends whose son in California created a business of emptying houses that have been walked away from by people who, presumably, at least for some, became unemployed and were consequently unable to pay their mortgages.
It's very easy for us relatively comfortable retired folk who drank the water, fell in love with the TV lifestyle, may or may not have 'suffered' paper losses in the stock market and 401K plans and the like, but who are living the good life to not notice what is happening in, for lack of a better phrase, 'the real world out there.' Reading
The Daily Sun doesn't necessarily give us a true picture of life throughout the U.S.
In other words, yes, foreclosures in huge numbers are real, and an unemployment rate of no matter what the percentage is represents folks who are out of work. We can read/hear about 1,000 or whatever number laid off from this or that large company and it sounds like a number, but these are lives, these people have families, and even right here in TV we don't have to look further than Circuit City going into Chapter 11 and Linens & Things closing outright--and just prior to Christmas too. How insensitive or in denial can we continue to be?...