Bailing Out the Bear

Uncle Ben and the Federal Reserve (see valentine to ben posted earlier) have bailed out Bear Stearns to the tune of we-can't-tell-you but the Bear has a write downs of 2.75 BILLION mostly due to the mortgage sub prime people-who-could-not-buy-toilet-paper-got-to-buy-houses-financed-by-someone-with-less-brains....financial mess the USA is now in.

JPMorgan-Chase was the one who pumped in capital into the bears cave with the blessings of Uncle Ben. Chase is in pretty good shape...do I smell this bear getting eaten alive?

Which leads me to remember just how pissed off I am that theres even a fucking sub prime crisis to begin with.....

In 2004 hubby & I decided that we needed more space (we really did) and we decided to buy a new house with sorta well known to the 1st time home builder whose CEO resigned after back dating some options.....

Bottom line...since I was applying for the mortgage in my name only you would have thought the world had come to an end....all I heard from various home builder mortgage brokers was: Miss Bitch you are self employed.

No shit.

The last moron that said that to me received the "I know that you stupid bitch" answer at which point my husband sweetly (he knew better) asked me to go get something to drink....

Bottom line, told home builder mortgage people to fuck off and applied at national savings & loan. The mortage system was so fucked up there that I was dealing with a loan officer in FLORIDA and an underwriter in San Francisco who kept having fights with his boyfriend who then would get pissed and go nuts at work....

Home Builder was pissed that we did not buy 20,000 worth of upgrades when we built the house and used only 7800 of our 9700 in incentive money leaving extra money on the down payment. They took 10 months to build a 120 day house....and then had the nerve to want a good customer service survey... WTF?????????????

S&L Branch manager saves my ass. (NOTE: When dealing with S&L never call the 800 number always go to the branch...the executive people are CLUELESS....) we close and move in.

That 169,900 house could have cost our asses nearly 200,000 if we had bought all the shit home builder wanted to sell us at hyper inflated prices. Of course the home builder mortgage company would have financed all the shit we wanted at 2 points above what everyone else was getting because my ass was self employed.

Instead of buying their high priced lighting I bought on sale at Home Depot and Overstock.com. Same with the storm doors...Andersen at Home Depot. I also got blinds for 22 windows for about 1050 from an online website...75% less than home-builder studio.

Bottom line....people just got too fucking happy with shit and no one ever looked at the future and said Hmmmm what happens IF? BTW most of the variable rate mortages were tied to the LIBOR (London Index Bank Overnight Rate) and when that bitch moved...it moved...straight up! We refi'd our variable rate that was on its way to 7.5 back to 5.8 30 year fixed 24 months after closing.

People got caught because they were not educated consumers. For fucks sake people...get with it! If you are going to sign a note for several hundred thousand dollars don't you think some education is in order? Like WTF am I signing? WTF does it mean ? Will my ass be able to pay for it if shit gets nasty? Then you better learn how to figure with a calculator the shit is nasty results and show much it will cost your ass as well. You also better learn how to read the financial pages on Yahoo Finance and keep up with your shit.

Sorry if your ass is losing your home...sorry you believed all the bullshit you got fed. Me? I refuse to let someone else tell me how much money I need to spend to make my ass happy.

Dave Ramseys "Total Money Makeover" would be a good start.