David Byrne, yes that David Byrne, one of my favorite contemporary musicians, explains the mortgage credit crisis and how the housing bubble might explain why working people voted against their interests in 2004 and helped elect GW Bush,
Meanwhile the recipients — the workingmen and women who are barely eking by — suddenly have loan offers thrown at them by the truckload. They feel richer, more flush; things are going well it seems, and their situations improving. It’s not so hard to pay the bills. They worry less and sleep more. A sense of blissfully ignorant well-being pervades the land. The working class and the under- and unemployed assume that the Republicans are somewhat responsible for this new (virtual) wealth — and maybe they were. It would follow that Mr. Joe Average might vote for the administration seemingly responsible for his new sense of well-being. Now, the bills are coming due — the housing market stalled, as I understand it, triggering the collapse of the whole house of cards.
Although Byrne's analysis of the sources of the bubble isn't half bad, the really good stuff is at Calculated Risk if you have a taste for true insider mortgage industry wonkishness in all its glory. But having seen Bryne's blog entry, I couldn't, just couldn't, resist the chance to use that headline.
If you really like David Byrne you should own the concert DVD “Stop Making Sense.” It’s top notch.
I’d like to see what circumstances would prompt the headline “This is not my beautiful wife.”
Because “the workingmen and women who are barely eking by” make such foolish and destructive choices (such as voting Republican) it is quite clear we need to eliminate the modality of their self-inflicted wounds, ie eliminate their right to vote.
I think it clear what we need is governance by a parliament of celebrity: Byrne, Fonda, Penn, Sarandon and their colleagues, perhaps with Bono as prime minister. Fred Thompson and Schwarzeneggar are problematic in this regard, as Republicans, but perhaps reinvigoration of the “fairness doctrine” can be used to censor them.
How much longer will we continue to allow “the workingmen” to make their own choices? When will we learn that this only leads to ruin and destruction? When the Enlightened class are finally allowed to rule, everything will be perfect such that there won’t even be mistakes to learn from.