News and Politics | June 28, 2008 | 17 comments

Credit crunch turns cars into homes

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/26/usa.creditcrunch

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dearmat23
Dan Glaister reports in the UK paper The Guardian that homeless people living in cars and motorhomes across the US are being joined by a new breed: the middle class.

As mortgage foreclosures continue to rise, growing numbers of middle-class professionals are losing their homes and downsizing from four bedrooms to four wheels.

Meanwhile the war in Iraq alone costs $4,681 per household, $1,721 per person, $341.4 million per day.
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17 comments // Credit crunch turns cars into homes

  • Robroy1
    • 0
      Robroy1  

    • Some good will come from all of this no thanks to Bushies but in spite of them. The Bushies have awakened the world to how much death and misery one evil administration and one evil man leading it can do. I think many people will be on guard when another evil leader comes along. I hope this one ends up before the world court. But one thing is for sure, the world will decrease it's dependency on oil and hopefullf the arabs and the bushes and the Big Oil can drink it for dinner. It may take a while but dependency is decreasing and it will continue slowley but surely. I am not saying completly but there will be a drastic reduction. Some good will come from this and hopefully Bush and his cohorts will be imprisoned for all the people they have killed.

    • 3 years ago
  • 24French
    • 0
      24French  

    • The U.S. life we had - house/car/whatever food whenever/isolated, obscenely self-absorbed wealth - may be a thing of the past. How can it continue to be sustained? Should it? It seems like the country is waking up from an unmatched era of consumerism and waste. Finally, our collective thought process has to step outside the house/car/more/better paradigm we set up. In retrospect, it really was insane. Group crazy. And we have the SUVs and Hummers to prove it.

    • 3 years ago
  • Toughth
    • 0
      Toughth  

    • Remember back in the early 90s when daddy bush was in charge, Many people were living in their old jalapies, and working trying to find any type of job in that market too. i have said this before, Like father like son, the Bush's are just trying a different tack to make the middle class beg to be included in living in this country.

    • 3 years ago
  • dearmat23
  • dearmat23
    • 0
      dearmat23  
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    • Rome43, I linked up to your great pod. Thank you.

      Different side of the story but the same story. Anyone watching Rome's pod and thinking I'm no crack head, won't happen to me remember my clip focusses on Guy Trevor who lost his job as an interior designer when the sector contracted thanks to the foreclosure crisis.

      He says - "I see myself as a casualty of a perfect storm," he said. "The people sleeping at the [car parks] are ... just like me. They come from normal, everyday homes. I think a lot of people in this country don't realise that they, too, are a couple of pay cheques away from destitution."

      In normally affluent Santa Barbara there were 150 foreclosures last month, with a total of 800 for the year ending in May, according to the county assessor's office, which assesses property for tax purposes.

    • 3 years ago
  • Rome43
  • cerealforeal
    • 0
      cerealforeal  

    • That's awesome fucking news, just how I wanted to start my morning; knowing there are human beings in the government that actually care about this problem and continue to wage a profit war.

    • 3 years ago
  • dearmat23
    • 0
      dearmat23  
    • Image

    • LA Holly, I'm affraid it's much bigger than that.

      WHO rules the world? The most familiar answers to this question are so poisoned by paranoia that it is tempting to dismiss the question itself. If the Jews are so powerful, then why have they had such a dreadful time of things? If the men and women of Davos are so mighty, then why do they keep messing everything up?

      Yet the fact that so many people give foolish answers to a question does not discredit the question. The rise of nation states produced national ruling classes. It would be odd if the current integration of the world economy did not produce new global elites—business people and financiers who run global companies and global politicians who steer supra-national organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund.

      These elites constitute nothing less than a new global “superclass”. They have all the clubby characteristics of the old national ruling classes, but with the vital difference that they operate on the global stage, far from mere national electorates.

    • 3 years ago
  • patsarts
  • Audiogeek
  • dearmat23
  • Robroy1
  • dearmat23
    • 0
      dearmat23  

    • The report doesn't mention the war, I was setting a simple comparison, to illustrate an inescapable paradox. I'm sure there's countless other damning statistics that can be applied... Federal debt $9.5 trillion...

    • 3 years ago
  • J_Jammer
    • 0
      J_Jammer [removed]  
    • dearmat23:

      Rising oil costs are rising the cost of many other things. It doesn't just affect gas.

      People who use to afford their lives on the paycheck they get a year ago cannot do so now. This greedy need to try and hurt people in the government by other people in other governments via their people is just as nasty as fighting a war and killing people.

    • 3 years ago
  • dearmat23
  • J_Jammer
    • 0
      J_Jammer [removed]  

    • I think the war has something to do with it but I can't see how it can be totally to blame. Oil prices via lies have risen to unspeakable amounts. It's killing people's pocketbooks and making them pay an arm and a leg to get to and from work.

      Ideally it would be great to have a scooter or a bike to get from here to there. But not everyone is in the right physical condition for one and certainly don't have enough money for the other at the moment.

      It's difficult position that is going to boil over soon and something drastic will happen.

    • 3 years ago
  • J_Jammer
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