Everything Is So Fucked

Have you ever visited Annotated Rant? It's hilarious. My favorite is Fuck The South.

I saw a similar rant recently and wanted to share it with you. It's from a Millennial (I assume) in response to The Atlantic's recent article on why Millenials aren't buying anything (cuz their cheap). The following rant explains it's not cuz they're cheap:

Why Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy

HAHA NO MONAY!!!!!

Maybe our generation aren’t buying houses and cars because EVERYTHING IS SO FUCKED

You want us to actually talk to bank people and get home loans and auto loans? They are still fucking us! Any time I go into a bank, I feel disgusted. You want me to do MORE business with the who want to charge me 5 dollars for every single swipe of my debit card? Get fucked!

You think I’m gonna buy a car? A car? Where am I gonna get the money for a car and the insurance and the insurance against the insurance company if God forbid they decide to do the same things they did to the poor Fisher family and countless others? And fucking GAS? Are you crazy? The planet is dying, and you want me to buy gas at $FUCK.YOU/gallon?

In the past 5 years since the economy fell apart, we’ve been adapting. We’ve been listening to countless horror stories of those who made the risk. Those who saved and did it right, and still ended up with an inferior product with inferior service that RUINS YOUR LIFE. It’s not like ordering a pizza, and instead of sausage, you get cheese. It’s like ordering a pizza and then your credit is ruined and you are flat broke. The pains of acquisition aren’t worth it if it can all be taken away like a bureaucratic fart in the bathtub. It would be smarter to save our money for tickets to god-damn Mars than to invest in these hideous, broken systems.

We aren’t cheap. We fucking hate doing business with you people.

All these pieces on Millennials are so mired in confusion since we don’t even trust journalists any more. The news, our entire lives, has been scary. Think about being 8 and processing the deaths of abortion doctors or homegrown terrorism. Now try to process the news when every asshole on camera just lies. The news hasn’t had an ounce of truth in it for 10 years. Can you not understand how much we don’t trust anyone who is older than us? How can you trust anybody when the president and vice-president of the United States lied to the Secretary of State so they could START THE WRONG WAR!

Fucking seriously.

Also, that graphic? Is that what you think we all look like? Are you fucking kidding me, Atlantic?

I hope they never find out how to market to us. I hope we splinter so much that companies like Ford will have to make a decent product instead of asking the Vomit Spouts that created Jersey Shore how to create MORE fantasies about how great THINGS will make your life. We don’t attach to things because things break. We saw everything break.

But, that’s just me.

h/t TFTT

Thursday Cartoon Fun: Crime & (No) Punishment Edition

Just Walk Away

My son and I were in Los Angeles for Passover over the weekend.  We ate great food, saw friends and family, and had an all around great time.  We drove, and though there was some traffic heading down I-5, and then back up, with my cousin in the car with us for the ride it went very quickly.  It was a good trip.

My best friend and his family let us stay at their house, as usual, and that's always nice because we have been friends since we were 3 years old (we're pushing 50 now) and we live far apart.  Getting together only happens a couple times a year.

We always talk and talk and talk.  His wife, who I have known since high school is the most awesome woman I know, and incredibly smart and sensitive.  My best friend is a lucky fucker.  We were talking politics and education and all that.  We got on to the issue of the economy and the housing bubble and the fact that my mortgage is so far underwater it will never come back up to a level where I won't lose money.  Ever.

So, I have decided to be one of those folks who simply walks away from the house I bought.  I put a very big down-payment on the house.  That was stupid, in retrospect.  I will never see a return on my investment, in fact I am going to lose it.  I have been paying my mortgage, but it has been going down a hole, not really back into the house.  So, I must walk away for my sanity.

It is a devastating realization.  It calls into question one's ability to navigate this life, or that's how it feels for me.  It is emasculating, frightening, and depressing.  It is hard too because the equity was supposed to send the kid to college, and there is no equity, and there won't be.  Ever.  Fuck.

The discussion with my friends, and the subsequent decision to walk away, was both painful and cathartic (as is writing this post) at a time when catharsis seems to be the only good thing around.  I am slowly realizing that money, something we teachers struggle to make, is just money.  How else can I think about it, now that I have chosen to walk away from all that I invested in?  But it's true, it's just money.  I have friends, family, love and support, so how bad could it really be?

The best part about it is my son.  He now knows that at some point we are going to have to leave the house, forever, and never have the money we paid for it back, and what that means.  I explained the financial workings of the underwater mortgage, and how I can never sell the house and break even, much less make a profit, and he looked at me and said, "That makes good sense.  When you're in a hole, stop digging, as you used to tell me. You're such a smart dad!"  I love that kid. [When he was little and he got caught in a lie (and I could always tell) I would tell him that I know he's not being truthful, so he is in a hole and must get out via the ladder of truth.  He remembered, and clearly understood, and was able to use that knowledge to comfort his old man.]

I did try to get a mortgage modification, 5 times, but no luck.  I will still try to get the house for free by showing, hopefully, that Chase doesn't know where the actual note is, like some lucky folks. I have no hopes of this happening, but I must at least try.

The walking away does weigh heavy on my mind.  But no longer worrying about "losing the house" and instead just giving it away, does ease my mind a bit, and perhaps the graying of my hair will slow.

I figure I have about 4 months of not paying before they boot us.  I guess during that time I should begin to sell all those appliances I had to buy. Fuck, again.

Friday Cartoon Fun: Bob Reich Edition

...Although the financial reform bill may have clipped some of Goldman’s wings — its lucrative derivative business may require Goldman to jettison its status as a bank holding company, and the access to the Fed discount window that comes with it — the main point is that the Goldman settlement reveals everything that’s weakest about the financial reform bill.

The American people will continue to have to foot the bill for the mistakes of Wall Street’s biggest banks because the legislation does nothing to diminish the economic and political power of these giants. It does not cap their size. It does not resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act that once separated commercial (normal) banking from investment (casino) banking. It does not even link the pay of their traders and top executives to long-term performance. In other words, it does nothing to change their basic structure. And for this reason, it gives them an implicit federal insurance policy against failure unavailable to smaller banks — thereby adding to their economic and political power in the future. [emphasis mine]

The bill contains hortatory language but is precariously weak in the details. The so-called Volcker Rule has been watered down and delayed. Blanche Lincoln’s important proposal that derivatives be traded in separate entities which aren’t subsidized by commercial deposits has been shrunk and compromised. Customized derivates can remain underground. The consumer protection agency has been lodged in the Fed, whose own consumer division failed miserably to protect consumers last time around.

On every important issue the legislation merely passes on to regulators decisions about how to oversee the big banks and treat them if they’re behaving badly. But if history proves one lesson it’s that regulators won’t and can’t. They don’t have the resources. They don’t have the knowledge. They are staffed by people in their 30s and 40s who are paid a small fraction of what the lawyers working for the banks are paid. Many want and expect better-paying jobs on Wall Street after they leave government, and so are shrink-wrapped in a basic conflict of interest. And the big banks’ lawyers and accountants can run circles around them by threatening protracted litigation....

From Robert Reich

Saturday Cartoon Fun: Pile Of Rubble Edition

Monday Cartoon Fun: Goldman Sachs vs SEC Edition

A Comparison: FDR : BHO

FDR in 1936:

Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred.

Obama announcing new financial regulations today:

My message to members of Congress of both parties is that we have to get this done. And my message to leaders of the financial industry is to work with us, and not against us, on needed reforms. I welcome constructive input from folks in the financial sector.

h/t Josh Orton