This Old House And Free Money

I am about to run out the door to go door-to-door with other campaign volunteers and Chad Lauga, our IBEW brother running for the district 103 seat in the Louisiana Legislature.  By the way that district covers all of the east bank of Plaquemines Parish, the eastern most part of New Orleans East, and all of St. Bernard Parish.  Chad is #54 on the ballot.  The primary election is October 22nd. He is tied for first place in the polls, welcomes your help and needs your support.  You can learn more at Laugainthehouse.com.

Time only for a quick thought on another matter.  Everyone knows there are lots and lots and lots of houses for sale on the market, at ever declining prices.  These are almost all individual owner occupied or foreclosed bank owned houses; new single family home construction is dead.  Remarkably, there is also nearly an unlimited supply of virtually free money (4% 30 year mortgages) available for loans to purchase these properties.  But few potential buyers can access the capital (qualify for a bank loan) because they have too much debt already, are at risk of losing the job they have, are underemployed on a part-time basis for meager wages, or have no job at all.

The private sector at large will not hire the unemployed because the overall economic stagnation has caused a sag in demand for all consumer goods, along with houses.  Look for a subsequent post exploring how the greedy bastards on Wall Street and in the banks and boardrooms caused this situation to come about.  I can assure you it will not improve for a very, very long time on its own.  We have seen this before and know what needs to be done.  But there is a lot of anger, fear, and finger-pointing out there which is insisting on all the wrong policies.

Right now the Federal Government also has virtually an unlimited supply of essentially free money available to it (Treasury bonds are only paying 1.03% interest, and are in hot demand) which could and should be used to infuse needed dynamism into the stalled economy.  When people get back to work, they pay more in taxes, the money borrowed to get things moving again is repaid, they buy more houses and other things, and the economy returns to health and growth.  It's as simple as 1 + 1 =  2,  but our enemies insist on imposing the arithmetic operation of subtraction on our standard of living.  We need to turn the pencil around and erase the propaganda of the Republican/Teacan right-wing, so things can start adding up in our favor again.