Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Empire Strikes Back: How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The Empire Strikes Back: How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme - Again

Click here to access article by Laura Gottesdiener from TomDispatch. (Note: if you wish to skip Engelhardt's introduction, you will need to scroll down to the article.)

For the past few years I expected that this was happening, and looked in vain to find much media coverage. It has apparently been a well kept secret hidden mostly from the public because it is far too embarrassing for the One Percent ruling class to reveal.

This class loves their economic busts because they provide splendid opportunities to buy up assets on the cheap. The 2007/2008 featured most prominently a collapse in the housing market set up by the ruling class who induced so many of the 99 Percent to take out easy mortgages. Remember the "ownership society" theme promoted by George Bush back in 2004? Now they are cashing in on this great profit opportunity by buying housing on the cheap and renting them back at high rates to people who have been thrown out of their homes by banks.