FSBO XI

December 26, 2007 · Filed Under Economy, Opinion

Seventeen weeks into the sale of the house and not so much as a low ball offer. When the president of Wells Fargo Bank says publicly that these are the worst times for real estate since the Great Depression, he isn’t kidding. In fact, there’s nothing funny about what’s going on.

If this is some kind of pyramid scheme where a person buys their spot on the pyramid board and waits patiently for the blocks to fill in until they get their money back, we’re just waiting for our turn. If prices fall to twenty year ago levels almost all of our retirement money will have disappeared in a single year. And we’ll go from occasional volunteering at the local mission serving the homeless to standing in those lines on a permanent basis. Is this the future the New World Order has in mind for all of us with personal estates under $10,000,000?

We never had that much in life, going without things is the way we got by. Unfortunately if you’re laid off at 55 years of age with seven years until the reduced social security checks, you’ll find the savings so painfully put away each year will fly out the door in a single month. Thirty years of savings will only get you 30 months plus whatever interest the funds had accumulated. NAFTA is one of the direct proofs that our government has declared war on Americans by making moving production offshore so lucrative that companies have no rational choice but to do so. Corporations were the masters that ordered our “elected leaders” to draft the act originally so it isn’t exactly a shock it makes big profits a cake walk, which they are allowed to defer the taxes on these profits.

So it’s not so much our government that is the enemy of the American people it’s the corporations of this country who answer to the demanding greed of the investor class. These people demand 10-40 % return on their investments in a 3-5% inflation world. Unfortunately to get these outrageously high returns someone has to pay the price, that would be every hard working American that has to pay high rents, watch their wages get swallowed by millions of competitors swarming into our country, and still expected to spend every penny they have so the retail sector can stay healthy and prosperous.

When is enough, enough? If the top 1% of the population has fortunes so massive that their descendents can’t spend it all no matter how wastefully they live, isn’t it time to show some self control? Does America have to resemble some depressing sci-fi movie with masses wandering the earth in squalor, while the few live like kings of old? It’s Christmas Day and an excellent point to begin the process of giving some of that extreme wealth back to the faceless masses it was taken from. With 90% of all wealth in their possession, they are the only people that can make life in America any better.

By Lloyd H. Frye
Op-Ed Columnist
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