There was a time when a home was a place to live, a place where you raised your family, a place to grow your garden, plant your flowers and watch your fruit trees grow to full maturity so you could eat the fruit they would bear during their lifetime.
Sunday dinner called families home to a table with meals cooked with food grown in their own garden or nearby. Home was where you grew old with your life partner; it was a place to die, remembered, by those you loved and who loved you.
Today your home is a speculators bet, a henchman's noose.
Your home has become a tool of a political fraud scheme so massive that it touches the lives of every American, man, woman and child. There was a time when families worked to pay off their mortgage so that they knew they owned their home free and clear. The mortgage burning was a cause for celebration. No more. Now people determine what the maximum payment is that they can afford, and speculate on internal rates of return, tax deductions, and how fast they can flip their 'home' moving on to a larger home, a new neighborhood, different friends.
What has happened to America?
Several times a week you receive phone calls, either from a machine voice that oozes cordiality or from an eager human being who wants desperately to arrange a new mortgage for you. Easy. Quick. Acceptance guaranteed; words that flood into your ears along with the avaricious longing they cannot hide. Do you think it is smart to borrow 125% percent of your home? Ask yourself, "why would anyone, even a loan-shark lend someone 25% more than it is worth?
You watch the supply of new homes on the market grow ever larger. For a while you saw those shiny new houses on tiny lots going up in price as they sold like hot cakes. Then you noticed that they were lingering on the market; in many areas specials began appearing. In a few areas offers of assistance from local government appeared. No down payment signs went up.
If you paid attention you noticed that the developments were new 'planned communities,' on small lots coming complete with Home Owners Associations with "Restrictive Covenants" whose rules, restrictions and bylaws make the contract you signed to buy the house look like a parole agreement instead of a general warranty deed. If you perused those restrictions you might have discovered that your 'ownership' includes big fines if you try to do things like change the color of the paint, grow vegetables, put up an antenna, or alter the appearance of your home in any way. If you are like most new homeowners you did not bother to check before signing on the dotted line. They are planned alright, behind the closed door of the FED.
Those new homes look good – but they are covered with petroleum based vinyl siding that will literally be falling off the building after the polyvinylchloride is decayed from UV exposure in ten to twenty years. Then consider that owners will not be able to afford to recover their homes, and most importantly the warranty will just have run out. And what about restrictive covenants that are so intense that you can't have your family over on Sunday because you can't park more than two cars in the driveway at any given time without having your homeowners association fining you and trying to take away your home for the lien they placed on it for your breach of the restrictive covenants? As for growing a garden to feed your family in an economic crisis, well you can kiss that goodbye, cause it violates the covenants as well.
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