I swear, every once in awhile, you say something that makes me want to dedicate the rest of my life to developing the technology necessary to reach through my screen and punch you right in the face. And because I'm from the metro-Detroit area, perhaps I can make great profit from this technology for the benefit of my home area, distribute it to the rest of the lowly Detroit area residents, and have them reach through their computer screens and punch you in the face as well. It sounds like a win-win for everyone but your face.

http://WeAreOfMichigan.blogspot.com

Sell your house. Move to Detroit. The median house in the Motor City sold for $7,500 in December. How about that, dear reader? You can buy a house for the same price as the Dow stocks. A little low on cash? Put it on your credit card.

Of course, then you’ve got to live in Detroit. The papers report that life in the city is so grim 1,000 people move out every month.

We’ve never been to Detroit. Out of curiosity, we offered to take Elizabeth for a romantic getaway to Detroit for her birthday. Our offer drew this reply:

“Are you out of your mind?”

Poor Detroit. No one goes to the city for a holiday. Not even students. As near as we can tell people only go there if they have to. And then, they get out as soon as they can.

We can imagine what it is like. We lived in the Baltimore ghetto for nearly 10 years. If you want to know what it is like, there’s a TV show that chronicles life there – The Wire.

Was it disagreeable living in the inner city? No, it would have to undergo major improvements to be disagreeable. It was Hell. Drug dealers on the street corners. Trash in the alleys. Everybody with a pistol in his pants and a chip on his shoulder.

Elizabeth was once on the phone with her brother.

“What’s that noise in the background?” he asked. “It sounds like popcorn popping.”

“Oh, that’s just someone shooting in the alley,” Elizabeth replied. “I think they’re trying to settle an argument.”

We’d been there too long. Elizabeth hadn’t even noticed the gunfire.

But it shows what government can do when it tries to fix a problem. In the case of Detroit and Baltimore, the government provided massive bailouts. Education standards collapsed…so the government provided money to the local education bureaucracy. Jobs disappeared (largely because people couldn’t read or write)…so the government provided massive bailouts in many different bureaucracies – training centers, welfare, food stamps. Pretty soon, the only industry left was the welfare bureaucracy.

We don’t know how it works now, but when we lived in the ghetto a girl’s best career path was promiscuity. She got more money with each child she had…provided, of course, that the father didn’t take responsibility for it. Then, the child grew up…took drugs and stole cars…until he got sent to prison. One problem led to another – but it could all be traced to the government’s giveaways. They had the same effect in Baltimore as they had in Burkina Faso. The political elite took the money and lined their pockets…the masses become more miserable than before. And the worse conditions got, the more money the cities received from federal bailout programs.

Baltimore is still in business. But from what we read, Detroit sounds like it has become a kind of Port-au-Prince with snowdrifts. The whole city sounds like a hellhole without the warm fires.

..."

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/a-depression-with-a-capital-d/

Quote from article: ". . . a win-win for everyone but the hapless Wall Street honchos who ruined the world. And who cares about them?"

Well those "honchos" "walked off" with eight years of horrific profits and wealth to the detriment of everyone else. Do you think that those honchos care about anyone else after they have fained all of their wealth from defrauding everyone?

We cannot "forget about them", they need to be required to return a substantial amount of those ill gotten gains back to society to reduce the national deficit that the average Americans are going to be taxed to pay for eventually.

We certainly cannot afford to just "forget" about these guys . . . we need to remember them very well. They need to become TARGETS of investigations and indictments . . . and taxation. Rember that 90% of the wealth out the USA is owned by only 3% of the population.

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented actions . . . and it is time to find a way to "re-balance" our economy that these guys have devastated by their corruptions and market manipulations.