Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House. One is from Chicago, another is from Tennessee, and the third is from Minnesota.

All three go with a White House official to examine the fence. The Minnesota contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. "Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me."

The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, "I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100 profit for me."

The Chicago contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, "$2,700."

The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?"

The Chicago contractor whispers back, "$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence."

"Done!" replies the government official.

And that, my friends, is how the new stimulus plan will work.


If you and your family have been spending more than you are making for years and years, the solution is not to borrow more money to renovate your bathroom!!!

You say that like it's a bad thing...

Like you said in a previous post MeYammy...

You can't fix the hole in your shirt with a pair of scissors, this will only make a bigger hole!

Hehe - so true

At least someone was listening

I thought that's how the government has been operating for the last 75 years or so. They now more than ever just want to give money to those that don't work or criminal companies.

Sad state of affairs. A major reason we are in this hole is because:

People often say, why do new car dealers have to have a used car lot to make money. Well, this is why. A new car normally has a kind of buyer that can afford the car they are about to purchase, so they when authorized the type of credit check, the dealer can fairly accurately determine if the buyer can or can't afford the car.

Used cars normally are a riskier purchase because. It is here that folks with less stellar credit can be approved for autos that they can't afford, but the banks and dealer are willing to still approve and sell thanks to normally smaller amounts and less risk to them on the purchase.

So it goes like this. When a new car is sold, it 90% of the time never comes back or is repossessed. A used car probably comes back 45% of the time. A dealer (crooked imo) can even increase this number if they are really good and here is the hook. The dealer may make 1K to 3K off of a new car. But what if they can make 1 to 3K off of a used car....2 to 3 times

So thanks to mainly the 1990's.....and regulation of Home financial institutes's to give loans to folks that couldn't afford home ownership, you in a way have the same situation. Banks thought........hey, double dipping and repossessing homes is good business. They get someone in there that will only be paying on the interest for a couple of years at best, take possession back on the house and resale it again in a booming house market.

That worked on driving home prices up, loans approval standards down.......and all of a sudden you have a bubble begin to be created.......false demand on homes with prices being driven higher thanks to EASY approval.

Case in point....when my wife and I were home searching....it was amazing the amount we were approved for. We hammered the numbers for weeks..and decided we couldn't afford anything near what we were being approved for.

In the end, we settled on a house that was 120K less then what we were able to afford and we were correct.

The financial institutions were setting imo, folks up like used car dealers and the folks were biting hook, line and sinker, because they were not reading the fine print and let the purchase of something they couldn't afford take over their critical thinking.


My 2 cents,


Weasel

strandr wrote:

Like you said in a previous post MeYammy... You can't fix the hole in your shirt with a pair of scissors, this will only make a bigger hole!

What both you and MeYammy failed to see is the big picture generated by this comment. If instead of cutting the hole out of the shirt you are actually cutting the shirt away from the hole, if you make this cut big enough you will get a new shirt. Hol;e gone, new shirt in place