Meltdown

A sad thing happened in our fair city this morning. One of the largest mortgage companies in the country, and one of the few companies headquartered here in our fair city, shut its doors. This threw hundreds, maybe thousands of workers here and in cities across the country out of work, suddenly and without warning. One worker is quoted as having said that a sudden layoff is not something you can plan for. That is wrong thinking, but I see his point. Perhaps the workers should have seen this coming, but so what if they did? When you are drowning, thinking that you should not have stood up in the boat isn't much help. That is kind of where workers are. They plan their lives around their jobs and turn a blind eye to the possibility that they might lose the job. Thinking that they should have saved some money isn't helpful now. Home values are down after a record run up, interest rates are up after historic lows, adjustable rate mortgages are adjusting and all the people who were loaned money when they didn't really qualify to borrow it, are defaulting on the loans. This company is caught in a bind, so they are shutting down. It is a sad situation. As I have repeatedly posted, the housing market was caught up in a cycle of greed and stupidity and this is the fallout. It is the dot com bust on a smaller scale. In other news, I played golf with the Seafood King and Some Guy Named Bob today. It was hot and humid. I guess I am going to have to resign myself to the fact that I am never going to be a good golfer. There are worse things. The Seafood King asked me to look at the telephone situation at one of his restaurants again today. It was a quick fix. This is becoming a side job. If only it paid something. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky