Banks and Crooks - Who is the crook?

I just read Meagan McArdle's blog about people defaulting on a mortgage and being happy about it.  The whole scenario stinks for people that are responsible, invest in a house they can afford, and stick to it when times get tough to pay their bills.  She quoted an excerpt from a 12-10-09 Wall Street Journal.

PALMDALE, Calif. -- Schoolteacher Shana Richey misses the playroom she decorated with Glamour Girl decals for her daughters. Fireman Jay Fernandez misses the custom putting green he installed in his backyard.  But ever since they quit paying their mortgages and walked away from their homes, they've discovered that giving up on the American dream has its benefits.

Both now live on the 3100 block of Club Rancho Drive in Palmdale, where a terrible housing market lets them rent luxurious homes -- one with a pool for the kids, the other with a golf-course view -- for a fraction of their former monthly payments.

Rethinking the American DreamView Interactive.The housing bust has brought big changes to the 3100 block of Club Rancho Drive in Palmdale, Calif. See details on the homes, debts and residents.

."It's just a better life. It really is," says Ms. Richey. Before defaulting on her mortgage, she owed about $230,000 more than the home was worth. People's increasing willingness to abandon their own piece of America illustrates a paradoxical change wrought by the housing bust: Even as it tarnishes the near-sacred image of home ownership, it might be clearing the way for an economic recovery.

Thanks to a rare confluence of factors -- mortgages that far exceed home values and bargain-basement rents -- a growing number of families are concluding that the new American dream home is a rental.

Some are leaving behind their homes and mortgages right away, while others are simply halting payments until the bank kicks them out. That's freeing up cash to use in other ways.

Ms. Richey's family of five used some of the money to buy season tickets to Disneyland, and plans to take a Carnival cruise to Mexico in March. Mr. Fernandez takes his girlfriend out to dinner more frequently. "We're saving lots of money," Ms. Richey says.

I read this and then paused and re-read it.  I then read the comments and people kept complaining about how banks took advantage of them and rarely admitting that it was their own ignorance of the contract, their own poor planning and unrealistic ambitions of success that made this acceptable behavior.  Some even mention that a bank is a business and buying a house is a business event and that it was fair that the payments were not made since both parties enterred into the contract willingly.

I will admit that some people were taken advantage by some unscrupulous lenders, but they are the minority.  I can partly fault the government for encouraging the concept that owning a house is the only american dream that shows you are a success.  A recently re-exposed document shows that the Clinton administration went to ridiculous lengths to increase the homeownership rate through the The National Homeownership Strategy: Partners in the American Dream. It promoted paper-thin downpayments and pushed for ways to get lenders to give mortgage loans to first-time buyers with shaky financing and incomes. It’s clear now that poor lending standards pushed prices up by increasing demand, leading to defaults by people who never should have bought a home in the first place.  Items such as the American Dream Downpayment Act of 2003 signed by Bush, continued the practices because matched his Ownership Society goals.  Congress was strongly behind the push for home ownership too.

When you analyze it, it appears that both the bankers and the general population are crooks, when they feel it is the responsiblity of others to honestly tell people "no, you can't have that house, car, vacation" without paying cash for it.  The enablers in this script are our own elected officials.  The people mentioned in the article are crooks, just as much as the bankers that let them have the mortgages.

When did the people of the USA quit being responsible for their own actions?  I feel it is when we became a nation of people that feel entitled.  We feel entitled to everything from free health care upon retirement (and some people it should be free sooner) and a host of non-necessity items like cheap cell phones, cable TV, and museums, parks and local airports.  It is only when we are forced to pay for our own welfare or entertainment that we are careful about how our money is spent.  There are people that need our help to make some decisions, but they are in the minority of people.  Most people can make logical choices that are in their own best interests if you give them a few reasonable choices, show them the costs out of their own pocket for each choice. 

When the costs come from your own pocket, you can chose parks, over museums, over local private airports.  You also have an increasing interest in managing all other costs (for ex. medical) when higher percentages come directly from your pocket, so maybe higher deductibles is one way to reign in health care costs.  Sometimes, our elected officials also need to be told "no more" to funding projects that are not mandatory for the welfare of the entire community and to represent the whole welfare of the populace which means "no, means no" when the populace says, how about funding my teacup museum?.

Vampires - Myth and Reality

Vampires have become big business.  The success of the Twilight series, True Blood on HBO, stories by Anne Rice, Stephen King and others shows just how big the business is in blood sucking.  Most of these people attempt to glamorize the Vampire, often as a creature sympathetic to humans.  Where did this modern view of vampieres come from?

Some people trace vampire mythology to Vlad Tepes of Romania, for his impaling his enemies on stakes, drawing and quartering or burning them alive during his revolt from the Ottoman empire.  It turns out that he wasn't the only one doing this in the 1400's.  His contemporaries did similar things including most other Middle Ages Rulers and even the Catholic Church.

According to Paul Barber, author of "Vampires, Burial, and Death," nearly every culture have some version of the vampire, and those myths are similar to the European one.  In the Middle Ages, when misfortune struck a person, family, or town, the vampire or other boobyman would be put forth as the origin.  Vampires are an easy answer to illiterate people trying to explain why bad things happen to good people.

Add to this people's inate fear of the dead and misunderstanding about the cause of the death.  History shows that normal body decay wasn't understood and people assumed that it always happened at a fixed rate.  Yet in the summer a body would decay fast while a body buried in winter would not decay, making the body appear undead.  People would unearth graves when things went badly and find bodies more intact than anticipated and assume that the person was undead and therefore the reason for the misfortune.  As we became more informed about death and decay, the vampire legends disappeared.

If you go back in history you will also find other vampire related horrors such as Lamia, a demoness with the head and torso of a woman and the lower body of a snake.  The Greeks also feared the empusai, the malicious daughters of Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft. The empusai, who could change form, came up from Hades (the underworld) at night as beautiful women to seduce shepherds and then devour them. A similar creature, the baobhan sith, shows up in Celtic folklore.  Indian folklore describes a number of nightmarish characters, including rakshasa, gargoyle-like shape-shifters who preyed on children.  All of these alternative vampire historical figures add to the potential movie horror themes.

Interest in Vampire disappeared for decades but has become commonplace in movies and literature in the last 10-20 years.  Is it a case of people enjoying the bad boy image, the power over others, or fascination with supernatural things?  What is scary is that they are real and have entire websites to determine if you or someone you know is a vampire.  There are many such sites and they seriously talk about Slayers (from Bucky the Vampire Slayer fame).

So now we ask are they real.  Checking on informed sources (wikipedia, lol) you can find the following response. 

First is the medical condition porphyria, which may cause a combination of anemia and psychological disorders leading to the belief that one must drink blood to survive. Secondly, the existence of psychologically impaired individuals organizing into "vampire cults", such as the so-called Kentucky Vampire Clan, makes the existence of persons who attack other humans and drink their blood a real phenomena, though an exceedingly rare one both pathologically and criminally speaking.

The article goes on to talk about Viral Vampires,  Immortal Vampires while others add Pranic or Psychic Vampires (feed on energy).   Are they real?  Yes, with the exception of Immortal, because  there isn't proof that they do or do not exist.

So why do a blog about them.  I love the special effects of the movies.  The New Moon, Interview with a Vampire, Underworld, and Blade movie shows some interesting special effects, and I like special effects.  I also like other movies with great effects including Shrek.

Besides, it is hip.  It seems that there are real vampires.  It just depends upon how you define them; they are a myth, so we can be loose with our definitions.  To be serious for a moment, are there blood sucking people taking advantage to drain the lifeforce of others?  We all feel that someone is taking advantage of the system.  We might even call them blood suckers.  Those people are called   __________________________________ (Fill in the blank).  Suggestions might be Welfare recipients, Democrats, Republicans, Investment Bankers or Lawyers and you get to pick your favorite.

As we think of our current blood sucking enemy, remember they might look at you the same way.  Seriously, who really cares if people enjoy a good horror movie if it is all in fun.

And now to vampire humor -

What does a vampire fear most? Tooth decay
Why did the vampire's lunch give him heartburn?  It was a stake sandwich.

Yeah, childish attempt at humor but so are vampires......