Has the shit finally hit the fan?

[Toucano]

Poll question: Has the shit finally hit the fan?

We've all seen the shit storm coming for months if not years.

I'm inclined to think this is it. The gas "shortages" and prices will drive people to default on their mortgages and high interest credit cards. Of course, there won't be any bankruptcy protection anymore.

[JanMichael]

1. It hasn't "Hit" the fan, it's "Hitting" the fan.

As in the present...

[madeline_con]

5. "No, this ain't it yet. All hands, brace for impact."

Wait until the bodies start to stink while the blitzkreig rages.

The Repugs will jump ship soon...

[Independent_Liberal]

2. The doo doo is flying at me very fast!

:D

[Birthmark]

3. I think so

If not, I have wasted a good deal of money on an industrial grade umbrella.

[Corgigal]

4. I'm so pissed

I could spit. I saw some woman today who lost everything that she couldn't believe no one as done anything to help her. She can't believe this is America.

She's right.

[Hoosier]

9. Tell to ask Rush...

He'll remind her that 'people lose things everyday'.

[darkism]

6. I can feel that this is it.

There's been something in the air for the last few days, I can't describe it.

Something indescribably negative and nasty, a wave of the collective consciousness imbued with rage headed straight for **.

The gas prices will be the first thing to turn people, the resulting investigation into how Nero** failed to fund the disaster preparation and played his guitar while NOLA sank will deepen the wound. The National Guard who could be helping but are instead dying to create a clone of Iran will add to it.

Then throw in Treasongate, DSM, LIHOP and every other single criminal act that these liars have committed in the last four years and the shit will absolutely have hit the fan.

[never_get_over_it]

7. Think it is hitting the fan

wait until all those folks can't get back from their long Labor Day weekends because there is no gas - then it will be flying

[Terran]

8. Nah.

It can get LOTS worse than this. :scared:

[undergroundpanther]

10. Wait till

they bring out the crowd controol devices they've been itching to use on all the uppity poor ,nonwhites,liberuls,drug users,and homo freaks. Microwave crowd cookers and long distance tazers will make every knee bow to emporer asshole.. I bet Bush gets a boner thinking about it,the socioipath monster.

[gristy]

11. A person needs to lose his/her job before they default on their mortgage

Will Katrina precipitate a recession causing substantial job loss? Not sure...
To the extent that the housing bubble is a psychological phenomenon (think lemmings), it would seem that Katrina just may have the power to prick that housing bubble, and the lemmings just may start running the other way. All you need is some % of owners/speculators to decide that a housing "correction" is imminent, and it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy as an initial small drop in the housing market brings on more sellers, causing larger drops, bringing more sellers. The extent that some owners may "have" to sell because of job loss will exacerbate the dip in addition to triggering it. But one thing will tend to work in the opposite direction, I think, and that is the tendency of owner/speculators and even simple owners to "sit tight" with a drop in the housing market.

But I imagine many other things besides gas prices and the housing market are going to come into play.

on edit: spellin' and grammar

[Toucano]

13. I hate to disagree, but I will.

People hardly have to lose their job to lose their homes.

The U.S. is experiencing record home-ownership due PRIMARILY to loosened criteria for underwriting mortgages and so-called "new lending products" thanks to deregulation. Mortgages have been issued for mobile homes, for pete's sake, something that simply wasn't done 10 years ago.

Speculators are a whole other barrel of fish, so let's forget about them for the moment.

They have put a two-income household into the biggest house they can afford by stretching the definition of "can afford". The only information these borrowers ask about their loan is "What's my payment?"

Interest rates have been going up. Adjustable mortgages are costing more already. Now increase the family's budget for gasoline from $40 a week to $70 a week. That's $120 a month more they have to come up with.

So they miss the minimum payment on their Capital One card or are a week late with their car payment. Now they're zapped with a $35 late fee and a penalty interest rate of 32%. Their monthly minimum goes up. Next month, they're late on the Chase Visa card. It's a snowball. In this case, a snowball encrusted with shit.

In the past, they could file for bankruptcy and write off the credit card debt - keep the car to get to work and the house. Uh uh. Now the credit card debt must be repayed.

So they put the big ol' house on the market and try to economize. Only everyone else is in the same situation and there's a glut on the market. Don't nobody want their big ol' house.

Foreclosure is imminent.

All this joy without a single day of work missed.

[gristy]

17. Yes, I agree that maturing ARMs will put the squeeze on.

However..., the folks whose ARMs are just now switching over from fixed to adjustable (after taking out their loan 5 or 10 years ago) are sitting on a ton of home appreciation and so will be able to weather increased home payments (for a while, anyways) brought about by rising interest rates by tapping into some of that equity (assuming they hadn't tapped into all of it already). You would need high rates for a period of years (which may certainly come to pass) for people to go bankrupt due to rising payments on their ARMs.

[Usrename]

18. There's a million people out of work in the impact zone

not sure how this affects housing bubble, they will need homes, but they have already lost their income

[me b zola]

12. The wheels are coming off

LBN is reporting that 10 major airports may shut down due to lack of jet fuel.

At least 20 oil rigs/platforms in the Gulf are missing.



It's gonna get ugly.

[lectrobyte]

14. as the late great Warren Zevon would say: send lawyers, guns and money

the shit has hit the fan.

[nonconformist]

15. To put it bluntly

We're fucked.

[Beelzebud]

16. Turning and turning in the widening gyre

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.


Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Second Coming -- W. B. Yeats

[wli]

19. We're screwed alright, but there's a long way down the abyss to go.

It's bad now. It can get a lot worse. I suspect it will get a lot worse. Especially in winter.