Mortgage Meltdown: Who Pays?

Eric Nilsson has some observations:

"Many people are desperate for jobs and, so, take risky jobs at dangerous work sites because that is the only way these people see to get ahead in life. When an accident happens and one of these workers loses an arm, no reasonable person would merely point to the fact that the worker voluntarily took the job as support for the claim that the worker deserved to lose an arm.

I don't know what percent of holders of risky mortgages today should be given a break if the housing market collapses. But I do know that lumping all holders of risky mortgages together on the basis of some simplistic ethical perspective isn't right."

After all, as Eric mentions elsewhere, subprime mortgages were thought to be great by the "maestro" Alan Greenspan.

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats?

That's the line that you hear often enough when dealing with economics, but is it true. In the case of the United States since 1973 Eric Nilsson begs to differ. He isn't done crunching the numbers but from what he has so far it looks like we are just getting back to the early 1970s in terms of real hourly earnings.

For a narrower study here's Eric's take on the 2003 Bush tax cut.