Monday, October 29, 2007

Getting hosed

I noticed the change on my way home from work. The sign on the Shell gas station reader board spelled out the bad news. Gas is over $3 a gallon.

The reason it jumped out at me is because when I drove to work this morning I made note of the price on the same sign at the same gas station. The price, on the day the price of a barrel of oil closed at a record high over $93.50, also went up about 7 cents a gallon at one local gas station.

It was a telling sign, just one of many illustrating that ordinary Americans are pretty well screwed. I don't expect a return to economic giddiness anytime soon. Wall Street may be waiting for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates this week so they can go on pretending a recession can be avoided, but ordinary Americans won't benefit from a little rate cut from the fed. The costs of too many of the things we need to get through our daily lives are going higher, not lower. Gas prices are up. Energy prices are up. Credit card interest rates are up. And God help anyone who is the the same boat so many of my family and friends who are first-time home buyers with an adjustable rate mortgage, which has also gone through the roof. I don't think the failed mortgage/credit/housing crisis is nearing its end, I fear it is only getting warmed up.

Bend over Americans a big financial dildo is taking aim at your backsides. And if you think anyone brought the lube, you are in for a painful surprise.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Milk is now $4.49 a gallon. How's that for healthy kids?

An old joke is that if you think sodomy is a pain in the ass, you're doing it wrong.

Nobody's going to be making jokes about this "hosing."

Anonymous said...

Such a vivid colorful analogy there, G-Man. So much so, I almost got a visual. lol

I could tell a story about getting hosed with my adjustable rate mortgage that had us running to my credit union to re-finance. The company are crooks, plain and simple. I asked all the right questions, and got the answers I wanted to hear at the time of the loan. The kid lied, plain and simple.(Although we should have read the fine print on the 200 page loan documents.) Ours was due to go up, well over $800.00 a month.

Then we went to our credit union who gave us a product with a 30 year fixed. But the old loan didn't want to let us out, and sent the check back to the credit union, not once but twice. With stupid flimsy-ass excuses as to WHY they couldn't accept it. They kept this game up until it cost us another$1850.00 out-of-our-pockets in money we wired them, before they finally accepted the pay-off from our credit union. It was the biggest nightmare of our lives, that just ended less than 2 weeks ago.Oh just for the record, don't ever get a mortgage with an ARM thru Ameriquest or Citi-residential. They do not bring the lube, nor do they warn you prior to sticking it to you!

Oh and someone keyed my minivan somtime in the last three days. The minivan that I keep immaculate and clean; now has a huge scratch right down the hood of the front of the van. (That didn't pertain to topic, sorry)

I truly hope karma is real. I want to see those two companies, actually I believe it to be one. Ameriquest has so many class-action lawsuits against them, I think they are openeing up under this citi-residential name to avoid going belly up. As well as transferring assets to this other company, including my house, right in the middle of my re-fi.

By the way, did you know Bush gave the founder of Ameriquest an ambassador job to the Netherlands. I found that ironic, that where there is a screwing of America, you can always find Bushes name attached somewhere in the mess. (I had no idea that Ameriquest was considered a sub-prime lender when I sought out the loan. I just knew the name from commercials)

What I want to know, is when are we going to impeach that crook? He has sold out the American people every which way he can. And continues to do so, blatantly. All I can say is I'm glad to be in the last quarter of my life, cuz things are going to get worse, before they ever start getting better.

Hope you have a good day, G-Man.
:-)3T

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