This is Going to be Short

Not much to report and based on the news sites, it's been a slow day for everyone else as well. We made a three-hour road trip today to do some shopping at the nearest Sam's club. As usual when we go there, the cart was over-flowing before we had anything from our list. We are now the proud owners of a one-year supply of various staple foods like Tootsie Rolls. Man do those people have our number. The only thing saving us from complete financial ruin (and a sugar coma), is that it's so far away we can only do it once every month or two.

We got chased home by the first real snow storm with high winds and all sorts of fun stuff, with more of the same predicted for the next two or three days. We are so looking forward to that....

Have I mentioned how much I miss Arizona?

Anyway, we made it home and managed to fit everything in. So far, the pantry hasn't crashed through the floor into the apartment below us, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Monday I should learn something about at least one job I applied for last week. It means getting back into tax prep after a 20-plus-year sidetrack in IT, which I have mixed feelings about. One thing I liked about doing taxes was that I was busy when there was nothing going on anyway, and had three-day weekends all summer. I could live with that, although I think with this place it will be more like 7-day weekends during the summer. But a job's a job and if they want to pay me money, I'll milk it for as long as I can.

As I said, not much new on the news other than the on-going Gore effect that has even Florida in a deep freeze. But I did find one thing interesting (you knew that was coming, right?): a decent article outlining all the ways that the Foreclosure Alternatives Program has been a complete failure. No news there; another well-intentioned government plan that not only doesn't help, but ends up hurting the very people it is supposed to help. But this is what I do find interesting:

Mr. Zandi argues that the administration needs a new initiative that attacks a primary source of foreclosures: the roughly 15 million American homeowners who are underwater, meaning they owe the bank more than their home is worth.

Increasingly, such borrowers are inclined to walk away and accept foreclosure, rather than continuing to make payments on properties in which they own no equity. A paper by researchers at the Amherst Securities Group suggests that being underwater “is a far more important predictor of defaults than unemployment.

So people are willing to make payments while "underwater" on everything they own except their home? Why should my tax money be used to write-down someone else's mortgage just because the value of their home did exactly what the value of every other thing they buy does? Maybe instead of the government continuing to sell the lie that home prices just go up forever, they can turn the collapse of the housing bubble into a teachable moment.

Anyone think that will ever happen? Yea, me neither.

That's it.