#1172 Pumping Crater

The other day I heard a commentator going on about his theory of the economic collapse and it got me thinking. It’s fashionable these days to blame the evil mortgage holder for everything.
It was that dang mortgage holder who shouldn’t have borrowed the money that led to the economic cratering. If he hadn’t borrowed off more than he could chew we’d all be safely back in the housing bubble right now.
With far more homes than there were people who couldn’t afford to buy them. With people buying two and three houses on the speculation that they could flip them over and make a killing before the balloon payment came due. With “too big too fail” financial institutions insuring the “never-gonna-happen” of defaults with little things called credit default swaps that no one would ever have to redeem.
“What credit would default?” all the Wall Street and financial experts on the business Cable TV stations would say. “This is a different paradigm, all the old rules we were taught in MBA school no longer apply. Trust us. We’re the experts.”
“Sign here.”
Yep, those evil mortgage holders really caused a big problem.
Nasty borrowers.
But as I was listening to a hindsight is 20/20 expert intone on this interesting take on history, I happened to drive by a gas station and notice the price of a gallon of gas is creeping up again. And I remembered hearing another news story about the same thing. Gas is going up.
Uh-oh.
And my mind flashed back to that time right before the economic collapse when gas prices tripled and quadrupled. When families on the edge financially suddenly found themselves over the edge. When bloated, predatory, budget-busting gas prices suddenly pushed our nation off that teetering delicate balance we had with mortgages, lenders, and credit default swap issuers.
We were on the edge sure. The housing and credit bubble was eventually due for a change. But it was gas prices exploding that burst the bubble. Prices at the pump were the tipping point.
And then, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, the economic pump didn’t work ‘cause the oil baron vandals took the handle.
But hey, I’m no expert...
America, ya gotta love it.