Dan Gillmor has a good post today linking to stories in a couple of Bay Area newspapers about the housing bubble. I have written about this before and I believe that it is really important that people pay attention to this. It is downright stupid for people to be committed to paying upwards of 40% of there income on a mortgage(s) that they are not even accumulating any equity in. If you cannot afford to pay enough to actually pay down some principal on a mortgage you should be renting. I don’t want to exclude anyone from homeownership but if someone can’t afford they are not doing themselves any favors by taking on crushing amounts of debt with no realistic hope of ever paying it off. And with the changes in bankruptcy law this year, when the bubble does burst people are not going to be able to escape the debt like they might have in the past. If you are in this kind of position, get out now while you still can.

Today’s San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News both have articles about the crazy Bay Area housing market. I read both as warning shouts from the rooftops, but I suspect most readers will see a more Pollyanish angle.

The Merc’s story, headlined “Home buyers get comfy with debt,” begins:

Brett and Sarah Klynn could be poster-children for a new, innovative generation of California home buyers that, despite soaring prices, has taken on crushing debt to push homeownership to its highest level in decades. The Klynns, both in their 20s, took out five loans to buy a two-bedroom, two-bath condo near San Jose’s Kelley Park in May. They are spending roughly 45 percent of their income on their home, a not uncommon portion for new home buyers.

I would not use the word “innovative” to describe this kind of behavior. But then, I don’t think people should be taking such risks.

Meanwhile, the Chronicle’s story — more apty headlined “”How Do They Afford It?” — has a similar theme. It starts:

The housing market is red-hot in the Bay Area. So, who’s buying those pricey homes — and how are they able to do it? The answers: Young professionals. Riskier loans. Longer commutes. Smaller houses. And, in some cases, a lot of peanut butter and jelly. With Hayes Valley condos selling for $750,000 and Livermore tract homes fetching $1.3 million, the question is on everyone’s lips: Who’s paying these stratospheric prices? The answer, increasingly, is young professionals who are devoting exorbitant portions of their incomes to housing, according to a new study.

Will the message for readers be that these “home buyers” (an expression that makes little sense given the hyper-leverage involved) are doing the smart thing? Or that they’re running unbelievable risks that, for many, will end in tears?

I suspect the latter, but as prices continue to rise the optimists are controlling the game.

Oh, wait. Prices aren’t rising, or at least they didn’t last month — showing the first (albeit) tiny month-to-month dip in a while. But the year-over-year price is still at a record, by far.

Lenders keep raising the limits of what they’ll loan, meanwhile. They keep offering interest-only or nothing-down loans, to more and more people. It’s corporate irresponsibility and greed fueling individual irresponsibility and greed. So American. So risky. So scary.

The San Jose Mercury News story

The San Francisco Chronicle story

Jules, Max and I just recently returned from one of over 1600 candlelight vigils held around the country in support of Cindy Sheehan and her quest for meet with the shrub. There were about 150 people there tonight at the University of Michigan Diag in Ann Arbor. There was also another gathering over on north campus.

I just noticed this item on boing-boing:

Ministry of Reshelving puts 1984 in its proper place
This weekend, prankster/gamer/performance artist Jane McGonigal and The Ministry of Reshelving launched an effort to put copies of Orwell’s 1984 in its “appropriate” section of book stores. From the rule set:

1984Shelf 1. Select a local bookstore to carry out your reshelving activities.

2. Download and print “This book has been relocated by the Ministry of Reshelving bookmarks and “All copies of 1984 have been relocated” notecards to take with you to the bookstore. Or make your own. We recommend bringing a notecard and 5-10 bookmarks to each store.

3. Go to the bookstore and locate its copies of George Orwell’s 1984. Unless the Ministry of Reshelving has already visited this bookstore, it is probably currently incorrectly classified as “Fiction” or “Literature.”

4. Discreetly move all copies of 1984 to a more suitable section, such as “Current Events”, “Politics”, “History”, “True Crime”, or “New Non-Fiction.”

5. Insert a Ministry of Reshelving bookmark into each copy of any book you have moved. Leave a notecard in the empty space the books once occupied.

6. If you spot other incorrectly classified books, feel free to relocate them.

7. Please report all reshelving efforts to the Ministry. Email your store name, location, # of 1984 copies reshelved, and any other reshelving activities conducted, to reshelving @ avantgame.com. Photos of your mission can be uploaded to Flickr, tagged as “reshelving”, and submitted to the Ministry of Reshelving group.

Link to Flickr group

If you haven’t read 1984 I highly recommend going to your local bookstore or library and grabbing a copy to read. It is quite astonishing how the events of the last 5 years parallel the events of the book. Politicians (especially the republicans) perpetuating double speak, telling lies repeatedly until people believe it (eg. the connection between Saddam Hussien and 9/11, there wasn’t any connection there), perpetual war with a nebulous enemy (the global war on terror) etc.

I saw this today on sivacracy.net:

George Bush took a 2 hour bike ride on Saturday, and when he got back, he was asked how he could go for a two hour bike ride when he doesn’t have time to meet with me, and he said: “I have to go on with my life.” (Austin Statesman, August 14) WHAT!!!!!????? He has to get on with his life!!! I am so offended by that statement. Every person, war fan, or not, who has had a child killed in this mistake of an occupation should be highly offended by that remark. Who does he think he is? I wish I could EVER be able to get on with my life. Getting on with my life means a life without my dear, sweet boy. Getting on with my life means learning to live with a pain that is so intense that sometimes I feel like throwing up, or screaming until I pass out from sorrow. I wish a little bike ride could help me get on with my life. …

I just wish George had as much courage in his entire body as Casey had in his little pinky, then he would meet with me. Crawford, Tx. is beautiful prairie land, but I could think of dozens of other places I would rather be right now. However, if George or anybody else thinks I am leaving before my mission is “accomplished” they have another think coming. I will stay the course. I will finish the mission. I will take no prisoners.

How could this country have ended up with such an ARROGANT, IGNORANT IMBECILE for a president! He can’t even take 15 minutes out of his busy exercise and brush clearing schedule, to meet with Mrs Sheehan. Bush, Cheney, and their whole gang should be impeached for their incredibly collosal studipity if not for the all the lies they have told and continue to tell to get this country into a totally unnecessary war! American troops are dying daily (1857 so far) so that this bozo can see himself as a “great wartime president”. This needs to stop.

Siva had a great short post on sivacracy.net this morning about last resorts. Very well thought out.

You know how your keys are always in the LAST place you look?

That’s because you stop looking when you find them. Duh. They could also be in the FIRST place you look. But the first place would also be the last place.

Keep that in mind when W says he would attack a country without provocation even if it has broken no international laws or treaties only as a last resort.

See, he only attacked Iraq as a last resort. It was also a first resort. But whatever.

If you haven’t seen this before, or even if you have it is worth repeating.

The world would be a better place if this guy just stayed on vacation permanently.

The August getaway is Bush’s 49th trip to his cherished ranch since taking office and Tuesday was the 319th day that Bush has spent, entirely or partially, in Crawford — roughly 20 percent of his presidency to date.

Jim Kunstler has an excellent post about the coming crash that US is facing. He talks about the complete lack of any kind of discipline that the hipocritical replubican hacks running this country are demonstrating. If you are sitting a variable rate interest only mortgage right now and you have the potential to grab any profit compared to the purchase price of your house, SELL NOW and take your profit. Put the money away and start renting. DON’T WAIT!. Before long interest rates are going to be going through the roof, and the price of houses is going to collapse. At that point you won’t be able to recover your purchase price even if you can sell. Then you will be in the hole to the bank and with recently enacted “bankruptcy reform” bill, you won’t be able to escape your debts by declaring bankruptcy.

For another prime example of the fiscal irresponsibility of the republican congress and whitehouse check out this item from Salon.com

A mess of thorny devil’s club and salmonberries, along with an old chicken coop, surrounds the 40-year-old cabin where Mike Sallee grew up and still lives part time on southeast Alaska’s Gravina Island. Sallee’s cabin is the very definition of remote. Deer routinely visit his front porch, and black bears and wolves live in the woods out back. The 20-mile-long island, home to fewer than 50 people, has no stores, no restaurants and no paved roads. An airport on the island hosts fewer than 10 commercial flights a day.

“I can take off from the homestead and walk the beach for several miles before I get to any other habitation,” says Sallee, a fisherman who also operates a small lumber mill. “There’s two main mountain ranges on the island and a big valley of forest and muskeg.”

Yet due to funds in a new transportation bill, which President Bush is scheduled to sign Wednesday, Sallee and his neighbors may soon receive a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and 80 feet taller than the Brooklyn Bridge. With a $223 million check from the federal government, the bridge will connect Gravina to the bustling Alaskan metropolis of Ketchikan, pop. 8,000.

All this is happening while we have squandered $300 billion in Iraq, with no end in sight.