Tioga Herald

Dear Editors:

Paul Krugman says the economy is doing well. There are many facts and figures which back up what he says.

Thinking about that idea that unemployment is down and the economy is doing good, I have to wonder who is fueling the fire behind the younger generations who are wet behind the ear and are complaining about a business cycle which those of us with wisdom of age have seen all the time and work to be prepared as best we can. Shit happens like inflation happens.  Period. It is a tough thing to prepare and yes, sometimes those of us in the older group find it difficult to be prepared. But we try.

Mortgage rates going up after a long hiatus of low mortgage interest rates is not a topic to be used to bemoan the economy, is it? For those of us in the older Baby Boom generation, we paid mortgage interest rates in the double digits, sometimes as high as 13%. Did anyone give one damn about that? Not on your life.

When Sleepy Ronnie in the Cabinet took measures to “reduce the mortgage rates,” his actions benefited the younger Baby Boomers born in the late 1950s. Why? Because Sleepy Ronnie in the Cabinet allowed the use of lower rates for first-time home buyers. By that time, most of us older Baby Boomers had already purchased a home so we were precluded. I tried to obtain a lower interest mortgage rate on a home in Florida in 1982 and was told no because I had already owned a home in upstate New York.  The house in Florida, at the base rate of homes in Florida, was about $20K more than the one we sold in upstate NY. People like us, purchasing a second home after leaving NY faced an increased housing value AND a very high interest rate. Was there anyone who gave one damn about this? And my salary was just about flat when compared t that I had in New York. Sure. It was my choice, right? Wrong. There was a freeze on hiring in SUNY and other education institutions.  Sure. Sure. Republicans came to power and attempted to destroy the work we were doing to improve software development productivity, reliability, and quality for the military. The terrible commander-in-chief was Sleepy Ronnie in the Cabinet.  What did we get instead? This fantasy of “star wars.”  Only a charismatic idiot who believed that the ripping down of the wall in Berlin and our troubles with the Soviet Union were over and behind us. Where was Putin at that time? A KGB agent? What are the left-wing people of East Germany and Hungary, and so forth, doing today? They are on common ground with one idea today: dictatorship, authoritarianism, autocracy. Nothing to do with ideology at all.

The Republican authorities monitored such events better between states than Republicans did to monitor whether Republicans from the north were voting twice in presidential races, once in the north and once in Florida. No wonder Florida became the one-party state, like a Putin state, as it is today.  Sorry. I diverge.

It is more than just mortgage rates. It is the huge increases in the cost of housing due to greedy and selfish ones with their house flipping. It is about corrupt developers and banks working together to price housing very high in many locations. Developers get their money and banks eventually get the homes which people cannot afford due to cost-gouging high prices.  Long-term investment on a slow pace, is gone, in favor of lovers of money and instant gratification.  During the years of high interest rates which hurt the older Baby Boomers and Neil Bush and others were subversively damaging the federal savings and loan programs created by their family’s enemy from the past, FDR. 

If someone is trying to muddy the waters of the younger ones today, by means of inconsistencies for which younger ones are not able to differentiate, then I, for one, ask that such muddying of waters stop. For those of us in the older Baby Boomers had to deal with very high interest rates after our parents had mortgage rates and lower housing prices after World War II.  It was tough on them, but imagine how much we had to withstand the financial difficulties. This added to an oil embargo which caused prices of gasoline to be at high levels, too. 

Paul Krugman is correct. The economy is doing well. It could do better with regard to mortgages and housing. But it needs more of an overhaul of the corrupt individuals involved in developing real estate and in the banking industry, overall. President Biden has already called for increased perspectives about regulating business, but he keeps getting slammed regarding any ideas he has. Or else the media never includes his ideas in discussions about elements of the economy.  This is areal problem for trying to fix the economy and all of us coming together to attempt to do it, even if we play only a small role.