One nit to pick.. Check your facts; raise your credibility. Bloggers have a responsibility too. Once you put something in writing and it makes it's way out into the 'inkernet', you perpetuate misinformation. Even though you retracted it, the original text is still in many newsreaders (it was in mine :).
I kind of have to agree that a few of the suggestions from the original article seem kinda strange.
The phrase "overpriced suit combos" is a little ambiguous. If you are refering to coordinating suiting separates, then you are correct. If you are referring to suits sold as suits, your assertion is false because you do save money by buying a jacket and pant/ skirt as a suit.
On the button up shirt as a jacket front- this usually looks sloppy. It's Seattle grunge dressed up for the office. It doesn't so much mess with my head as put a furrow in my brow. Cotton button up shirts don't have the same weight as a jacket and don't lay right. Also, the bigger the bust, the worse it looks (the bottom half of the placket just sorta flops in the wind when walking.)A vertical stripe shirt should especially never be worn open. It has a widening effect on the normally slimming vertical stripes.
Also, in "layers, layers, and more layers"- I'm not sure I am following your logic that by wearing more clothes at one time, you somehow save money. Seems to me that regardless of price, if you wear more items per day you will need to own more items.
In your attempt to find a new angle, you overlooked one obvious remedy to this problem: accessories. Instead of "accessorizing" with three tanks, how about accessorizing with actual accessories? Almost any women's magazine that has addressed this topic talks about accessories. It's classic advice for a reason.
@11 I agree whole-heartedly! Particularly with the author's first suggestion- stick to a classic wool jacket(unless you are allergic) or the highest wool content you can afford. The reason is that man made fibers like poly/rayon blends can harbour odors whereas wool repels them. Quality wool only has to be dry cleaned no more than three times a year.
I have a mix-and-match uniform of pants (slacks or khakis), solid t-shirts, and blazers. Then I add a necklace to make it more fun. And sometimes interesting socks, because I'm subversive that way.
Here are some of my current most-worn outfits:
1) olive drab khakis, cream shirt, black jacket, and necklace with pearls, onyx and garnet beads
2) black slacks, yellow shirt, olive green linen jacket, and necklace with white pearls, gold-tone pearls, and garnet beads
3) black slacks, white shirt, black-and-white check jacket, pearl/onyx/garnet beads
4) tan khakis, forest green shirt, black jacket, pearl/garnet necklace
5) black slacks, black-and-white striped shirt, green linen jacket, pearl/onyx/garnet necklace
6) tan khakis, purple shirt, black jacket, necklace with beads of amethyst, silver/black, and some kind of green stone
It's not the greatest, especially since I insist on wearing flat lace-up leather shoes, but most people around here dress a lot more casually. I am thinking of moving up to fitted woven blouses in solid colors.
One thing about solids is that they are easy to mix and match. And one thing about necklaces is that they don't wear out very quickly and they tend to keep fitting very long term.
This is very true. I was checking out Ann Taylor, Talbot's and Chico's websites last weekend after getting back from thrift store and consignment shopping. I was trying to get a frame of reference for what is "in" and a bit more upscale this fall. What I found was quite a few classic pieces, many of them were at the thrift stores I was looking at and in good quality brands.
I have a creative background so subtleties of fabric, color and cut or design is kind of second nature and I can keep those concepts in my head when shopping. I still try to make a list of what items I need to fill in my wardrobe with. It keeps me from buying yet another black jacket that is nearly identical to the others in my closet.
Even if your not inclined to thinking this way just get a notebook and cut out pictures or print outs of things you see that are what your going after for fashion. You could even snap pictures with your phone at a high end store. Then take those concepts and go look for them at thrift stores.
People buying houses they cannot afford should be a problem only for that person and whoever lent him the money. When it starts causing problems for everyone else, I think that's a sign that there's something more going on.
After all, people have wanted bigger and better houses since we moved out of caves. Why is it that this time it's threatening the whole economy? Obviously a lot of things play into this, but we're not going to solve the problem by propping up house prices.
Hardly. Sarah's tips won't be appropriate for EVERY work environment, but they are a really good start. There are ways her suggestions could turn out horribly, but I think she's assuming you know how to match like colors and patterns and can put together something crisp. I have shopped many new stores (like Ann Taylor, Petite Sophisticate, Von Maur, etc) that took the concept of a basic t and button-up and overcharged (while calling it "this year's" look).
A nicer fabric, richer color, and the right accessories can turn a cheaper version (i.e. thrift store find) into something very chic.
Perhaps it's because people weren't happy with the house they could afford.
People aren't defaulting on $100,000 mortgages here. They're defaulting on the $200+ mortgages in areas where they could easily find something liveable for less.
That's a bit of a simplification, but by and large- people overbought and banks over-lent.
A mortgage is a privilege, not a Constitutional right.
Banks (as a group) can't borrow money. They hold so much bad debt that they're insolvent (or close enough). They can collect small deposits because small deposits are insured, but they can't sell bonds, they can't sell commercial paper, and they can't issue huge money market CDs.
Without access to the money markets to borrow, the banks are unable to lend. In theory they'd be able to sort-of maintain the status quo--making new loans as old loans get paid off--but in practice a bank in that situation would accumulate some cash just in case things got worse.
You express doubt about that part, but it's actually already happening. As I type this, the federal government can borrow money for 3 months at just 0.5%, but top-tier credits that aren't the government are paying 8 times that.
With essentially no lending going on (because the banks don't have any money to lend), commerce begins to grind to a halt. There are very few businesses of any size that can operate without ready access to credit. Even businesses with no long-term debt still have short-term credit needs--to fill the gap from when they buy raw materials until they get paid for the products they sell. Similarly, farmers borrow at planting time and then pay off the loan at harvest time.
Unable to borrow, businesses fail. Some can just shrink--they only buy the raw materials they can pay cash for, they layoff enough employees that they can cover their payroll without a loan--but many fail almost immediately. Worse, more fail every month--because customers are cutting orders, because customers are failing, and especially because consumers (having lost their jobs) are buying less.
Until the great depression, economist believed that a panic was self-limiting: Businesses would shrink and fail, but that would open up opportunities for other business to step in, buy the (still valuable) assets, and make a go of the business. Prices would fall, asset values would fall, but eventually things would reach equilibrium.
In the great depression, though, that didn't seem to happen. Business activity continued to shrink for years. Even after it stabilized, it showed no signs of returning to growth. There was land, there was labor, there was even capital--but there seemed to be no will to put it to productive use. The economy seemed to have gotten stuck at some low-level equilibrium where vast swaths of the population were unemployed.
Maybe that wouldn't happen this time. But that's the crisis that so many people are afraid of.
Don't forget that the Fed lowered interest rates making mortgages cheaper and inflating house values. My parents' mortgage was 14%-- and they could afford it because they paid $30,000 for their house. But although a 1/3 lower rate may mean you can afford a larger mortgage payment, it doesn't mean that the same house actually tripled in value. In capitalism value is based on what you can pay, but intrinsic value does exist, and it should exert an opposing pressure, unless the government continues to lend money at a rate below that of inflation.
Certainly any banker offering no or less than no down payment mortgages was committing fraud. This is not a matter for regulation, but of law enforcement.
Read a Cato article today that brought up two great points: Housing bubbles are worst in localities with high land use regulations, and federal housing policies geared towards subsidizing low-income homebuyers encourage folks who can't afford to buy to do so anyway. Tag on ridiculously low federal funds interest rates for way too long and you have a recipe for disaster.
Artifially restricting housing supply through land use regulations, including Environmental Protection Agency proposals to integrate climate and land use all drive up prices. Less regulated regions have natural supply and demand growth with moderate price fluctuations.
Low-income earners should probably not be buying property, especially during speculative periods of rising prices. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac drove these two institutions into signficantly increasing their subprime lending portfolios. This was done with decent intentions of increasing homeownership rates amongst lower-income folks, but the harsh reality is that these people could not sustain their housing payments after initial teaser periods and rapid periods of equity growth expired.
I've heard no objective definition of what the gloom and doom will be if we don't get a bailout. I've heard some companies will fail, so what! companies are born and die everyday. Some people will lose their homes, like that hasn't been happening since the begining of time? Tell me how many? Unemployment will rise, give me some objective data, what percentage? And heres the one thats real hard to swallow, "Credit will be unavailable" BULL#*%+!! even in the dark ages people were lending to other people for profit, its the worlds second oldest profession. Are they trying to tell us it won't exist in the future unless we buy their plan. Please Mr Paulson, define "crisis" in some objective terms.
I thought the cause was people getting very stupid loans which in turn was caused by banks suddenly offering and allowing these loans. It's about banks collecting all the closing costs for bad loans and then bundling them with other loans to look good and selling them to either naive or lied-to buyers.
This reminds me of developers who build houses poorly or on poor property (like on an earthquake fault or in a flood zone) and then sell everything to other people who then have to deal with the upcoming problems.
I really wish people would have to take more responsibility for the problems they cause. I guess that's were regulation comes in--don't allow banks to offer stupid loans.
Now it's true that if housing values kept going up, then when the borrowers defaulted, the lenders could sell their houses and get their money back. And if interest rates had gone down, a lot fewer borrowers would have defaulted (but since they started at or near historic lows, how likely was that?), so we could blame interest rates. And if salaries had gone up faster than inflation instead of salaries barely going up while we had record-breaking inflation of oil and food prices, then fewer people would have defaulted. But none of these things would have mattered if people had been allowed to take only loans they could reasonably have been expected to repay.
The guest with comment #15 says "The problem is inflation...but at this point that must seem like a better problem than a sudden collapse in the price of houses (and many other assets)." But inflation is the collapse of the value of money applied to all purchases (not just housing and many other assets). I'd rather have housing prices collapse. (Disclaimer: I admit I'm not planning to sell my house. But if I were, I could still use the money to buy another house whose value had also collapsed, right?)
To Jen I'd say that (almost) everyone can afford a home, just not a giant new house. There are tiny houses and trailer homes, and mud houses and stuff like that which actually are quite a bit cheaper than the average home.
Don't you have thrift stores and consignment shops? I have been able to get a fairly moderately priced wardrobe by shopping at both. You'd be amazed what makes it into thrift stores. I would say that 90% of my clothing was bought for less than 5 dollars per piece. The other 10% I am able to pay more for because of the fact that I buy secondhand.
You never know what these jobs might mean to people in China. If someone is very poor and doesn't have any job at all, they might be grateful for that 12 bucks a week job. Maybe (as the previous poster pointed out) that could more of a living wage there due to the cost of living there. I don't feel guilty at all for purchasing stuff at Wal-Mart. And I think it's absurdly self righteous for people to tell you how to spend your money. If you have beliefs against Wal-Mart, by all mean, live by your beliefs. Just don't push your beliefs on others.
all of these comments are far and away smarter than the article they refer to. the style recommendations in said-article are atrocious. you can look much better and spend less money by making a teensy bit more effort to find thrift store chic. take one sunday afternoon, have a glass of wine, and play dress up in your closet, making outfits for the upcoming season, mixing and matching, and you won't have to think about it for months.
I almost exclusively shop at thrift stores and I look for signature skirts which I can pair with any number of slightly more casual tops or dress up with jackets and sweaters. Basically like your signature jacket idea, except with skirts, I guess.
I'm sick of it all. I didn't load up with debt and was responsible so I'm screwed. Government will bail out the banks and the individuals who made bad decisions. The net effect will be to prop up home prices artificially and will keep me out of the market ... again.
The Democrats - being so politically pc - thought everyone should be a homeowner. Standards became so lax as to be ridiculous.
The Republicans took care of the fat-cats on Wall Street and oversight disappeared.
Now the 'Masters of the Universe' want to bailout the entire system. How come you trust those who screwed it up in the first place.
Another key question is WHY did house prices get so high? Well lets think about this, with the low interest rates and lowered financial requirements. People who couldn’t afford houses where laughing and buying happily, not reading the fine print on the fluctuation mortgage rates. Now if the supply of houses are diminished, economics tells us that the price would increase to follow suit. Now imagine this on a massive scale, prices are going to rocket. Then when the fluctuating mortgages started rising, people who couldn’t afford a cent more got picked off and claimed bankruptcy, and like a house of cards it all came tumbling down. The Fed’s correction thought inevitable was handled in a poor and amateur-ish manner. .I was just reading a couple posts on www.StockResearchPortalblog.com where they were discussing the impact of the financial crisis and how it’s led to the current bailout. I found it interesting that they made comparisons from 1929 to today. It seems as if the market is one big wheel and always repeats itself.
A big problem with deregulated capitalism is that it forces companies to engage in riskier and riskier behavior in order to be competitive -- ultimately, however, some of the behavior turns out to have been *too* risky. Unfortunately, its very hard to gauge how risky is too risky. The Republicans party has consistently fought for deregulation and reduced enforcement of anti-trust laws so that companies can buy each other more and more easily. This encourages companies to take greater and greater risks because if one company is making larger profits (by being increasingly leveraged, for example), then your company either has to do the same or risk getting bought by someone who *will* do it.
You see the same kind of behavior in every other sphere of human behavior, though: radium dials seemed like a great idea for watch faces until the risks to human health were discovered; DDT seemed like a great way to control mosquitoes until the risks to the environment were made clear; and the list goes on and on. We have regulatory agencies like the FDA in place in order to carefully assess the risks to reduce the likelihood that new, experimental drugs gain widespread use before unanticipated effects are discovered. It's expensive to have regulatory oversight and it dramatically limits what kinds of approaches get tried -- it's too expensive to try to get regulatory approval of anything that isn't a pretty sure bet. But we accept the limitations because of the potential for human suffering. Companies have a hard time evaluating risks to human suffering: they have an obligation to pay attention to the bottom line -- and only the bottom line. We have to have strong government regulation if we want the behavior of companies to engage in risky behavior to be limited. And, although I don't hear Republicans saying it yet, it seems clear now that they agree with that sentiment.
What's lower than casual dress code? The company that I work for, I guess, has no dress code. So, I also have the opposite problem.
While I can appreciate being able to wear what I want; I am a designer, and sometimes long for another position solely for "fashion/style" purposes. I don't like feeling "overdressed" in my work environment because I choose to wear heels...I digress. I suppose that's why/how I came to discover WiseBread...to care a little less about appearances, and more about my personal finances.
So, if I were to dress for success and still spend less I'd live at the following stores:
TJMaxx, Loehmann's, Nordstrom Rack, Filene's Bargain Basement, and (for a decent suit) Ann Taylor Loft sale section with a 20% off mailer coupon:)
Also check out stores like Target and TJ Max. Target's in house brands are (Mossimo, Merano) are reasonably priced and fashionable. And TJ Max carries great department store brands as long as you're willing to dig through the racks. Right now, I'm wearing a great pair of pants that I did drop some bucks on because I know I'll get my money's out of them (I've had them for a year and wear them at least twice a week) and a shirt I got for $6 on the Target clearance rack.
To check and double-check your thrift store finds for any strange tags or stickers. I was never more embarassed than when I wore a designer suit into a business meeting and had a co-worker mock me for the bright orange plastic string that was hanging out of my sleeve. I had removed two stickers and a tag, but missed this tell-tale sign of consignment shopping...
I have to agree with the have your own style concept. It will save you a ton by not buying into some rather silly trends.
I find better designer clothes at thrift stores than I do in the regular stores around here. Professional or women with too much money seem to buy expensive clothes when they are in a bigger city so I find all sorts of neat designer clothes at thrift stores I could not buy new around here.
Even thrift stores from the same chain are not the same. Goodwill stores vary widely in how the price or what merchandise they have.
"The root cause of all this financial mess is the unregulated exotic instruments like CDS (credit default swaps) "
This and deregulation that allowed these exotic loans to be sold by pretty much anyone with a pen and also the massive deregulation in the investment banks world caused this far far more than someone buying more home than they can afford.
Yes, this thing reeks to high heaven like Iraq and the Patriot Act. We have the former CEO of Goldman Sachs (Paulson) asking for the largest no questions asked blank check in history with no oversight.
If we the taxpayers are going to spend 700 billion dollars it ought to be going directly to homeowners and businesses that need that operating credit or changes to their mortgage to keep things rolling. Giving it to the investment banks seems very stupid and with little promise we might ever get it back.
Not giving Wall Street the bail out might make the markets a mess for a long while but we are also not the only game in the world. Giving the average taxpayer or business that employs people what will keep them going makes more sense.
You probably don't work in a place where you have to interact with clients.
Thanks for the post..
One nit to pick.. Check your facts; raise your credibility. Bloggers have a responsibility too. Once you put something in writing and it makes it's way out into the 'inkernet', you perpetuate misinformation. Even though you retracted it, the original text is still in many newsreaders (it was in mine :).
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_president_bush_call_the_consti...
I kind of have to agree that a few of the suggestions from the original article seem kinda strange.
The phrase "overpriced suit combos" is a little ambiguous. If you are refering to coordinating suiting separates, then you are correct. If you are referring to suits sold as suits, your assertion is false because you do save money by buying a jacket and pant/ skirt as a suit.
On the button up shirt as a jacket front- this usually looks sloppy. It's Seattle grunge dressed up for the office. It doesn't so much mess with my head as put a furrow in my brow. Cotton button up shirts don't have the same weight as a jacket and don't lay right. Also, the bigger the bust, the worse it looks (the bottom half of the placket just sorta flops in the wind when walking.)A vertical stripe shirt should especially never be worn open. It has a widening effect on the normally slimming vertical stripes.
Also, in "layers, layers, and more layers"- I'm not sure I am following your logic that by wearing more clothes at one time, you somehow save money. Seems to me that regardless of price, if you wear more items per day you will need to own more items.
In your attempt to find a new angle, you overlooked one obvious remedy to this problem: accessories. Instead of "accessorizing" with three tanks, how about accessorizing with actual accessories? Almost any women's magazine that has addressed this topic talks about accessories. It's classic advice for a reason.
@11 I agree whole-heartedly! Particularly with the author's first suggestion- stick to a classic wool jacket(unless you are allergic) or the highest wool content you can afford. The reason is that man made fibers like poly/rayon blends can harbour odors whereas wool repels them. Quality wool only has to be dry cleaned no more than three times a year.
I have a mix-and-match uniform of pants (slacks or khakis), solid t-shirts, and blazers. Then I add a necklace to make it more fun. And sometimes interesting socks, because I'm subversive that way.
Here are some of my current most-worn outfits:
1) olive drab khakis, cream shirt, black jacket, and necklace with pearls, onyx and garnet beads
2) black slacks, yellow shirt, olive green linen jacket, and necklace with white pearls, gold-tone pearls, and garnet beads
3) black slacks, white shirt, black-and-white check jacket, pearl/onyx/garnet beads
4) tan khakis, forest green shirt, black jacket, pearl/garnet necklace
5) black slacks, black-and-white striped shirt, green linen jacket, pearl/onyx/garnet necklace
6) tan khakis, purple shirt, black jacket, necklace with beads of amethyst, silver/black, and some kind of green stone
It's not the greatest, especially since I insist on wearing flat lace-up leather shoes, but most people around here dress a lot more casually. I am thinking of moving up to fitted woven blouses in solid colors.
One thing about solids is that they are easy to mix and match. And one thing about necklaces is that they don't wear out very quickly and they tend to keep fitting very long term.
This is very true. I was checking out Ann Taylor, Talbot's and Chico's websites last weekend after getting back from thrift store and consignment shopping. I was trying to get a frame of reference for what is "in" and a bit more upscale this fall. What I found was quite a few classic pieces, many of them were at the thrift stores I was looking at and in good quality brands.
I have a creative background so subtleties of fabric, color and cut or design is kind of second nature and I can keep those concepts in my head when shopping. I still try to make a list of what items I need to fill in my wardrobe with. It keeps me from buying yet another black jacket that is nearly identical to the others in my closet.
Even if your not inclined to thinking this way just get a notebook and cut out pictures or print outs of things you see that are what your going after for fashion. You could even snap pictures with your phone at a high end store. Then take those concepts and go look for them at thrift stores.
@Guest:
People buying houses they cannot afford should be a problem only for that person and whoever lent him the money. When it starts causing problems for everyone else, I think that's a sign that there's something more going on.
After all, people have wanted bigger and better houses since we moved out of caves. Why is it that this time it's threatening the whole economy? Obviously a lot of things play into this, but we're not going to solve the problem by propping up house prices.
Hardly. Sarah's tips won't be appropriate for EVERY work environment, but they are a really good start. There are ways her suggestions could turn out horribly, but I think she's assuming you know how to match like colors and patterns and can put together something crisp. I have shopped many new stores (like Ann Taylor, Petite Sophisticate, Von Maur, etc) that took the concept of a basic t and button-up and overcharged (while calling it "this year's" look).
A nicer fabric, richer color, and the right accessories can turn a cheaper version (i.e. thrift store find) into something very chic.
Linsey Knerl
Perhaps it's because people weren't happy with the house they could afford.
People aren't defaulting on $100,000 mortgages here. They're defaulting on the $200+ mortgages in areas where they could easily find something liveable for less.
That's a bit of a simplification, but by and large- people overbought and banks over-lent.
A mortgage is a privilege, not a Constitutional right.
@ Mad Mike:
The crisis scenario is this:
Banks (as a group) can't borrow money. They hold so much bad debt that they're insolvent (or close enough). They can collect small deposits because small deposits are insured, but they can't sell bonds, they can't sell commercial paper, and they can't issue huge money market CDs.
Without access to the money markets to borrow, the banks are unable to lend. In theory they'd be able to sort-of maintain the status quo--making new loans as old loans get paid off--but in practice a bank in that situation would accumulate some cash just in case things got worse.
You express doubt about that part, but it's actually already happening. As I type this, the federal government can borrow money for 3 months at just 0.5%, but top-tier credits that aren't the government are paying 8 times that.
With essentially no lending going on (because the banks don't have any money to lend), commerce begins to grind to a halt. There are very few businesses of any size that can operate without ready access to credit. Even businesses with no long-term debt still have short-term credit needs--to fill the gap from when they buy raw materials until they get paid for the products they sell. Similarly, farmers borrow at planting time and then pay off the loan at harvest time.
Unable to borrow, businesses fail. Some can just shrink--they only buy the raw materials they can pay cash for, they layoff enough employees that they can cover their payroll without a loan--but many fail almost immediately. Worse, more fail every month--because customers are cutting orders, because customers are failing, and especially because consumers (having lost their jobs) are buying less.
This scenario has played out hundreds of times--it use to be called a panic. (See my article from last year, Credit squeeze, formerly known as a panic.)
Until the great depression, economist believed that a panic was self-limiting: Businesses would shrink and fail, but that would open up opportunities for other business to step in, buy the (still valuable) assets, and make a go of the business. Prices would fall, asset values would fall, but eventually things would reach equilibrium.
In the great depression, though, that didn't seem to happen. Business activity continued to shrink for years. Even after it stabilized, it showed no signs of returning to growth. There was land, there was labor, there was even capital--but there seemed to be no will to put it to productive use. The economy seemed to have gotten stuck at some low-level equilibrium where vast swaths of the population were unemployed.
Maybe that wouldn't happen this time. But that's the crisis that so many people are afraid of.
Don't forget that the Fed lowered interest rates making mortgages cheaper and inflating house values. My parents' mortgage was 14%-- and they could afford it because they paid $30,000 for their house. But although a 1/3 lower rate may mean you can afford a larger mortgage payment, it doesn't mean that the same house actually tripled in value. In capitalism value is based on what you can pay, but intrinsic value does exist, and it should exert an opposing pressure, unless the government continues to lend money at a rate below that of inflation.
Certainly any banker offering no or less than no down payment mortgages was committing fraud. This is not a matter for regulation, but of law enforcement.
Read a Cato article today that brought up two great points: Housing bubbles are worst in localities with high land use regulations, and federal housing policies geared towards subsidizing low-income homebuyers encourage folks who can't afford to buy to do so anyway. Tag on ridiculously low federal funds interest rates for way too long and you have a recipe for disaster.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/09/22/blame-urban-planning/
Artifially restricting housing supply through land use regulations, including Environmental Protection Agency proposals to integrate climate and land use all drive up prices. Less regulated regions have natural supply and demand growth with moderate price fluctuations.
Low-income earners should probably not be buying property, especially during speculative periods of rising prices. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac drove these two institutions into signficantly increasing their subprime lending portfolios. This was done with decent intentions of increasing homeownership rates amongst lower-income folks, but the harsh reality is that these people could not sustain their housing payments after initial teaser periods and rapid periods of equity growth expired.
I've heard no objective definition of what the gloom and doom will be if we don't get a bailout. I've heard some companies will fail, so what! companies are born and die everyday. Some people will lose their homes, like that hasn't been happening since the begining of time? Tell me how many? Unemployment will rise, give me some objective data, what percentage? And heres the one thats real hard to swallow, "Credit will be unavailable" BULL#*%+!! even in the dark ages people were lending to other people for profit, its the worlds second oldest profession. Are they trying to tell us it won't exist in the future unless we buy their plan. Please Mr Paulson, define "crisis" in some objective terms.
I thought the cause was people getting very stupid loans which in turn was caused by banks suddenly offering and allowing these loans. It's about banks collecting all the closing costs for bad loans and then bundling them with other loans to look good and selling them to either naive or lied-to buyers.
This reminds me of developers who build houses poorly or on poor property (like on an earthquake fault or in a flood zone) and then sell everything to other people who then have to deal with the upcoming problems.
I really wish people would have to take more responsibility for the problems they cause. I guess that's were regulation comes in--don't allow banks to offer stupid loans.
Now it's true that if housing values kept going up, then when the borrowers defaulted, the lenders could sell their houses and get their money back. And if interest rates had gone down, a lot fewer borrowers would have defaulted (but since they started at or near historic lows, how likely was that?), so we could blame interest rates. And if salaries had gone up faster than inflation instead of salaries barely going up while we had record-breaking inflation of oil and food prices, then fewer people would have defaulted. But none of these things would have mattered if people had been allowed to take only loans they could reasonably have been expected to repay.
The guest with comment #15 says "The problem is inflation...but at this point that must seem like a better problem than a sudden collapse in the price of houses (and many other assets)." But inflation is the collapse of the value of money applied to all purchases (not just housing and many other assets). I'd rather have housing prices collapse. (Disclaimer: I admit I'm not planning to sell my house. But if I were, I could still use the money to buy another house whose value had also collapsed, right?)
To Jen I'd say that (almost) everyone can afford a home, just not a giant new house. There are tiny houses and trailer homes, and mud houses and stuff like that which actually are quite a bit cheaper than the average home.
Don't you have thrift stores and consignment shops? I have been able to get a fairly moderately priced wardrobe by shopping at both. You'd be amazed what makes it into thrift stores. I would say that 90% of my clothing was bought for less than 5 dollars per piece. The other 10% I am able to pay more for because of the fact that I buy secondhand.
You never know what these jobs might mean to people in China. If someone is very poor and doesn't have any job at all, they might be grateful for that 12 bucks a week job. Maybe (as the previous poster pointed out) that could more of a living wage there due to the cost of living there. I don't feel guilty at all for purchasing stuff at Wal-Mart. And I think it's absurdly self righteous for people to tell you how to spend your money. If you have beliefs against Wal-Mart, by all mean, live by your beliefs. Just don't push your beliefs on others.
all of these comments are far and away smarter than the article they refer to. the style recommendations in said-article are atrocious. you can look much better and spend less money by making a teensy bit more effort to find thrift store chic. take one sunday afternoon, have a glass of wine, and play dress up in your closet, making outfits for the upcoming season, mixing and matching, and you won't have to think about it for months.
I almost exclusively shop at thrift stores and I look for signature skirts which I can pair with any number of slightly more casual tops or dress up with jackets and sweaters. Basically like your signature jacket idea, except with skirts, I guess.
I'm sick of it all. I didn't load up with debt and was responsible so I'm screwed. Government will bail out the banks and the individuals who made bad decisions. The net effect will be to prop up home prices artificially and will keep me out of the market ... again.
The Democrats - being so politically pc - thought everyone should be a homeowner. Standards became so lax as to be ridiculous.
The Republicans took care of the fat-cats on Wall Street and oversight disappeared.
Now the 'Masters of the Universe' want to bailout the entire system. How come you trust those who screwed it up in the first place.
The 'Greater Depression' is around the corner.
Another key question is WHY did house prices get so high? Well lets think about this, with the low interest rates and lowered financial requirements. People who couldn’t afford houses where laughing and buying happily, not reading the fine print on the fluctuation mortgage rates. Now if the supply of houses are diminished, economics tells us that the price would increase to follow suit. Now imagine this on a massive scale, prices are going to rocket. Then when the fluctuating mortgages started rising, people who couldn’t afford a cent more got picked off and claimed bankruptcy, and like a house of cards it all came tumbling down. The Fed’s correction thought inevitable was handled in a poor and amateur-ish manner. .I was just reading a couple posts on www.StockResearchPortalblog.com where they were discussing the impact of the financial crisis and how it’s led to the current bailout. I found it interesting that they made comparisons from 1929 to today. It seems as if the market is one big wheel and always repeats itself.
A big problem with deregulated capitalism is that it forces companies to engage in riskier and riskier behavior in order to be competitive -- ultimately, however, some of the behavior turns out to have been *too* risky. Unfortunately, its very hard to gauge how risky is too risky. The Republicans party has consistently fought for deregulation and reduced enforcement of anti-trust laws so that companies can buy each other more and more easily. This encourages companies to take greater and greater risks because if one company is making larger profits (by being increasingly leveraged, for example), then your company either has to do the same or risk getting bought by someone who *will* do it.
You see the same kind of behavior in every other sphere of human behavior, though: radium dials seemed like a great idea for watch faces until the risks to human health were discovered; DDT seemed like a great way to control mosquitoes until the risks to the environment were made clear; and the list goes on and on. We have regulatory agencies like the FDA in place in order to carefully assess the risks to reduce the likelihood that new, experimental drugs gain widespread use before unanticipated effects are discovered. It's expensive to have regulatory oversight and it dramatically limits what kinds of approaches get tried -- it's too expensive to try to get regulatory approval of anything that isn't a pretty sure bet. But we accept the limitations because of the potential for human suffering. Companies have a hard time evaluating risks to human suffering: they have an obligation to pay attention to the bottom line -- and only the bottom line. We have to have strong government regulation if we want the behavior of companies to engage in risky behavior to be limited. And, although I don't hear Republicans saying it yet, it seems clear now that they agree with that sentiment.
What's lower than casual dress code? The company that I work for, I guess, has no dress code. So, I also have the opposite problem.
While I can appreciate being able to wear what I want; I am a designer, and sometimes long for another position solely for "fashion/style" purposes. I don't like feeling "overdressed" in my work environment because I choose to wear heels...I digress. I suppose that's why/how I came to discover WiseBread...to care a little less about appearances, and more about my personal finances.
So, if I were to dress for success and still spend less I'd live at the following stores:
TJMaxx, Loehmann's, Nordstrom Rack, Filene's Bargain Basement, and (for a decent suit) Ann Taylor Loft sale section with a 20% off mailer coupon:)
Also check out stores like Target and TJ Max. Target's in house brands are (Mossimo, Merano) are reasonably priced and fashionable. And TJ Max carries great department store brands as long as you're willing to dig through the racks. Right now, I'm wearing a great pair of pants that I did drop some bucks on because I know I'll get my money's out of them (I've had them for a year and wear them at least twice a week) and a shirt I got for $6 on the Target clearance rack.
To check and double-check your thrift store finds for any strange tags or stickers. I was never more embarassed than when I wore a designer suit into a business meeting and had a co-worker mock me for the bright orange plastic string that was hanging out of my sleeve. I had removed two stickers and a tag, but missed this tell-tale sign of consignment shopping...
Linsey
I have to agree with the have your own style concept. It will save you a ton by not buying into some rather silly trends.
I find better designer clothes at thrift stores than I do in the regular stores around here. Professional or women with too much money seem to buy expensive clothes when they are in a bigger city so I find all sorts of neat designer clothes at thrift stores I could not buy new around here.
Even thrift stores from the same chain are not the same. Goodwill stores vary widely in how the price or what merchandise they have.
"The root cause of all this financial mess is the unregulated exotic instruments like CDS (credit default swaps) "
This and deregulation that allowed these exotic loans to be sold by pretty much anyone with a pen and also the massive deregulation in the investment banks world caused this far far more than someone buying more home than they can afford.
Yes, this thing reeks to high heaven like Iraq and the Patriot Act. We have the former CEO of Goldman Sachs (Paulson) asking for the largest no questions asked blank check in history with no oversight.
If we the taxpayers are going to spend 700 billion dollars it ought to be going directly to homeowners and businesses that need that operating credit or changes to their mortgage to keep things rolling. Giving it to the investment banks seems very stupid and with little promise we might ever get it back.
Not giving Wall Street the bail out might make the markets a mess for a long while but we are also not the only game in the world. Giving the average taxpayer or business that employs people what will keep them going makes more sense.