There's No Income Disparity in This Country...Of Course Not!
Having read a fair number of analyses, charts and statistics pro and con on the issue of whether there is widening income disparity in this country (the good 'ol USA) or not, we present here a stark fact or trend in the mortgage market that probably makes the point as well as anything else that there is at the very least a rather dramatic spread between those who have gobs of money and the rest of us. Putting it in this non-economic, non-technical manner perhaps makes the point better than statistics or arguments. I don't know. I do know that the following says much about the State of the Union in this Year of Our Lord (Anno Domini, a/k/a AD) 2014:
Having spent some years in the Private Banking business, the ways of the rich and the ways banks court them are familiar to me. So this latest foray into mortgages by those who can probably pay cash doesn't surprise me. And the amounts here don't necessarily tell us that those who've got it are growing farther away from those who don't. This could just be "business as usual" for the rich and their bankers, playing with cheap money to purchase real estate. There's nothing particularly new in this. Money is cheap and some rich people, knowing this, chose to use that money rather than their own to buy some house or apartment that suits their fancy.
But let's turn now to the experience of growing up and living in and around New York City for some decades, and witnessing the evisceration of the middle class beginning in Manhattan, and now spreading to the outer boros in certain instances. Now it becomes more evident that the gap continues to widen, simply because that old, solid middle class, specifically those who man the blue collar/working class ranks, that once bound together the life of the great City of New York has begun to shrink and dissipate. Beginning ever so slowly, the trend accelerates. To witness it simply makes it hard to imagine that it's not obvious to everyone else.
Perhaps the tourists prefer the City now as it has become. It's surely a better place than existed at the depths of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And yet something goes missing when the regular folks struggle to live their lives as the tourists and the "gentry" enjoy life in the City.
(If interested in further information on this, click HERE.)
Banks are handing out mortgages of as much as $10 million to the wealthy in record numbers while first-time homebuyers struggle to get loans.Okay, so all this really means is that folks with lots of money get loans - mortgages and other types of credit - easier than you or I can get them. Simple common sense tells us that, right?
Having spent some years in the Private Banking business, the ways of the rich and the ways banks court them are familiar to me. So this latest foray into mortgages by those who can probably pay cash doesn't surprise me. And the amounts here don't necessarily tell us that those who've got it are growing farther away from those who don't. This could just be "business as usual" for the rich and their bankers, playing with cheap money to purchase real estate. There's nothing particularly new in this. Money is cheap and some rich people, knowing this, chose to use that money rather than their own to buy some house or apartment that suits their fancy.
But let's turn now to the experience of growing up and living in and around New York City for some decades, and witnessing the evisceration of the middle class beginning in Manhattan, and now spreading to the outer boros in certain instances. Now it becomes more evident that the gap continues to widen, simply because that old, solid middle class, specifically those who man the blue collar/working class ranks, that once bound together the life of the great City of New York has begun to shrink and dissipate. Beginning ever so slowly, the trend accelerates. To witness it simply makes it hard to imagine that it's not obvious to everyone else.
Perhaps the tourists prefer the City now as it has become. It's surely a better place than existed at the depths of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And yet something goes missing when the regular folks struggle to live their lives as the tourists and the "gentry" enjoy life in the City.
(If interested in further information on this, click HERE.)
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