The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I been watching – with considerable interest — no pun intended, the subprime loan debacle on the South End. I can understand the mortgage companies’ point of view. And I can understand the bank’s way of looking at it. And, believe it or not, I can see how the realtors might view it. They’ve all been watching the Pay Day Loan folks and the credit card companies and they figured where there’s blood in the water, charge right in. Gotta be dinner in there for them too…..

But I have a harder time with the neighbor who buys into a house twice what he needs at an unbelievably low interest with a 40 year loan and has to put his wife and kids up as collateral. A year later after the adjustable rate adjusts, maybe doubles and … hello…. Our boy can’t meet the nut. Penalties roll into play, collection agencies suddenly come knocking, goons call at midnight, how could this be happening to our boy in the over valued Land of the Free and the Mortgaged Home of the Brave?

I didn’t get it. But awhile back Tyee Store put in an ATM machine. For the same reason casinos put em in. As a service to their valued customers. I watched folks, apparently in full control of their faculties, well, by South End standards, withdraw $20 for their cigarettes and adult beverages and pay the $2 or $3 transaction fee. They’d do it a few times a week, many times a month. I’d say, hey Jimmy my man, what’s your thinking here? That’s 10, 15 %. And Jimmy would say, yeah? couple bucks, so what?

Now Jimbo doesn’t probably own a subprime house, but he’s got a car loan and probably rents his plasma TV and his furniture and he pays the bare minimum on his credit card balance and well, I’m no accountant, but I bet Jimbo is the tip of a very deep iceberg floating next to my little dinghy. I’m not saying we need a Great Depression to teach folks the meaning of a devalued dollar, but short of remedial 3rd grade math, I don’t know what it takes.

Tyee Store took our their ATM money mojo a few months back Couldn’t manage to keep it stocked with cash. I was gonna ask em what their thinking was? But I think we already knew the answer, I guess, and I’m sure not a fella that teaches the predators how to hone their hunting skills…..

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