I see a lot of sentiment on various blogs of this kind. People think that: 1) economic crash will be a problem only for the Bush administration, and 2) the crash will be confined to Americans, who got ‘greedy.’

In fact, the full effect of what you are seeing now won’t hit until around 2011, when the mortgage resets peak, oil production goes off a cliff, and the Boomers start retiring en masse. The 44th president will be planning his/her reelection at that point, and W will be a memory.

Also, this thing is not going to be contained in America. American consumption props up Chinese, European, and Candadian economies, which are export and manufacturing based. These economies all used securitization to create their manufacturing base, and now the cost of commodities, coupled with decrease in consumption, is going to absolutely kill them.

Democrats looking for some perverse vindication int the current economic situation don’t seem to grasp its seriousness.

Count me down for blaming “corporate america.” I think if I were pointing fingers (and I am) I’d point mine straight at CitiFinancial, CountryWide and friends. Some people assert we should blame the people making too little who were too stupid to buy houses they couldn’t afford. I think it makes more sense to blame the people who were stupid enough to loan them the money in the first place.

Either way, one of the two groups is at fault. A moderate person might blame both, but in a world where most people grew up in a world where banks wouldn’t loan people money who couldn’t afford to pay the money back, I have a lot more sympathy for the idiot masses who can’t do math than for the bankers who can.

The irony of all of this is that because polls are showing so many people intend to use their tax rebates to pay down debt, the banks seem to always have the upper hand.

And me, I won’t be getting a tax rebate. Instead, this past year I’ll have paid about $60,000 in taxes to support a war I never wanted, started by a guy whose business ventures included running Arbusto, Spectrum 7 and Harkin energy into the ground just like he did this country. Because while I blame the banks, it would have been nice if someone had come along and predicted this was going to happen and done something to stave it off about 4 years ago. Somebody like a president or congress.

However, as a resident of Austin, TX, I wish you would not paint all Texans with the same brush. Yes, there are parts of Texas that may fit your description, but there are parts which easily rival cities in California. I have lived in San Diego (5 years) and San Jose (12 years). I moved to Austin 3 years ago because I wanted to raise a family in a ’sane’ environment. My wife and I had good paying jobs but all we could afford was a small condo with no yard. Now we live in a very nice neighborhood with room for 4.

BTW, I don’t own a gun, chew tobacco, or drive a big pick up truck. Just a normal American family trying to wisely navigate the difficult economic circumstances we find ourselves in.

And a big Thank You to Dr. Housing Bubble and other blogs that offer real information and analysis as opposed to the biased crap in the MSM.